Anxious. Uncertain. Fearful. These are just a few of the emotions Peoria’s unsheltered residents and advocacy groups are feeling in the aftermath of the city’s recently approved public encampment ban.

Seth Phillips has been living on the streets of Peoria for just over a year. He calls the ordinance, with fines and possible jail time as penalties, “ridiculous.”

“I suffered a head injury, lost my job, my house, and pretty much everything that I had,” said Phillips, noting he’s dealing with the effects of vertigo. “I’ve been on the street, bouncing around from place to place since then. I usually camp; whenever shelter is available, I do use the shelters. But right now, I’m currently staying in a tent.

Phillips says many of the people living in the camps are in circumstances much like his, something that the people backing the ordinance don’t understand.

“It’s not something that they decided for themselves. They didn’t decide one day that, ‘I want to go be homeless and then deal with this and that,’ ” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who said that in my life.

“‘Yeah, I want to be homeless, not have a job, not have an income. Not have a place to lay my head at night, so I’m constantly sleeping on benches, bridges, rocks, grass, a wet spot, wherever.’ There’s no fun in it at all.”

Peoria became the largest city in Illinois with a public camping ban two weeks ago, when the city council passed the ordinance on a 6-5 vote during a special meeting on Nov. 19. City staff said it would be 30 days before they could begin clearing campsites.

Mayor Rita Ali is not signing the measure, although that action is a symbolic gesture since she doesn’t have veto power.

Short-sighted

Chris Schaffner, the executive director of the nonprofit JOLT Foundation, says the ban is short-sighted. “If they’re going to pass an ordinance that is going to close these encampments and ban public camping on city property, then they have to have a robust system to get these people connected to and we just don’t have that,” Schaffner said.

“When you look at the number of shelter beds and available housing units and the need, there’s a massive disparity there. We are well short of that mark, and we’re not going to fix that in 30 days. So to enact such a punitive criminalizing of these folks without having an alternative is draconian.”

Schaffner says community nonprofits started meeting about what they can do next to help those affected immediately after the ban’s passage, with staff members from the city’s Community Development department joining them at the table.

“All the collaboration that’s happened since the vote, that needed to happen months and months ago. So we’re putting the cart before the horse, that’s the problem with this,” he said. “That’s just talking pragmatically. But part of the problem we have though is we have people on the council that just don’t care. They just don’t want to see these folks.”

Displacing the displaced

Kate Green, the executive director of the Home for All Continuum of Care, says the ban is likely to pose a challenge in connecting with the unhoused population to help them access the assistance and services they need.

“When these ordinances are enacted, and we’ve seen this in other communities, it displaces the problem, and it can go to unintended places like doorsteps and stoops and in places that weren’t intended in the first place either,” Green said. “So I think there’s going to be real friction in terms of the enforcement of this ordinance.”

Green says community partners have been working on a “100-day challenge” to develop what she calls “innovative, transformational” changes to help those in need — but the timeframe has been accelerated with the ban now in place.

“The Continuum of Care took two approaches: We had advocacy against the ordinance; but also, if the ordinance were to pass due to the decision of policy makers, we wanted to make sure to inform the protocols that were in place because of that ordinance,” she said. “I think that’s where we really were able to make a difference and really inform the steps and stages in that process before enforcement actually takes place.”

How many?

Green says there’s currently around 600 people in their four-county system who are seeking permanent housing assistance. Peoria city officials estimated there’s around 40 to 50 people staying at the downtown campsites along Interstate 74.

But that figure could be low. Kshe Bernard, the co-founder of LULA Peoria and the outreach director for JOLT, says by her count it’s as high as 90.

She says the people she works with are in despair and the service providers are in “crisis mode.”

“We don’t really have ‘next steps’ right now,” Bernard said. “It breaks my heart, because I think there’s so many myths surrounding people who are experiencing homelessness: that they don’t want to work, that they don’t want to be housed. I’ve been doing this work for over five and a half years, and I don’t know anybody who doesn’t want a home of their own — and almost all of them, if they’re able to work, express wanting to work.”

More harm than good

Bernard says the ban on encampments only creates more barriers for the unsheltered individuals to overcome.

“No matter how many times you throw away someone’s tent, fine them or jail them, it doesn’t give them a home. It doesn’t make them not homeless,” she said. “These are humans. These are Peoria’s most vulnerable citizens.”

Community Development director Joe Dulin says the city is working with the community groups to get as many campsite residents as possible housed before enforcement starts.

Enforcement starts with a series of warnings over five days before the first citation is issued. The fine for a first offense is set at $50 to $100, and would go uncollected if there isn’t a repeat violation within 180 days. A second citation within the 180-day window runs $150 to $250. The third violation within 180 days assesses a fine of $250 to $750, and puts a potential jail term of up to six months on the table.

City Attorney Patrick Hayes says the ordinance is modeled after the state’s trespassing law that Peoria already applies in many cases. Hayes says in his time with the city, it’s never reached a point where someone is jailed. Peoria County Sheriff Chris Watkins says it’s too soon to know what kind of impact this may have on the jail. The jail currently has 492 beds.

Schaffner says he understands the city’s desire to make Peoria’s downtown more welcoming for visitors and to help businesses thrive.

“I care deeply about our economy. A vibrant economy is actually going to create more resource opportunities for people, more job, employment, better housing, more affordability, and possibly more social services to support people,” he said. “So I’m in favor of that, and I also think businesses have rights. But I think there’s got to be a balance there, because I do believe at the end of the day that people matter more than profit.”

Despite the uncertainty created by the ban, Schaffner says JOLT and the other non-profits will keep doing all they can to help Peoria’s unsheltered residents.

“We want to be a resource that looks at, how do we end this problem long-term. But then we’re also harm reduction, so we’re looking at the short-term negative effects of this, and we’re going to do everything we can to mitigate that,” he said.

“We’re going to continue to work to connect people to mental health services and to help refer them to the housing organizations that can actually help with long-term, permanent or permanent supportive housing. We’re going to also continue to work on helping them if they’re struggling with substance use. If they’re interested in getting into treatment or getting help or entering into recovery, we have services that can support that as well.”

With the ban going into effect just before the start of winter, Seth Phillips fears the consequences could be dire.

“Not everybody’s going to make it, I don’t think,” he said. “They’re either going to end up in jail or they’re going to end up taking their own lives because they’ve already got the world on their shoulders, and it’s hard.

“It’s hard just to have the mental strength to keep going like tomorrow’s another day. Not everybody’s going to make it, man.”

— This story published in partnership with WCBU, Peoria Public Radio.