San Rafael bans camping in parking garages, Boyd Park

The San Rafael City Council voted unanimously this week to ban camping in some areas because of fire risk.

The ban, which took effect immediately following Tuesday’s vote, prohibits camping in Boyd Park and city parking garages. The vote took place the same day homeless campers under Highway 101 were relocated to a designated area nearby with supportive services.

On Thursday, people at Boyd Park were given notice at 8 a.m. to leave the park. By 10:30 a.m., only one person remained.

Last month, council members heard recommendations from city staff on ordinances to address public health and safety hazards associated with homeless camps, including banning them in high fire risk areas and critical public sites.

Camps, and the fires that may accompany them, were cited as adding “to the already critical risk of wildfire in the city’s open space and on some other public properties.”

Assistant City Attorney Lisa Goldfien noted the 2019 federal court decision in Martin v. City of Boise, Idaho, can restrict cities from enforcing anti-camping ordinances if applied to people with no alternative shelter available.

But Goldfien said the decision does not require a city to allow camping or sleeping anywhere on public property and emphasized the need to prevent hazards within the city. San Rafael continues to enforce the ordinance against camping in open spaces and city parks. The ordinance also gives the city manager the ability to prohibit camping in other spaces when necessary, she added.

“The case doesn’t entirely prohibit the city from stopping camping in various places on public property. It says you can’t criminalize sleeping outside everywhere, but it doesn’t say you can’t, in specific places, prohibit camping,” Goldfien said before the meeting.

“We’ve been trying to enforce the ones in open space,” she said. “We’ve been a little bit less strict about enforcing camping in parks when people don’t have elsewhere to go.”

A staff report prepared by Goldfien noted Boyd Park is directly adjacent to the “very high fire-risk, and highly-populated and central San Rafael Hill area.” Goldfien added the city fire department has reported that camps in parking garages have generated numerous public safety calls “to douse fires, stop gushing water from tampered-with fire suppression equipment and clean up debris and hazardous solid waste in stairwells and in parking areas.”

Fire Chief Darin White said these “risky fires” motivate his department to strive to prevent any accidents involving open flames around dry fuel.

During the public comment period of the meeting on Tuesday, Sunny Lee said moving people from Boyd Park could disperse them to other areas of the city.

Pat Langley told the council that while she understands the need for fire prevention, “Displacing people from Boyd Park begs the question: Where will they go?”

“The safe camping spaces recently created under Highway 101 are not adequate for those (people) … to move from those areas,” she said. “The last thing we all want is to have people dispersed throughout open spaces, neighborhoods and the library lawn. The sad reality is the pandemic has pushed many more people into homelessness.”

Mayor Kate Colin and City Manager Jim Schutz pointed to the city’s new “support service area” under Highway 101 as a place people can go, and noted the council has approved $260,000 to work with Marin County to hire more case workers to aid homeless people. Police Chief David Spiller said the supportive camping site under the highway can be expanded as needed.

Vice Mayor Maribeth Bushey thanked Colin and Schutz for their action “to bring our fellow San Rafael residents the services they need to get into housing and get back on their feet.” She added that more time analyzing risks at other locations is needed “if we’re just going to be transferring the problem around the city.”

“That’s not very helpful,” she said.

Getting people into shelter is still “a really big priority for the city,” Goldfien said before the meeting.

“The city’s working very hard to connect people who are without shelter to services and with housing as much as possible, as it’s available, trying to get people into rooms and shelter,” she said.

She noted the city is seeking a homeless solutions coordinator to act as that liaison since the departure of homelessness official Andrew Hening in June.