Ban on homeless trespassing in Fresno proposed by councilmembers

FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - A prohibition connected trespassing astatine Fresno businesses was presented to the nationalist by 3 members of the Fresno City Council connected Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Bredefeld was joined by chap assembly members Mike Karbassi and Tyler Maxwell. The 3 assembly members are each sponsoring the bill. They accidental it is clip to code backstage businesses and what was described arsenic the "homeless people who harass them."

According to Bredefeld, the caller projected ordinance would let backstage concern owners to inquire radical creating problems to permission the spot and not return. If the idiosyncratic refuses to permission they could beryllium taxable to a transgression enactment of trespassing, a misdemeanor, oregon imaginable jailhouse clip arsenic good arsenic a good of $1,000.

"I privation to beryllium clear," Bredefeld said. "We privation to assistance those who are stateless and genuinely privation assistance and privation to change. There's plentifulness of assistance disposable successful the city."

According to Bredefeld, the metropolis has spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating housing, providing necessities, enactment services, aesculapian care, and more.

"But there's a subculture of the stateless who privation that toxic lifestyle, careless of the assistance offered to them," Bredefeld said.

"Those who take to prosecute successful drugs, transgression behavior, unrecorded connected the streets, harass concern owners, make unsafe and unhealthy conditions successful our community, indispensable beryllium held accountable"

Councilmember Mike Karbassi says, arsenic a tiny concern owner, helium shares successful the conflict his constituents look daily.

"[Business owners are] dealing with unprecedented increases successful security rates," Karbassi said. "On apical of that, for years, tiny businesses successful this assemblage and communities crossed California person had to woody with folks that conscionable aren't well."

Karbassi says that, portion homelessness is not a crime, the unhoused should not beryllium allowed to enactment successful behaviors that load tiny concern owners.

"Small concern owners are radical similar you and I," Karbassi said. "We can't spend to let Fresno to crook into San Francisco."

But Karbassi wants the projected ordinance to assistance the unhoused - arsenic good arsenic concern owners.

"This is not a solution to homelessness," Karbassi said. "But this, on with the caller measures we've taken and the Supreme Court ruling, are steps we tin instrumentality to hopefully propulsion the unhoused to places they request to spell to get treatment."

Councilmember Tyler Maxwell says Fresno is simply a hotbed for affordable housing, first-time location ownership, and debased taxes. If it is to enactment that way, Maxwell says the unruly and unhoused request to beryllium held accountable.

"I can't adjacent statesman to archer you the fig of telephone calls my bureau gets from concern owners who are desperately struggling to enactment unfastened but are having a hard clip due to the fact that of hard individuals. Not patrons, but radical loitering, starting fights and sleeping successful and astir their businesses," said Maxwell.

Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz confirmed determination is presently nary municipal codification that addresses trespassing of this nature.

Janz says galore cases and tribunal rulings related to trespassing person been dismissed owed to an inability to beryllium beyond a tenable uncertainty that trespassing occurred. Janz says those cases would present travel straight to the City Attorney's bureau arsenic municipal codification violations alternatively than civilian matters.

"We've seen clip and clip again are courts and judges moving to disregard these cases," Janz said.

"Police officers retired there, are dealing with aggregate calls and they person to determine what telephone they're going to spell to. Are they going to spell to a telephone wherever their lawsuit is not going to get filed by the D.A. oregon a lawsuit wherever it's going to get dismissed by a justice oregon bash you spell to a antithetic call?"

Janz says leaving these cases up to tiny businesses to spell aft successful tribunal is not helping anyone and the projected ordinance is astatine the precise slightest solution erstwhile it comes to prosecuting these cases.