Critics of Aurora homeless law proposal say it’s an attempt to undermine camping ban

AURORA | Aurora city lawmakers tentatively approved a change Monday to the city’s homeless camping ban that proponents say reflects how the city actually enforces it, but critics say is a surreptitious plan to undermine the moratorium.

“This is like Chinese water torture,” Councilmember Stephanie Hancock said during the city council’s study session focusing on the proposed change. “I feel like this is drip, drip. This is going to back, go back into reverse.”

The proposed council resolution wouldn’t change Aurora’s year-old camping ban, allowing the city to force homeless campers off of city streets, medians and parks without notice, city homeless program officials said. Instead, the proposal would direct city staff to oblige some homeless campers with a 72-hour warning.

City staff and council proponents of the resolution say homeless campers who create an imminent safety threat to themselves or the public can still be immediately forced from their campsites.

City Manager Jason Batchelor and other city officials said the proposed measure reflects how the city actually handles evicting homeless people from unauthorized camping in public spaces.

If illegal campers are spotted or a complaint is called into the city, outreach workers contact the campers and attempt to get them to go to Aurora’s nascent Regional Navigation Campus, which boasts a large shelter and a variety of support services.

If the campers refuse to leave, the process of getting qualified contractors to the site for abatement usually takes about 72 hours, officials said. Even at the time of abatement, the campers can essentially collect their belongings and move on. Or they can leave them behind for disposal.

If they refuse to budge, they can be arrested and jailed, under the existing ordinance.

Councilmember Alison Coombs, who supports the change, said it reflects the reality of how abating homeless encampments has been carried out for the past year.

She said the city has been disingenuous in promoting a narrative to residents that if you call in to complain about homeless campers that the city ousts them immediately.

“What we’re really doing is we’re making a false promise to people that we’re going to do something faster than we actually can,” Coombs said.

She said council proponents of the measure want to ensure a policy that precludes the city from taking someone’s tent while it’s cold and snowing, or face losing what few belongings they have.

Opponents of the change in philosophy intimated that the new council majority, Democrats, are what’s prompting the change, and that issues brought forward recently by city homeless officials were never mentioned before Democrats were elected last November.

The current Aurora law was created about a year ago after a 2024 Supreme Court ruling, saying, essentially, that cities and counties do not have to provide some kind of shelter to homeless people in order to evict them from public encampments.

Previously, the city would only evict homeless campers if they could offer some kind of shelter accommodation.

City officials said the proposed change would not affect the city’s mandate to immediately remove campers from interstate medians and underpasses as a matter of public safety.

Those areas are under a joint management agreement with the Colorado Department of Highways. Camping in underpasses and on highway medians is inherently dangerous and subject to immediate abatement, according to state and city regulations.

The resolution, sponsored by at-large Councilmember Rob Anderson, primarily seeks to ensure homeless campers are afforded time to find, consider and act on options, he said.

Councilmember Amy Wiles said she’s heard directly and from city officials that many homeless people are skeptical or even fearful of the city’s Navigation Center. Numerous clients there reported bad experiences as the center first opened as a chaotic and even dangerous experience.

The Sentinel previously reported a long list of problems the city says it’s addressing regularly.

Unable to stay at an encampment, critics of the process say that abatement enforcement just shuffles homeless people to another site, if they don’t accept shelter services.

Critics of the proposed ordinance said that rather than create city policy to accommodate problems with not immediately being able to evict homeless campers, the city should find the resources to carry out the abatement ordinance as it was intended by the previous city council.

Hancock said homelessness and vagrancy are serious problems no matter what the underlying cause is, economics, substance abuse or mental illness, and that “residents” demand the city keep homeless people from living in public spaces.

“At some point, you need to deal with it,” Hancock said. “If they choose not to deal with those things. Then, as adults, you have choices. You can go to the Navigation Campus. You can go to treatment. Or you can go to jail.”

The city’s current camping ban was approved by the former city council after the 2024 Johnson v Grants Pass Supreme Court ruling permitted the changes in Aurora and in cities across the country.

The only opposition to the camping ban when it was enacted came from the three Democrats on the city council at the time. In November, Democrats took control of the city council and are sponsoring the proposed change.

“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, folks can say that this is not punitive, but the consequences certainly will be,” Coombs said last year before the previous city council enacted the camping ban. “When we create this discretion, it means that a person could be immediately moved with no notice and no offer of shelter and could be put in jail for up to 364 days. That is punitive.”

The measure now moves to the council floor at a future city council meeting for final consideration.