News from the South - Alabama News Feed

Many more cities ban sleeping outside despite a lack of shelter space • Alabama Reflector

Published

5 months ago

January 27, 2025

Staff Editor

alabamareflector.com – Robbie Sequeira – 2025-01-27 12:01:00

Many more cities ban sleeping outside despite a lack of shelter space

by Robbie Sequeira, Alabama Reflector
January 27, 2025

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s City of Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling last June allowing localities to ban outdoor camping even if there is no homeless shelter space available, roughly 150 cities in 32 states have passed or strengthened such ordinances.

Another 40 or so local bans are pending, according to data sent to Stateline by the National Homelessness Law Center. The measures vary in detail, but they typically include prohibitions on camping, sleeping or storing property on public land. Many also include buffer zones near schools, parks or businesses.

Bans often allow for steep fines and jail time. In Indio, California, for example, people caught camping illegally could face a penalty of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail. The ordinance in Fresno, California, bans sitting, lying, sleeping or camping on public property anytime, anywhere, with a penalty of up to a year in jail. Elmira, New York, includes sleeping in vehicles in its camping ban.

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Housing advocates and experts anticipate the surge in camping bans to continue in 2025. Supporters of the bans argue that homeless encampments endanger nearby residents and businesses. Critics say the prohibitions will just criminalize visible street homelessness and move it somewhere else.

“The idea behind anti-camping laws is to make homelessness so uncomfortable that people won’t want to experience it. But homelessness is already incredibly uncomfortable, especially during disasters,” said Samantha Batko, a senior fellow in the Housing and Communities Division at the Urban Institute. “Criminalizing homelessness doesn’t solve the problem — it just punishes people, makes it harder for them to find housing or jobs, and keeps them stuck in a cycle of instability.”

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California has the highest number of camping bans, with more than 40 ordinances either passed or introduced since July. It also has about 30% of the nation’s homeless individuals, followed by New York, Florida and Washington state, according to a U.S. Housing and Urban Development report to Congress in 2022.

California Democratic Gov. Newsom invested heavily in encampment clearance and housing, allocating $131 million to municipalities after the Grants Pass ruling. He also issued an executive order to cities to “urgently address homeless encampments.”

Elizabeth Funk, CEO of DignityMoves, a nonprofit that is helping California cities address unsheltered homelessness, anticipates a rise in anti-camping policies in 2025. Still, she said, the Grants Pass ruling could require cities to build more temporary shelters.

“It really is a policy decision, and we have chosen that the only valid use of taxpayer money is permanent housing. But the reality is … we can’t build our way out of this at a million dollars per unit,” said Funk. “Grants Pass removes the excuse that cities can’t act. Unsheltered homelessness is solvable — it starts with providing a roof.”

‘What do we do?’

Florida’s updated law, passed last year, requires counties and municipalities to ban sleeping or camping in public spaces such as parks, sidewalks and the state’s many beaches.

Many local governments scrambled to put local ordinances in place to comply with the law. And as of Jan. 1, residents and business owners have the right to sue municipalities if local efforts to address homelessness are deemed insufficient. The state has around 31,000 homeless residents.

The idea that the problem is such a small number of people … and no matter how much we spend on it, we’re not spending enough to actually fix it, is very frustrating.

– Gainesville, Florida, Mayor Harvey Ward

Gainesville, Florida, Mayor Harvey Ward said the state’s requirements haven’t dramatically changed the city’s response to homelessness.

Gainesville city officials noted philosophical disagreements with the state when they passed an anti-camping ordinance in December to avoid any potential legal action for noncompliance. The ordinance carries no jail time but includes a fine.

Ward said in an interview that he’s seen a major decrease in visible chronic homelessness in the city’s community plaza from a decade ago, a shift he attributes to the opening of more shelter spaces over the years.

“The good news is we don’t have 100 people a night sleeping on the community plaza anymore. I can see progress. I’m just not sure how to make that sort of leap in progress again,” said Ward, who is a registered Democrat, though the mayoral position is nonpartisan.

He said the state’s ban mandate also complicates how Gainesville and other cities respond to chronic street homelessness, especially given Florida’s bottom-tier spending on mental health services.

“The idea that the problem is such a small number of people — fewer than 1,000 chronic homeless folks in any year — and no matter how much we spend on it, we’re not spending enough to actually fix it, is very frustrating,” Ward said.

“We’ve plateaued. There are folks who, for whatever reason, either can’t be admitted to a shelter because of past issues or refuse to go. But they’re not doing anything illegal, so what do we do? How do we help someone who refuses services and isn’t breaking the law?”

‘No one chooses to sleep outside’

The rise in anti-camping ordinances after the Grants Pass ruling was a predictable outcome, even in cities that have no other options for people who don’t have homes, said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center.

“A large misconception is that people choose to experience homelessness. But no one chooses to sleep outside. People are forced into homelessness because elected officials fail to ensure safe and affordable housing,” said Rabinowitz. “The Grants Pass approach — making cities inhospitable to force people to leave — has been tried before. It’s expensive, ineffective, and only prolongs homelessness.”

Yet the approach is quickly gaining ground.

In November, Arizona voters approved a ballot measure allowing property owners to apply for reimbursements for public nuisance expenses when the government fails to enforce laws related to camping and loitering.

A Republican-led bill in Washington state — where six municipalities have passed or strengthened anti-camping ordinances since the Grants Pass ruling — would require most local governments to ban encampments near schools and parks by May 2027. It would offer grants for encampment sweeps, but also would pull funding from localities that don’t enforce the ban. The bill remains in committee.

Among the state’s cities with a ban in place is Spokane Valley, which updated its ordinance last fall. The updates include upgrading the violation of being in a city park after dark from a civil infraction to a misdemeanor, and changing the definition of “camping” to include sleeping overnight with or without camping gear.

Little has changed with enforcement in the interim months, wrote city spokesperson Jill Smith in an email to Stateline. The city also has several employees dedicated to connecting unhoused residents with services, she said, and it added a second outreach police officer in December.

Devon Kurtz, the public safety policy director at the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank, argues that camping bans are necessary to address unsafe encampments and unsheltered homelessness, and that they can be part of a system that helps reluctant individuals receive help.

In a recently published interview with the Philanthropy Roundtable, which advises conservative philanthropists, Kurtz warned that “homeless encampments are toxic environments filled with waste and trash, and are often hotbeds of crime.”

Advocates in many states are pushing back. After a successful petitioning effort by local residents, the city of Morgantown, West Virginia, will allow voters to decide in April whether to overturn a new camping ban passed last fall. As of November, the city had 28 shelter beds to serve an estimated homeless population of 150.

Do they work?

A 2024 RAND study found that policy changes — such as encampment sweeps and camping bans — in three Los Angeles neighborhoods temporarily reduced visible homelessness, but within months the unsheltered populations rose slightly in two of the communities and doubled in the third.

The survey found chronic mental and physical health issues and substance use disorders affecting more than half of respondents, with Skid Row residents being the oldest and least healthy.

Experts also argue that these laws are ineffective and costly, with a 2020 federal report finding sweeps in four cities cost $1,672 to $6,208 per unsheltered person annually.

Jeremy Ney, a data researcher who publishes the American Inequality newsletter, said that while a lack of affordable housing is a root cause of rising homelessness, responses to homelessness need to accompany policies that address other chronic barriers to stability.

“Housing alone is not enough. We also need employment, mental health, addiction and social service support systems that can ensure people stay in those homes,” Ney said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

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Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

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News from the South - Alabama News Feed

In polluted Birmingham community, Trump terminates funding for air monitoring

Published

16 hours ago

June 15, 2025

Staff Editor

alabamareflector.com – Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News – 2025-06-15 07:01:00

by Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News, Alabama Reflector
June 15, 2025

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

BIRMINGHAM — When Jilisa Milton received the grant termination letter, she wasn’t surprised. She suspected this day would come.

The language the Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution (GASP) had used in its application to the Environmental Protection Agency had been clear. “We’re talking about helping a community,” Milton, GASP’s executive director, said last week, “where Black people have been disproportionately impacted.”

Black residents had breathed heavily polluted air from a nearby coke plant for decades, and their neighborhoods had been declared a federal hazardous waste Superfund site after it was determined that waste soil laced with arsenic, lead and benzo(a)pyrene, a human carcinogen, from several nearby coke plants had been spread around their homes as yard fill.

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In light of this history and continued industrial pollution, GASP had obtained a $75,000 air monitoring grant from the Biden EPA in 2023.

Milton received the letter earlier this month from officials in President Donald Trump’s EPA terminating the grant because it no longer aligned with the agency’s priorities.

“I knew at some point they would notice the language of our grant,” Milton said, in that it made reference to services intended to help Black people.

Still, she said she doesn’t regret the way GASP characterized the situation on the ground in north Birmingham—that the need for air monitoring stemmed from the city’s history of corporate exploitation of majority-Black workers and residents.

Growing up in Birmingham, Milton said her grandparents often discussed the legacy of workers in the Magic City—so-nicknamed because of the seemingly supernatural economic boom spurred by steel production following the end of the Civil War.

“The majority of these workers were Black, and we can see the disparate impact that still has today,” Milton said. “And it’s really important for Birmingham to talk about our legacy and our history.”

Sanitizing that history, then, to comply with the Trump administration’s stated opposition to all things DEI and environmental justice—as if they were the same thing, just because they both often involve Black people—doesn’t sit well with her.

“I think the narrative work is gone then,” Milton said. “And we have to think about history so we don’t live it again.”

The grant, awarded through EPA’s small grants program, was set to fund GASP’s efforts to train residents in using air monitoring equipment to help establish a community air monitoring program, allowing those in north Birmingham access to critical information about the pollutants filling their lungs every day.

In addition to what is now the 35th Avenue Superfund site, encompassing the neighborhoods of Collegeville, Harriman Park and Fairmont, north Birmingham remains home to several polluters, leaving its residents in the 90th percentile for particulate matter, according to EJ Screen, a government tool also recently shuttered by the Trump administration.

That context of present and past pollution was what made securing funds for air monitoring so important, Milton said, giving residents an opportunity to learn more about the continued impact of industry on their health.

“For decades, residents of North Birmingham and other historically marginalized communities have been forced to live in the shadow of toxic industries with little support or transparency,” Milton wrote in a statement after receiving the termination letter. “The grant made it possible for us to monitor and document the pollution people live with everyday. Revoking this support sends a message that the health of Black, Brown, and low-income communities in Alabama is disposable.”

In its letter, EPA officials said the agency no longer supported the grant’s objectives.

“The purpose of this communication is to notify you that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hereby terminating Assistance Agreement No. EQ-02D22522 awarded to GASP,” the letter said. “This EPA Assistance Agreement is terminated in its entirety effective immediately on the grounds that the award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.”

Piles of coal and coke waste remain on the ground at the Bluestone Coke in Birmingham nearly three years after the plant closed. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News)

GASP’s isn’t the only environmental justice effort in Alabama nixed by federal officials. In April, Trump announced the termination of what the administration termed an “illegal DEI” settlement aimed at addressing sewage issues in the state’s black belt that have left its majority-Black residents sometimes unable to flush their own toilets.

The agreement, reached under the Biden Administration, required the state’s Department of Public Health to improve sanitation efforts in the region. It’s still unclear what that termination will ultimately mean on the ground.

In the end, Milton said the impact of the administration’s decision to terminate the north Birmingham air monitoring grant is racist.

“Look at the way they talk about environmental justice,” she said of administration officials. “They say it’s illegal to address these issues. So you hear the things they say, and it’s reasonable to discern from that that the impact is racist, and that what they’re doing is intentional.”

People of all races are forced to face the consequences of polluted air and water, Milton emphasized, but ignoring the reality that people of color have borne and continue to bear the brunt of industrial exploitation isn’t helpful. In fact, she explained, doing so could undermine the relationship organizations like hers have built with residents of color living through the impacts of pollution every single day.

“I don’t want to sacrifice the trust we have in communities that want to be heard because they notice that we start to change the way we talk about these issues,” she said. “Because they are the most important stakeholders. They’re who we’re here to serve.”

Moving forward, GASP plans to appeal the termination with EPA officials, Milton said, though she suspects the agency is unlikely to change its mind. If that’s the case, the nonprofit will do what they’ve always done—look to individual donors to fill in the gaps. It’s work that can’t be abandoned, Milton said. Not if she can help it.

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The post In polluted Birmingham community, Trump terminates funding for air monitoring appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This article exhibits a Left-Leaning political bias through its framing, language, and emphasis on environmental justice, racial disparities, and criticism of the Trump administration’s policy decisions. While it is presented under the banner of a nonprofit, non-partisan outlet, the narrative foregrounds the disproportionate impact on Black communities and casts recent Republican-led actions—particularly the termination of air monitoring and civil rights-related initiatives—in a negative light. It frames these decisions as racially motivated and harmful, aligning with progressive values on environmental equity and systemic injustice, without offering counterarguments or perspectives from the opposing side.

News from the South - Alabama News Feed

Faith Time: Challenges to faith Part I

Published

16 hours ago

June 15, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – WKRG – 2025-06-15 06:40:01

SUMMARY: Rabbi Steven Silberman of Congregation Ahavas Chesed discussed challenges to faith on Faith Time, emphasizing how global instability prompts deep spiritual questioning, such as “Where is God?” He highlighted the importance of community in Judaism, tracing its roots from Abraham to modern Jewish identity as an extended family. In today’s mobile society, he stressed the need for individuals to find belonging in local Jewish communities. Healthy questioning includes seeking purpose, understanding suffering, and connecting with God. Silberman encouraged engagement through prayer, charitable acts, activism, study, Hebrew language, and ties to Israel as essential ways to navigate and strengthen faith.

We talk about facing challenges to fundamental beliefs.

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News from the South - Alabama News Feed

Scattered summer storms in Alabama for Father's Day.

Published

16 hours ago

June 15, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – WVTM 13 News – 2025-06-15 06:35:38

SUMMARY: Alabama will experience scattered heavy storms on Father’s Day afternoon, following a cloudy and foggy morning with improving visibility. There’s no severe weather threat, but storms may bring frequent lightning, heavy downpours, and localized flooding, especially in areas like Walker and Winston counties affected by previous heavy rain. Temperatures will be in the mid to upper 80s with hot, steamy conditions. Storm coverage is expected to be more widely scattered than yesterday, but outdoor plans should account for possible rain. Summer storms will continue throughout the week, with decreasing storm activity later, leading to higher heat indices and approaching triple-digit feels-like temperatures by week’s end.