With city council set to vote this week on an ordinance banning tables and other objects from the public right of way, we’ve uncovered that the St. Pete Police Department is ramping up enforcement of an existing law used for the sole purpose of terrorizing the unsheltered.
You might not know that sitting down on the sidewalk or taking a nap on a public bench in St. Pete could result in a $500 fine and send you to jail for up to 60 days. Our homeless neighbors certainly do.
Since the start of the year, there have been 118 arrests or citations for “sleeping, sitting or reclining” on the public right of way – more than the total of the past 3 years combined.
With city council set to vote this week on an ordinance banning tables and other objects from the public right of way, we’ve uncovered (via court records) that the St. Pete Police Department is ramping up enforcement of an existing law used for the sole purpose of terrorizing the unsheltered.
Sec. 20-73 of the city code prevents “sleeping, lying or reclining” on public rights-of-way during daylight hours, in a “prohibited zone” which encompasses most of downtown St. Pete and surrounding areas – between the Bay, 5th Avenues North and South, and 16th Street, as well as a narrow stretch between 1st Avenues North and South to 31st St.
Of those cited for Sec. 20-73 this year, all were listed as “transient” or had an address indicating homelessness, such as a shelter or services facility.
We found that the bulk of the violations occurred before 9 AM, sometimes within minutes of daybreak. As part of the increased enforcement effort, the cops appear to be executing a regular “morning wake up patrol”, as it’s referred to by an officer in a citation from early April. When the continual harassment and psychological tactics aren’t enough, the police resort to citations or arrests.
Some individuals also appear to be frequently targeted. One homeless man — who has received numerous citations for sleeping/sitting as well as other minor charges this year — has been consistently ruled incompetent by the court, yet the SPPD continues to lock him up and strain the system with charges which are unlikely to hold up.
In several cases, officers improperly cited individuals for violations of Sec. 20-73. Five citations were issued prior to sunrise. One was issued well outside of the “prohibited zone”.
While there is a separate ordinance (Sec. 20-74) which bans sleeping at all hours, including overnight, it can’t be enforced unless there is available shelter space and without offering transportation to one. The onerous requirements likely make it infeasible to enforce long-term and at large scale.
We did find one violation of Sec. 20-74 this year, involving a 58-year-old man asleep in his wheelchair on the 200 block of Central Avenue at daybreak. There is no indication that the officer inquired about shelter availability.
63% of the violations we counted occurred in the area surrounding St. Vincent de Paul, located at 401 15th St N. The facility provides a variety of services, however, shelter space there is limited and in high demand. Still, the sidewalks surrounding the block itself are somewhat of a safe haven, with the I-375 overpass providing shelter from the rain, and the overnight presence of others providing a relative sense of security.
The area of St. Vincent is within view of a major intersection and key interstate entrance and exit ramps. Several blocks to the south, luxury developments — such as the Moderna — are growing like cancer in the area between the downtown Edge and Grand Central districts. The city and their big developer buddies are likely targeting this nearby concentration of poverty, which they may feel harms property values and slows investment, hindering the ability to maximize profits.
In addition to St. Vincent, it appears the downtown area east of 6th St and near the waterfront is also being vigorously patrolled. This coincides with the completion of two luxury high-rises — the Ascent and the Evo — which are in the process of bringing hundreds of wealthy new residents to this immediate vicinity. A third residential high-rise, the Saltaire, is expected to open later this year.
Instead of harnessing the increased tax revenue generated by the onslaught of new development to provide permanent housing for the unsheltered and the offering of good jobs or support services for those unable to work, the city government appears committed to the costly and barbaric approach of minimizing visible homelessness with an iron fist.
Municipal ordinance citations may not sound like a heavy-handed tactic, but they often require an appearance before a judge. This puts the homeless at a critical disadvantage. Without a permanent address or access to mail, important notices and updates from the court are never received. A lack of transportation could mean missing a court date, resulting in a warrant, jeopardization of a separate case or probation violation. What appears to be a harmless slap on the wrist can, and often does, snowball into a jail sentence for our homeless neighbors.
Another issue is legal access. While these violations are actually criminal in nature, indigent defendants facing municipal violations aren't always entitled to legal counsel the same way as when facing certain other charges. In Florida, the city or county must separately contract with a legal service to provide public defense for municipal violations. St. Pete doesn’t.
Last year, the ACLU penned a letter to the city government, warning them that the lack of legal defense for those facing municipal violations runs afoul of both the 6th and 14th amendments of the US constitution. Refusing to budge, the city appears hellbent on risking the potential for costly litigation in order to carry out their sadistic displacement scheme.
“Meanest City in the Nation”
The area of I-375 and 15th St – one of the primary targets of St. Pete’s current crackdown – has long been a site of struggle against gentrification. Prior to the Great Recession of the late 2000s, St. Pete had been experiencing an explosion of investment and development. Pressure from the business community led to a spate of stringent enforcement, and the homeless were being forced from their usual sleeping spots in the immediate downtown. That’s when tents began popping up beneath the I-375 overpass, leading to the creation of a makeshift tent city.
On the morning of January 19th, 2007, about 20 St. Pete Police officers descended upon the encampment, slashing tents while people still slept inside. A video of the incident was widely shared on YouTube and now-defunct social media sites like MySpace, drawing national scrutiny.
Republican Mayor Rick Baker went on the defensive, boasting of the city’s accomplishments and dedication to the county’s (failed) 10-year Plan to End Homelessness and blaming the leadup to the incident on everything from the activists to “criminal elements”, though begrudgingly admitting calling the tent-slashing a mistake.
Beginning that summer, the homeless took to the steps of city hall and surrounding sidewalk each night. The movement was well-organized. To the city’s dismay, the homeless staged a large protest near the Mahaffey when it hosted the Republican presidential debate in November of that year, once again thrusting St. Pete’s homeless crisis into the national spotlight.
While pledging additional resources to address homelessness, the city also began drafting a series of ordinances to put a stop to the nightly occupation outside city hall. These new laws included prohibitions on sleeping and placement of makeshift shelters, as well as an unconstitutional anti-panhandling ordinance and outlawing the “storage” of personal belongings on public property.
In February 2008, the city began clearing the area outside city hall, marking an end to the uprising.
The Era of “Progress”
15 years later, hundreds of unsheltered residents still remain on St. Pete streets. Laws borne of a far-right administration are being quietly utilized under the leadership of a Democratic council majority and Mayor who ran on the slogan of “progress”.
According to HUD, homelessness has been on the decline in Pinellas county. This data is derived from a one-night survey (Point-in-Time, or PIT) conducted each year in January, but homeless advocates have long argued this approach to gauging homelessness is flawed and inaccurate.
In contrast to the decline in the PIT count, data from the Pinellas County School Board shows an upward trend in student homelessness. At the end of the 2021-2022 school year, the district counted a record-high 4,674 homeless students. By comparison, there were just 962 at the end of the 2007-08 school year.
The annual jail count reveals the number of homeless inmates in Pinellas has increased as well — from 302 in 2010 to 626 in 2022. Based on data we sourced from jail records, the overall number of individuals booked as “transient” steadily grew from 1,989 in 2006 to a peak of 5,553 in 2019 – comprising over 13% of the jail’s total bookings that year. While the number of transient bookings dropped to around 3,300 the following year (likely due to COVID), the number has been on the rise ever since, up to 4,107 in 2022.
At least 18 cities and towns in Pinellas county have anti-homeless laws on the books, ranging from sleeping in public to panhandling.
In 2019, the SPPD launched the Police Assisting the Homeless (PATH) unit in an effort to address homelessness with an emphasis on service referral before enforcement. The department frequently pitches feel-good stories about the successes of the unit. Yet behind the smoke and mirrors of a $643,000 public relations budget, enforcement and incarceration clearly continue to play a seminal role in the city’s efforts.
The PATH unit came under intense scrutiny last year, after it was revealed that the unit was hoarding thousands of dollars in donations intended for use on toiletries and other supplies for homeless individuals. City leaders have since reallocated the money to a different department.
Last month, Mayor Welch released his operating budget workbook for 2024, which contains a whopping $151 million dollar allocation for the St. Pete Police – a nearly $17 million increase over last year. Meanwhile, only a measly $2.4 million dollar appropriation is planned for veteran, homeless and social services, including $400,000 for rapid rehousing. "Progress" for whom?
This week, the city will be voting on an expansion of its table ban. The new regulation would criminalize the use and placement of tables and other objects on public sidewalks in a massive swath of downtown. Anything from tables and podiums used during protests, to props and tip jars used by street performers, to display racks used by artists hawking their wares would be banned from the right of way. Violators would be subject to citation or arrest and seizure of property. The city is pushing the ordinance due to the alleged “aesthetic and economic harm” to surrounding businesses.
The city not only refuses to meet our needs directly with the growing budget, but they’re actively working to make our lives worse through laws like the sleeping ban and proposed table ban. Instead of offering permanent housing to all homeless residents, they choose brutality and incarceration. Instead of stopping the merciless rent gouging and tenant displacement, they collude with the landlords and developers who exploit us.
Remember who the enemy is: it's the landlord gouging you for rent and the boss suppressing your wages; it's the real estate investors buying up your neighborhood and the developers rebuilding it as a playground for the rich; it's the politicians and the cops who make and enforce the laws on behalf of the profiteers! They're united in their war against us, so we need to be united in our own defense -- service workers, gig workers, educational workers, teachers, tenants, those of us who are unemployed, those of us who are homeless -- an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us!
Citations or arrests for violations of St. Pete's ban on "sleeping, lying or reclining" on public rights-of way
With city council set to vote this week on an ordinance banning tables and other objects from the public right of way, we’ve uncovered (via court records) that the St. Pete Police Department is ramping up enforcement of an existing law used for the sole purpose of terrorizing the unsheltered.
Sec. 20-73 of the city code prevents “sleeping, lying or reclining” on public rights-of-way during daylight hours, in a “prohibited zone” which encompasses most of downtown St. Pete and surrounding areas – between the Bay, 5th Avenues North and South, and 16th Street, as well as a narrow stretch between 1st Avenues North and South to 31st St.
Of those cited for Sec. 20-73 this year, all were listed as “transient” or had an address indicating homelessness, such as a shelter or services facility.
We found that the bulk of the violations occurred before 9 AM, sometimes within minutes of daybreak. As part of the increased enforcement effort, the cops appear to be executing a regular “morning wake up patrol”, as it’s referred to by an officer in a citation from early April. When the continual harassment and psychological tactics aren’t enough, the police resort to citations or arrests.
Some individuals also appear to be frequently targeted. One homeless man — who has received numerous citations for sleeping/sitting as well as other minor charges this year — has been consistently ruled incompetent by the court, yet the SPPD continues to lock him up and strain the system with charges which are unlikely to hold up.
In several cases, officers improperly cited individuals for violations of Sec. 20-73. Five citations were issued prior to sunrise. One was issued well outside of the “prohibited zone”.
While there is a separate ordinance (Sec. 20-74) which bans sleeping at all hours, including overnight, it can’t be enforced unless there is available shelter space and without offering transportation to one. The onerous requirements likely make it infeasible to enforce long-term and at large scale.
We did find one violation of Sec. 20-74 this year, involving a 58-year-old man asleep in his wheelchair on the 200 block of Central Avenue at daybreak. There is no indication that the officer inquired about shelter availability.
63% of the violations we counted occurred in the area surrounding St. Vincent de Paul, located at 401 15th St N. The facility provides a variety of services, however, shelter space there is limited and in high demand. Still, the sidewalks surrounding the block itself are somewhat of a safe haven, with the I-375 overpass providing shelter from the rain, and the overnight presence of others providing a relative sense of security.
The area of St. Vincent is within view of a major intersection and key interstate entrance and exit ramps. Several blocks to the south, luxury developments — such as the Moderna — are growing like cancer in the area between the downtown Edge and Grand Central districts. The city and their big developer buddies are likely targeting this nearby concentration of poverty, which they may feel harms property values and slows investment, hindering the ability to maximize profits.
In addition to St. Vincent, it appears the downtown area east of 6th St and near the waterfront is also being vigorously patrolled. This coincides with the completion of two luxury high-rises — the Ascent and the Evo — which are in the process of bringing hundreds of wealthy new residents to this immediate vicinity. A third residential high-rise, the Saltaire, is expected to open later this year.
Instead of harnessing the increased tax revenue generated by the onslaught of new development to provide permanent housing for the unsheltered and the offering of good jobs or support services for those unable to work, the city government appears committed to the costly and barbaric approach of minimizing visible homelessness with an iron fist.
Municipal ordinance citations may not sound like a heavy-handed tactic, but they often require an appearance before a judge. This puts the homeless at a critical disadvantage. Without a permanent address or access to mail, important notices and updates from the court are never received. A lack of transportation could mean missing a court date, resulting in a warrant, jeopardization of a separate case or probation violation. What appears to be a harmless slap on the wrist can, and often does, snowball into a jail sentence for our homeless neighbors.
Another issue is legal access. While these violations are actually criminal in nature, indigent defendants facing municipal violations aren't always entitled to legal counsel the same way as when facing certain other charges. In Florida, the city or county must separately contract with a legal service to provide public defense for municipal violations. St. Pete doesn’t.
Last year, the ACLU penned a letter to the city government, warning them that the lack of legal defense for those facing municipal violations runs afoul of both the 6th and 14th amendments of the US constitution. Refusing to budge, the city appears hellbent on risking the potential for costly litigation in order to carry out their sadistic displacement scheme.
“Meanest City in the Nation”
The area of I-375 and 15th St – one of the primary targets of St. Pete’s current crackdown – has long been a site of struggle against gentrification. Prior to the Great Recession of the late 2000s, St. Pete had been experiencing an explosion of investment and development. Pressure from the business community led to a spate of stringent enforcement, and the homeless were being forced from their usual sleeping spots in the immediate downtown. That’s when tents began popping up beneath the I-375 overpass, leading to the creation of a makeshift tent city.
On the morning of January 19th, 2007, about 20 St. Pete Police officers descended upon the encampment, slashing tents while people still slept inside. A video of the incident was widely shared on YouTube and now-defunct social media sites like MySpace, drawing national scrutiny.
Republican Mayor Rick Baker went on the defensive, boasting of the city’s accomplishments and dedication to the county’s (failed) 10-year Plan to End Homelessness and blaming the leadup to the incident on everything from the activists to “criminal elements”, though begrudgingly admitting calling the tent-slashing a mistake.
Beginning that summer, the homeless took to the steps of city hall and surrounding sidewalk each night. The movement was well-organized. To the city’s dismay, the homeless staged a large protest near the Mahaffey when it hosted the Republican presidential debate in November of that year, once again thrusting St. Pete’s homeless crisis into the national spotlight.
While pledging additional resources to address homelessness, the city also began drafting a series of ordinances to put a stop to the nightly occupation outside city hall. These new laws included prohibitions on sleeping and placement of makeshift shelters, as well as an unconstitutional anti-panhandling ordinance and outlawing the “storage” of personal belongings on public property.
In February 2008, the city began clearing the area outside city hall, marking an end to the uprising.
The Era of “Progress”
15 years later, hundreds of unsheltered residents still remain on St. Pete streets. Laws borne of a far-right administration are being quietly utilized under the leadership of a Democratic council majority and Mayor who ran on the slogan of “progress”.
According to HUD, homelessness has been on the decline in Pinellas county. This data is derived from a one-night survey (Point-in-Time, or PIT) conducted each year in January, but homeless advocates have long argued this approach to gauging homelessness is flawed and inaccurate.
In contrast to the decline in the PIT count, data from the Pinellas County School Board shows an upward trend in student homelessness. At the end of the 2021-2022 school year, the district counted a record-high 4,674 homeless students. By comparison, there were just 962 at the end of the 2007-08 school year.
The annual jail count reveals the number of homeless inmates in Pinellas has increased as well — from 302 in 2010 to 626 in 2022. Based on data we sourced from jail records, the overall number of individuals booked as “transient” steadily grew from 1,989 in 2006 to a peak of 5,553 in 2019 – comprising over 13% of the jail’s total bookings that year. While the number of transient bookings dropped to around 3,300 the following year (likely due to COVID), the number has been on the rise ever since, up to 4,107 in 2022.
At least 18 cities and towns in Pinellas county have anti-homeless laws on the books, ranging from sleeping in public to panhandling.
In 2019, the SPPD launched the Police Assisting the Homeless (PATH) unit in an effort to address homelessness with an emphasis on service referral before enforcement. The department frequently pitches feel-good stories about the successes of the unit. Yet behind the smoke and mirrors of a $643,000 public relations budget, enforcement and incarceration clearly continue to play a seminal role in the city’s efforts.
The PATH unit came under intense scrutiny last year, after it was revealed that the unit was hoarding thousands of dollars in donations intended for use on toiletries and other supplies for homeless individuals. City leaders have since reallocated the money to a different department.
Last month, Mayor Welch released his operating budget workbook for 2024, which contains a whopping $151 million dollar allocation for the St. Pete Police – a nearly $17 million increase over last year. Meanwhile, only a measly $2.4 million dollar appropriation is planned for veteran, homeless and social services, including $400,000 for rapid rehousing. "Progress" for whom?
This week, the city will be voting on an expansion of its table ban. The new regulation would criminalize the use and placement of tables and other objects on public sidewalks in a massive swath of downtown. Anything from tables and podiums used during protests, to props and tip jars used by street performers, to display racks used by artists hawking their wares would be banned from the right of way. Violators would be subject to citation or arrest and seizure of property. The city is pushing the ordinance due to the alleged “aesthetic and economic harm” to surrounding businesses.
The city not only refuses to meet our needs directly with the growing budget, but they’re actively working to make our lives worse through laws like the sleeping ban and proposed table ban. Instead of offering permanent housing to all homeless residents, they choose brutality and incarceration. Instead of stopping the merciless rent gouging and tenant displacement, they collude with the landlords and developers who exploit us.
Remember who the enemy is: it's the landlord gouging you for rent and the boss suppressing your wages; it's the real estate investors buying up your neighborhood and the developers rebuilding it as a playground for the rich; it's the politicians and the cops who make and enforce the laws on behalf of the profiteers! They're united in their war against us, so we need to be united in our own defense -- service workers, gig workers, educational workers, teachers, tenants, those of us who are unemployed, those of us who are homeless -- an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us!
Be sure to join us on Thursday, June 15th, 5:00 PM at city hall to give public comment before the final vote on the table ordinance!
