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On Tuesday, January 31, many members of the community gathered at the Central Hillside Community Center, led by the The Duluth Human Rights Commission, in a hearing about the Homeless Persons Bill of Rights. Joined were activists, advocates, Police Chief Mike Tusken, City Councilors Joel Sipress and Em Westerlund, The Duluth Human Rights Commission, members of CHUM, members of Loaves & Fishes, citizens experiencing homelessness, and more. All brought together to discuss the future of the Homeless Persons Bill of Rights, and how best to proceed.

We visited this issue earlier in the year as the momentum was building around agreed upon language for the hoped Bill of Rights ordinance, with preliminary list of protections to include:

1. The right to use and move freely in public spaces, without discrimination or arbitrary time limits

2. The right to rest in public spaces and protect oneself from elements in a non-obstructive manner

3. The right to eat, share or accept food in public spaces

4.    The right to occupy a legally parked motor vehicle

5.  The right to a reasonable expectation of privacy in public spaces

6. The right to equal treatment by city staff and agencies

7.  The right to protection from disclosure of personal information without consent

8.  The right to protection from discrimination in housing and employment

9. The right to 24 hour access to basic hygiene facilities

10. The right to choose whether or not to utilize emergency shelter

11. The right to speak with an advocate or street outreach worker when questioned by police

At the hearing on Tuesday, a panel was held by the Human Rights Commission, members of the community were also invited to share their stories. A very diverse large meeting room was filled and many people voiced their experiences, questions, and ideas about what it means to experience homelessness in our community and how to help those experiencing it. Some key issues touched on included: public hygiene facility access, need for immediate shelter in winter weather, lack of affordable housing, lack of access to addiction treatment, inadequate facilities for mental health needs, legality of camping, legality of sleeping in cars, etc. On the note of addiction, Executive Director of Chum Lee Stuart, and Street Outreach Worker Deb Holman agreed, “We needed three more San Marco Apartments, yesterday,” in reference to Duluth’s facility for addiction housing. Stuart also elaborated that “we really need more facilities like San Marco specifically for those with mental health needs in our community as well.” It seems as though many with disabilities are getting swept under the rug with less and less housing available each year.

After basic needs were discussed, the greater was question was asked, what is feasible as a policy, ordinance, or law? It turns out, it’s a little different for each circumstance.

Local police have taken a step to try to employ a new policy towards people experiencing homelessness in Duluth in accordance with the proposed Bill of Rights, but they still can’t provide some of the requests legally. The issue of camping is illegal based off more than one law in our city, and on a state level, unfortunately essentially making it illegal to be homeless, and an ordinance or police policy can’t overturn that. Police Chief Tusken attended the meeting Tuesday to explain their new policy where they’re trying to provide help in the areas they can affect. Tusken said, “So, what we did is, created a policy for our police department, so that when we are interacting with someone experiencing homelessness we are using our best practices, ensuring their constitutional rights, ensuring their human rights, and making sure we are decriminalizing homelessness. It’s not a crime to be homeless, that’s been our focus, to ensure human rights, and make sure homelessness here in Duluth is not criminalized.”

When asked what some of main focuses of the policy policy are, and how they plan to be executed, Tusken continued, “We used the Bill of Rights as a guideline, and tried to match that language, to make sure people can gather in public spaces, to make sure there are no “Move-On” orders, etc. It’s not perfect, but out of the 11 principles, we managed to accomplish 7 in our policy. The big ones that we’re left are the issues of bathrooms and the hygiene facilities, we just can’t address that with policy. The camping issue is also legality at this point. We also can’t accommodate the sleeping in cars issue, due to too many safety concerns. Essentially we were able to accomplish about 75% of the requests.”

So what are the next steps? We had the chance to ask City Councilor Joel Sipress where this Bill of Rights will go next. “Em and I have a working draft for the language of the ordinance, that doesn’t address all 11 of the principles, due to the fact some of them can’t be addressed by an ordinance at this time. For example, the ‘Right to access a public bathroom’ principle, can’t be resolved until we find a realistic way to implement public restrooms everywhere. So, we having a working draft where we tried to address as many of the principles as we could. There are still some legal issues that have to be tweaked before we can take it to the city council. We shared a copy of the draft with the Human Rights Commission, and would be happy to share it with anyone else that would like to see it.” Sipress also expressed how important these community discussions are to achieving the end goal, mentioning, “One of the things I said tonight is that were holding off on taking it to the city council yet, so that we can have more conversations like tonight first about some of the other issues.”