Redding City Councilmember Julie Winter's comments about potentially detaining homeless people have spurred backlash from experts and constituents — some of whom addressed the council in fiery pleas and threats to sue Tuesday night.

And while the council voted unanimously to send a letter detailing Winter's ideas on homelessness to Gov. Gavin Newsom, at least one member also said he didn't sign onto the proposal she ended up mentioning later in a radio interview.

Here's how the issue got started.

The council voted Nov. 19 to send what seemed at the time like a routine letter to Newsom asking for help combating homelessness. Winter wrote the letter, which asked the state for:

Money to build a service-oriented shelter

Help incentivizing housing projects

A change in policies so the city could better enforce camping laws

Required treatment for addicts and conservatorship for some mentally ill homeless people, including if they can't manage their finances.

But in an interview a few days later with Jefferson Public Radio, Winter elaborated on her apparent vision, saying that there could also be a "low-security facility" that's "not a facility you could just leave because you wanted to."

“You need to get clean, you need to get sober, you need to demonstrate self-sufficiency, and once you do that you’re free to go," Winter said, reportedly going on to say that, "If you don’t want to get help, there are repercussions.”

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Winter didn't respond to several messages from the Record Searchlight seeking comment. She was mayor until Tuesday, when her term ended and Adam McElvain took over the role.

Her fellow city councilmembers said they weren't familiar with the JPR interview or a subsequent national story in Vice News, but they either distanced themselves from Winter's comments to the station or disagreed with them altogether.

What the councilmembers had to say

Mayor Pro Tempore Michael Dacquisto said he didn't know the context of Winter's comments, but if they were accurately portrayed, "I didn't think I was voting for that."

"I did not think when we agreed to that letter that we were asking for money to create a low-security facility that would hold people for 90 days; that's well beyond anything in the letter," Dacquisto said. "That's a concept that's foreign to anything we discussed."

Councilmember Kristen Schreder — a long-time voice on homelessness in the community — said the letter and anything Winter said later are "two separate things."

"The bullet points (in the letter) are pretty basic," she said, noting that the written proposals have been used in other communities already. "I support what we put in the letter."

McElvain said he couldn't comment because he hadn't seen or heard the follow-up stories.

Vice Mayor Erin Resner didn't respond to a message or email seeking comment.

Other backlash

After Winter made her comments, the Vice story characterized Redding as a city that "wants to build a homeless shelter that's basically a jail."

It wasn't the only criticism the council got over the idea.

Winter and the rest of the council got an earful at Tuesday's city council meeting, when two women gave impassioned speeches about the letter.

"You chalk every homeless person up as a drug addict, a criminal and unfit all in one letter," Brenda Woods said during the public comment period of Tuesday's meeting. "You're more worried about tourism than you're worried about finding housing for people."

Woods, who said her daughter is homeless, went on to threaten legal action.

"If you think for one minute that you will imprison my daughter who is homeless, you have another thing coming," she said. "Julie, this is personal for me, and this isn't just about my daughter anymore. This is about human beings ... for you to take everybody's constitutional right away and imprison them is not the answer, and I will sue you, Julie, if you touch my daughter."

Another woman ended her comments by repeatedly shouting "Help me!" at the council, while one woman said she's noticed progress on homelessness in Redding, even if it's "very slow."

An expert weighs in

Eric Tars, legal director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, said the proposal "seems to be a reversion to the medieval practice of poor houses."

"Our constitution forbids the jailing of people for debts; this isn't exactly that, but ... you would have a lot of due-process concerns," he said. "We certainly hope that the mayor and the city council understand that … that sort of policy would be neither humane nor constitutional, in all likelihood."

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Winter's letter details her trips to encampments, where she says she saw people "who routinely deny shelter." Tars said it's a common myth that most homeless people don't want help.

"This kind of rhetoric makes this assumption that people ... need to be forced into these situations that aren't appropriate for their needs," he said. "If the services were actually adequate and available, you'd see a line around the block for that, you know? Every time the Section 8 housing list comes out, people need housing and you see that line around the block."

Tars said he hasn't heard of a similar proposal recently, but the city of Columbia, South Carolina made headlines in 2013 for trying to force homeless people into a shelter outside town. That city later rescinded the decision after backlash mounted, with the councilmember who hatched the idea apologizing over it.

"The (then-) Redding mayor's, unfortunately, expressing an idea that many people have," Tars said. "It's a very seductive message. It’s the message that a lot of communities want to hear, that we can just solve this problem by forcing everybody into a situation."

Tars compared Redding's idea to President Donald Trump's talk of razing encampments. The evidence-based treatment for homelessness is the Housing First model, Tars said, but the city shot that down in 2016. The idea behind the program is that people can't become functional when they're still on the streets, but it's sometimes unpopular because people see it as giving housing away.

At the Nov. 19 meeting, Winter said people have been approaching the council about homelessness, which is "beyond the capacity of local government to solve."

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When constituents start complaining about encampments or panhandlers, Tars said the easy answer is to crack down on homeless people, even though that ends up creating a cycle of homelessness. What's even more ironic — it ends up being cheaper to temporarily house them until they get on their feet than to constantly clog up the court system, he said.

"The most politically convenient answer is, 'We’re just going to criminalize it. We’ll hide the costs of that in our jail budget, in our police budget, in our courts budget and, you know, we’ll make it disappear for today, but then that person’s going to have a criminal record, they’re going to have fines and fees that they can’t pay, and it’s actually going to prolong that person's homelessness," Tars said.

Redding already had a long and complicated relationship with homelessness.

Besides rejecting the Housing First pilot program, the city failed twice to pass sales-tax measures that, among other things, would have funded mental-health services and police officers to patrol encampments. They've also shelved or vetoed other alternate solutions to homelessness.

Tars said it's common for residents frustrated by homelessness to blame people on the streets instead of the things that got them there.

"The wealthy don’t want to have to see poverty around them, but it’s the poor people who are working two or three jobs just to pay their rent and make ends meet who ... their anger is being directed against other people who haven’t been able to make those ends meet, rather than questioning the system of, why do I have to work two jobs to make ends meet in the first place, you know? Why hasn’t my town created incentives for more affordable housing?" he said. "It’s those choices, rather than the choices of the individuals in the system, that are much more important, that are the ones that are actually driving homelessness."

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Alayna Shulman covers a little bit of everything for the Record Searchlight. In particular, she loves writing about the issues of this community through long-form storytelling. Her work often centers on local crime, features and politics, and has won awards for best writing, best business coverage and best investigative reporting in the California News Publishers Association's Better Newspapers Contest. Follow her on Twitter (@ashulman_RS), call her at 530-225-8372 and, to support her work, please subscribe.