Two Bay Area cities are going in different directions in battling encampments, as a Fairfax woman just won a delay on the clearing of her own encampment, while Fremont just passed a law that activists fear could illegalize handing cash or food to the homeless.
Many California cities are still struggling to interpret the new powers given to them by the Supreme Court’s summer Johnson v. Grants Pass decision that allows cities to ban public camping, even if the city cannot provide alternative shelter. Up in Marin County’s Fairfax, an unsheltered woman just won the right to keep her own encampment going while the courts sort out a lawsuit she filed herself. While in the East Bay city of Fremont, a new law just passed at the city council that makes it a crime to “aid or abet” homelessness, which some fear would make it a crime to give encampment residents cash, food, or even a bottle of water.
The Marin County encampment in Fairfax is at Peri Park, it’s seen in this Marin Independent Journal article as being decked with furniture and a mini-kitchen, and it reportedly has five or six people residents. Fairfax has a law saying people cannot be in the city’s parks at night without “sufficient police protection or adult supervision.” The encampment residents applied for a permit to be there at night, arguing that they are “adult supervision” since they are all adults…