By Brian Shane

Staff Writer

Taking inspiration from a recent Supreme Court ruling, Worcester County officials say sleeping on public property could go from a civil infraction to a criminal misdemeanor, a move that specifically targets the homeless.

“When the intersection happens between behavioral health issues and homelessness, and then criminality or victimization of others in that area, that’s where my office comes into play,” said Worcester County State’s Attorney Kristin Heiser. “It’s not our goal to prosecute the same person for the same type of low-level offense over and over again. We’d rather resolve the underlying problem.”

Under the guidance of Heiser and county attorney Roscoe Leslie, Worcester County’s Board of Commissioners says it will work in the near term to pen a draft ordinance that revisits penalties for sleeping on land owned by the county. Any such bill would then be subject to a public hearing.

Heiser said the goal of what she called an encampment ordinance is to provide a tool for law enforcement, “to make sure that the community is safe from the other effects these sort of individuals can have sometimes,” she told the commissioners at the meeting.

The commissioners discussed the issue at length during a Jan. 14 meeting with the input of several officials from the county’s social services agencies.

The biggest issue when trying to help the homeless population – or asking them to move along, if disruptive – is simply figuring out where to put them, said Sandy Kerrigan, who works on behavioral health programs with the county’s Health Department.

She added how the West Ocean City nonprofit Diakonia, which has shelter space, “is great and wonderful – but it’s often full.”

“Anytime we take somebody from an encampment or somebody hanging out on the Boardwalk, they’re going somewhere else and they’re somebody else’s problem at that point,” Kerrigan told the commissioners. “We can’t evict them from the county.  Where do we go? That’s where we get stuck. Because the people we’re dealing with are very chronically mentally ill individuals with mental health and substance use disorders.

Kerrigan also said this segment of the homeless population often cycles through police custody, jail time, hospitalization, and public spaces.

“It’s frustrating and I understand the reasoning behind where we are,” she said. “I wish there was a magic wand and an answer. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know that this will fix anything.

Last year, between 19 and 31 people were identified in a semi-annual survey as living in Worcester County without shelter, according to the county’s Department of Social Services.

Agency director Roberta Baldwin called them “chronic homeless individuals” – people facing some combination of behavioral and mental health issues, addiction, or other problems that keep them from holding down a job or a place to live.

While some actively choose to remain unhoused, Baldwin said the county is plagued by too few shelter beds, a lack of transitional housing, and a need for an additional homeless shelter.

A limited housing supply and high rental prices also are contributing factors – though you can’t get into subsidized housing if you have certain criminal charges on your record, she said.

“For someone who wants to get into housing or has a mental health issue and may be eligible for subsidized housing, that prevents them from being able to access a lot of services or programs that, if they didn’t have that conviction, they would be open to,” Baldwin said.

It was the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson that inspired county officials to adopt similar tactics when dealing with a homeless population.

In Colorado, repeat offenders caught sleeping in Grants Pass public parks faced fines, a temporary park ban, and eventually jail time, according to the court’s June 28 opinion. A class action case against the city claimed this violated their Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Justices ultimately ruled that a municipality imposing criminal penalties for acts like sleeping in public is not unconstitutional.

When advised Nov. 19 of the high court’s decision by solicitor Roscoe Leslie, the commissioners expressed interest in developing their own anti-encampment criminal ordinance – even though one already exists.

Since 1987, it’s been a civil infraction in Worcester County to camp on, tent on, sleep on, or inhabit any county-owned property, including parks or roadways. Revamping that penalty as a crime is now on the table.

“It’s really up to the commissioners to give us a direction on what you’d like to see,” Leslie said at last week’s meeting, calling the conversation “just a discussion starting point.”

Heiser added she’s looking to model existing legislation from San Diego, California, that targets the problem. Hearing that, Commissioner Jim Bunting (District 6, Bishopville) responded by saying, “I can’t think of a worse state for its homeless and taking over.”

“We got to decide whether we want one that looked like California or Worcester County. And I think we do need to stiffen our laws criminally or whatever it takes to get this under control,” he said.

District 3 Commissioner Eric Fiori said he’s heard increasingly from his constituents that homelessness is an escalating problem in the West Ocean City area, especially in more rural pockets.

“We’re trying to come up with a solution,” he said, “to make sure that we’re doing everything at the county level that we can possibly do as far as helping these folks. But the ones that choose not to have help, or choose to cause problems within the community, we need to have some tools within government to try to get them the help they need.”