ASTORIA, Ore. — Astoria leaders are holding off on an ordinance that would have temporarily banned people from a large part of downtown if they were cited or arrested for certain crimes in that area.
At a hearing Monday night, City Councilors Andy Davis, Andrea Mazzarella, Elisabeth Adams and Vance Lump said they wanted more time to consider the exclusion zone ordinance — and more public input.
They plan to discuss exclusion zones at a future work session. No final decisions would be made at that meeting, but city staff expect to get directions about how — or if — the City Council wants to proceed with an ordinance. This meeting would occur, at the earliest, on April 28, according to City Manager Scott Spence.
The ordinance the City Council considered on Monday was intended to address what police say are growing instances of bad behavior downtown and increased frustration from business owners and others in the community.
Astoria Police Chief Stacy Kelly emphasized that the ordinance would target behaviors, not any specific groups. But during a public comment period, people on both sides of the issue spoke about the ordinance in relation to Astoria’s homeless population.
Under the proposal the City Council considered on Monday, someone cited for things like theft, disorderly conduct, arson or harassment while in an area that stretches from Second Street to 19th Street and from the Columbia River to Franklin Avenue could be excluded from it for up to 90 days.
Other charges related to the city’s camping ordinance would operate on a three-strike rule. A person would need to rack up three citations in a 90-day period before the individual could be excluded from the downtown area as well as other city properties including the Astoria Riverwalk.
People who are excluded run the risk of a trespass charge and jail time if they return to the area for reasons not tied to work, seeking out social services or other exemptions.
Dozens of people packed the Astoria City Council chambers on Monday and others logged onto a Zoom call of the meeting, speaking for and against the creation of exclusion zones downtown. On Zoom, former state Sen. Betsy Johnson and a staff member from state Rep. Cyrus Javadi’s office also weighed in, urging the city to adopt the ordinance.
Johnson described a recent visit to Astoria.
“I’m sad to report that downtown looked awful,” she said and described seeing various unhoused people, trash and drug deals in the area of Ninth Street and Commercial Street. “That day, Astoria didn’t show well and I was embarrassed for all of us.”
She urged the City Council to “take back downtown or lose it.”
But some previously homeless people in the audience asked the City Council to consider a different approach, saying the ordinance would not encourage people to seek help as Kelly hopes it might and that, instead, it could push problems into new areas. They argued that the ordinance did not treat unhoused people as human beings.
Kelly emphasized he would look to apply the exclusion zone ordinance sparingly. But Astoria resident Daniel Hubner argued the city shouldn’t pass an ordinance on the promise that, “Chief Kelly’s going to be reasonable.”
“What we put in an ordinance is on the books, and that’s what it is and that’s how the courts are going to interpret it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s four years from now and some police chief none of us have ever met before is just going: cite, cite, cite — boom — you’re out of Astoria.”
Others also raised concerns about court challenges and costs associated with enforcing the ordinance. The proposal for Astoria was modeled after a similar ordinance from Medford. That ordinance aired in court and prevailed, Kelly noted.
But opponents of Astoria’s ordinance also pushed back against Kelly’s assurances that the homeless population was not the target of the exclusion zones.
Erin Carlsen, who helps run LiFEBoat Services, which operates a year-round shelter downtown, also teaches evening dance classes across the street. She said none of her students has complained about being harassed by homeless people.
“I can tell you that I have been sexually harassed, heckled and threatened by housed drunk men,” Carlsen said.
“Are the police going to equally cite and arrest and exclude based on the behaviors of every housed individual as well?” she added. “With the number of housed individuals behaving poorly on the sidewalk that I’ve seen just personally — with open alcohol containers and smoking joints — if applied justly, this could lead to an abundance of exclusions spanning all socioeconomic statuses in the downtown area, and how are we going to regulate that?”
But downtown business owners told the City Council that the situation had become impossible and, they feared, could put them out of business.
Lisa Parks, the owner of Brut Wine Bar, said she has compassion for the unhoused people she sees every day near her business. The wine bar is located around the corner from LiFEBoat, and people often sleep or rest in the door alcoves along 10th Street.
“It’s a really hard problem,” Parks said about homelessness in Astoria, adding, “There are so many individuals that are fine, that I have a good relationship with, that are walking around, they’re doing their thing. That’s not a problem. But what we’re talking about are the people that are the issue.”
She described situations where she’s had to lock herself and her customers inside the bar because someone was outside acting in a threatening manner. She and other business owners said customers have told them they don’t feel safe walking to their businesses. Others described routinely cleaning up human feces and other trash.
As the meeting entered its third hour, Mayor Sean Fitzpatrick encouraged the City Council to put off final deliberations of the ordinance to a future meeting. Davis suggested holding a work session instead to unpack the issue further.
“I would like to make sure that we’re not just criminalizing homelessness, making whatever ordinance we come up with more targeted,” Davis told KMUN following Monday’s meeting. “Making sure there’s accountability around it is a big issue for me. I want to make sure it’s effective.”
Other city councilors, however, left the meeting convinced exclusion zones were not the right decision.
“Speaking for myself, I don’t see the exclusion ordinance as a solution,” Lump wrote in an email to KMUN. “The only things the ordinance attempts to solve are the concerns of business owners downtown and I’m not convinced it even does that. The evidence supporting exclusion ordinances just isn’t there.”