JANESVILLE — Representatives of downtown Janesville businesses, the downtown Business Improvement District, Janesville Police Department and organizations that serve downtown homeless people gathered Tuesday to talk about how to best manage the presence of homeless people downtown.
The meeting followed a recent Janesville City Council vote to ban overnight camping in the parking lot of the Hedberg Public Library on South Main Street.
Council action in August now only allows overnight parking in a lot adjacent to City Hall and the Janesville Police Department on North Jackson Street, and requires homeless people to vacate that lot during the day, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. That council action raised some questions in the community about where homeless people are supposed to go during daytime hours, when businesses are open downtown, and how that affects businesses.
City manager Kevin Lahner said the two ordinances amended by the council in August were originally adopted in 2020 to provide homeless people a safe place to sleep overnight in the library and North Jackson Street lots. Since then, he said, security concerns in the library lot have risen.