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Homeless activists are pressing for change as El Dorado County sheriff’s officials attempt to clear out a homeless encampment on upper Broadway in Placerville.

In yet another episode of what homeless folks describe as an ongoing effort by local authorities to remove occupants from the area, members of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Homeless Outreach Team posted notices on the morning of Aug. 14 ordering those residing on the hill to vacate the area within a week.

Those residing at the upper Broadway site, just south of Highway 50 between Hangtown Motel and Tijuana Taqueria, had to vacate the property by 8 a.m. Aug. 21. The notice instructed camp occupants to remove all “property and camping paraphernalia” to avoid loss of property.

Some campers left the night before they were ordered to vacate the property, according to occupants on scene. About 20 homeless remained after 8 a.m. Aug. 21. Chuck Boyle, a military veteran and 12-year resident of El Dorado County, stuck around. Boyle said this particular trespassing notice was just one in an endless cycle of depopulating and repopulating of the hill.

“They come through with a warning or show up and tell people to leave. Most of us leave, but within days there are just as many people up here as before,” Boyle said. “It’s not like there’s anywhere else for us to go around here.”

John Gainsbrugh, a local homeless advocate, wants more help for the homeless of Placerville and surrounding areas.

“In this county, they show homeless people the Grand Canyon, tell them good luck and to jump,” Gainsbrugh said. “Why not assign a mental health worker to HOT? What about a city-wide forum on homelessness? When someone breaks their ankle, doctors give them a cast. We should think about helping our homeless in the same way.”

Gainsbrugh stressed the need for El Dorado County to adopt a housing-first approach to homelessness by opening a year-round, low-barrier homeless shelter

Ron Morris, who described himself as someone who follows the rules, started packing his belongings days before the trespassing notice went into effect. Morris, an electrician by trade, and his wife recently fell into hard financial times. They’ve been out on the streets for just over a year after living in Pollock Pines for more than 25 years.

“We were only here a couple of weeks but now we’re heading out,” Morris said as he stood across the street from the encampment. “Thank God I have a friend with a car to get me out of here.”

Shelly Morris, Ron’s wife, said Monday, Aug. 26 that the couple has since been drifting through the area searching for a stable place to stay.

Sgt. Anthony Prencipe, the El Dorado County sheriff’s public information officer, did not provide information on where the campers should go for shelter but stated that the campers are breaking the law on several levels.

“These properties do not belong to them and they are trespassing,” Prencipe wrote in a statement to the Mountain Democrat. “We have encountered homeless within these areas that have established structures, digging into hillsides, cutting down trees and vegetation and damaging state and public property.”

Prencipe added that campers are violating the law by endangering threatened animal and plant species and having open fire pits.

The El Dorado County Homeless Outreach Team was established in April 2017. The team is run by the county sheriff’s office and consists of a sergeant, two deputies, a Placerville police officer and an analyst, according to Prencipe.

“Our goal is to gain participation from the transient community,” Prencipe said. “We want to assist them and provide the resources that are available to them.”

Gainsbrugh was on-site with several copies of a controversial Idaho lawsuit, Martin v. City of Boise, which ruled that cities cannot prosecute people for sleeping on the streets if there is nowhere else for them to go. Barring a reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruling creates a constitutional right to camp in public parks or sidewalks.

The Ninth Circuit held that the “Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping outside on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to.” On Thursday, Aug. 22, the city of Boise formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case.

Late Wednesday sheriff’s officials returned to the site and told those left that they’d be back in a few days if they didn’t vacate the property, according to Boyle. Boyle said a group of sheriff’s deputies came back to the site on Sunday to talk to campers about moving out of the area.

There have been no arrests concerning the encampments, Prencipe said.

Like the rest of California, homelessness in the foothills is on the rise in recent years. El Dorado County’s biennial point-in-time homeless count identified a 122 percent increase in homeless individuals from 2015 to 2017. The county has yet to release data from the 2019 count but neighboring foothill counties — Placer, Nevada, Amador and Sierra, among others — all saw an increase from 2017 to 2019.

This week, Placerville officials are considering two pieces of legislation sure to impact the homeless within city limits.

On Tuesday the Placerville City Council considered adopting an ordinance prohibiting open burning of fires from the time when burning is declared prohibited by Cal Fire until the end of the fire season. Homeless people often use open fires to cook food and stay warm, especially during the winter months.

Soon, campers on upper Broadway might be losing a nearby public bathroom. At Tuesday’s meeting city officials held a public hearing on the park commission’s recommendation to demolish the restroom and shut off the water at Lumsden Park. Officials cited “continuous vandalism” and a desire to “remove an incentive for using Lumsden Park as a campsite for the homeless” as their reasoning behind the recommendation.