HomeMy WebLinkAbout4/13/2021 Item 2, Andreano
Wilbanks, Megan
From:Paul Andreano <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Tent ordinance
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Greetings council members and other members of SLO government. My name is Paul Andreano and I have been
conducting outreach with the unhoused community for several years now.
As you prepare to craft an ordinance that further marginalizes and endangers our community’s most vulnerable during a
pandemic, I would ask that you consider this simple statement. Tents in parks are not the problem, they are a symptom
of the problem.
SLO City still won’t acknowledge that they have unhoused community members who are not adequately served by 40
Prado. Yet the tents showed up en mass when the sweeps began in earnest last October. None of these folks are new to
SLO, they were pushed into the park by SLOPD. Given that the city refuses to give sanitation services like restrooms and
sinks to our unhoused, they will seek out those services as any and all humans do.
If you’re sick of seeing unhoused people in parks, then allow them an out of the way place to be. If you don’t want them
using public sanitation services, then provide them somewhere else. If you think tent and cart ordinances are the
answer, think again because there are lots of people like myself who will replace their tents and give them wagons in
place of carts. This gets us nowhere. But it is what we will continue to do.
I’m not happy with folks camping in the parks either. It’s terrible for them due to constant police harassment. But until
SLO City provides them a safe place to camp and get clean, I would much rather them have access to toilets and trash
cans and it seems city parks are the only places they can count on for those essentials.
This whole problem was created by SLO City’s oppressive tactics: dispersing homeless camps during a pandemic. Now
you think an ordinance will make the problem go away? I think it’s the beginning of a whole new set of problems.
When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Respectfully,
Paul Andreano
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