This article originally appeared in Nevada Current on Nov. 11, 2024.
As homeless rates in Southern Nevada have skyrocketed, both Clark County and the City of Las Vegas have recently taken more punitive measures to criminalize the unhoused for sleeping in public.
Clark County voted 6-1 last week to prohibit unhoused folks from camping and sleeping in a public right-of-way. Under the ordinance, which goes into effect Feb. 1, a person could be jailed up to 10 days and fined up to $1,000.
The law is supposed to be enforced after a warning and only if shelter space is available to direct unhoused folks to in lieu of citation or arrest. .
Clark County Commissioner William McCurdy cast the dissenting vote.
“I ask that we take a hard look at what we’re doing and ask ourselves if we are moving too fast,” McCurdy said.
He argued that the county lacks sufficient resources, including beds, housing, and administrative capacity to connect unhoused folks to services.
Commissioner Justin Jones acknowledged the vote in support of the ordinance was “super awkward” since in 2019 he publicly criticized the City of Las Vegas for passing an anti-homeless camping ban.
“I went over to the City of Las Vegas when they proposed their camping ban and vehemently opposed it,” he said. “None of us want to be in this position, but it’s also the reality we are all facing on the ground.”
The day after Clark County approved its ordinance, the City of Las Vegas voted unanimously to expand its 2019 ban on sitting and camping on downtown sidewalks to become a citywide ban.
Las Vegas City Council members Brian Knudsen and Olivia Diaz, who opposed the 2019 ordinance, voted in favor of the harsher law passed last week.
Under the new law, which took effect Sunday, people who are cited more than twice in a year can be sentenced to 10 days in jail. A person can complete a diversion program or rehabilitation program in lieu of jail time.
There have been 110 people cited and arrested under the original ordinance since 2020, city officials were told in a meeting in September.
The city’s initial ordinance was only supposed to go into effect if there was shelter space available.
The provision was written to be in compliance with a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which jurisdiction includes Nevada, that limited a city from criminalizing the unhoused when it lacked shelter space.
The U.S. The Supreme Court ruled in June that anti-camping bans passed by cities don’t violate the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment even when there is a lack of adequate shelter spaces for the unhoused to go.
Because of that ruling, the city removed the shelter requirement from the ordinance and the law can be enforced anytime.
Not everyone eligible for available services
Southern Nevada saw a 13-year-high in the number of people experiencing homelessness this year.
The Point-in-Time count, a yearly census to tabulate the number of unsheltered folks on one particular night, found 7,906 unhoused people early this year, a 20% increase from the previous year. The findings are usually seen as an undercount.
The report found that 34% of people were experiencing homelessness chronically, or those who have been unhoused for at least a year and struggle with serious mental illness, substance abuse or a physical disability.\
Not long after the Supreme Court ruled cities and counties could pursue anti-homeless bans, Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom suggested the county would pursue an ordinance similar to Las Vegas.
The ordinance is “intended to increase the connection between the expanded array of services,” said Clark County Deputy Manager Abigail Frierson.
“The ordinance requires steps to be taken prior to any enforcement action and those steps include education and the offer of services,” she said. “Even if services are refused an individual can avoid enforcement by moving from and not returning to the location of the violation.”
The county used Covid relief dollars, including money from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, to convert several older motels into non-congregate shelters.
Prior to the hearing, Clark County Social Services Director Jamie Sorenson briefed commissioners on non-congregate shelters and said the county operates 1,688 beds.
Those were 85% occupied during the count in January, he said.
The county is expected to open a 24-bed Crisis Stabilization Center in February. It is working to open four additional non-congregate shelters by 2027 to offer 6,800 additional beds for various homeless subpopulations.
The law punishing unhoused people for sleeping and camping outside was initially planned to go into effect Jan. 1. Commissioners delayed it until Feb. 1 in an attempt to line it up with the availability of more services.
“We still have projects in the pipeline that are not available yet,” McCurdy said. “Until they are online, it doesn’t make sense to adopt this even with an enactment date of February 2025 because they won’t be available until much later than that.”
Fuilala Riley, the CEO of Help of Southern Nevada, asked commissioners to delay the enactment date even further if the beds at the stabilization center or additional non-congregate shelters aren’t ready in February.
When commissioners announced their intention to pursue an anti-homeless ordinance in September, Clark County public defenders warned against it.
Public defenders were able to convince commissioners to change parts of the ordinance, including reducing potential jail time from six months to 10 days.
Olivia Miller, a public defender with Clark County, told commissioners during the hearing last Tuesday that even though there are options for shelter and treatment to theoretically direct people to in lieu of jail time, not every unhoused person is eligible for services.
A criminal history, substance abuse and other conditions are used as grounds to prevent people experiencing homelessness from being eligible for the already limited number of court diversion programs or shelter spaces.
“Being referred to and then turned away from a resource and then punished for not accepting referrals to those placements is a method that destroys trust and harms our ability to do further outreach,” Miller said.
She also recommended the county make a provision in the law that if a person is cited they have a chance to have the case dropped if they received services prior to their court hearing.
“By accessing resources even at a later instance than the initial citation that person has better accomplished our goals of any punishment would,” Miller said.
If arrested, unhoused people could have their items impounded and stored for up to 30 days. They would be able to get those items after they are released.
Erica Webb, another public defender, was concerned about a provision of the law that allows police to “make value judgements on unhoused folks’ personal property” and throw away items in encampments following an arrest.
“I think of a jailed client who was so worried about his property because he kept drawings from his daughter in his backpack,” Webb said. “He would look at them every day as a reminder that to get back in their lives he had to stay sober. While one person would see stick figures, he sees a reason to stay alive.”