The Greeley City Council this week showed consensus to approve a new camping ban, setting up a vote for a later date.
City staff presented the camping the ban to the council on Tuesday, proposing a complete ban on camping in public within Greeley, mainly impacting the city’s homeless population.
The proposed ordinance is the result of several years of research on how to address homelessness from city departments including Homeless Solutions, Public Works, Greeley Police and the City Attorney’s Office. The proposed ordinance would ban camping in public spaces without permission and expand the definition of camping to include having fires or stoves in a public area.
City staff and council members debated whether the ordinance would address concerns about encampments’ impacts on safety and health or essentially criminalize homelessness.
Mandy Shreve, director of the Homeless Solutions Department, said the city still lacks the resources to address the root cause of homelessness.
“The No. 1 reason for homelessness is affordability,” Shreve said. “We know that homelessness is a housing problem, and it’s not that we don’t know how to fix it. We don’t have the resources to.”
The average cost of a home in Greeley is $414,500, and the average median yearly income for one person in Greeley is $80,200. This has resulted in 85% of households in the city being unable to afford a home, an increase of 29% since 2019.
Meanwhile, as of December 2024, there are 541 homeless people in Greeley, with nearly 30% of them being chronically homeless, meaning they have been homeless for more than a year. United Way of Weld County, which operates the biggest homeless shelter in the county, has a capacity of only 60 people and will shut down for the summer by the end of April due to a lack of funding.
“I don’t see how this ordinance adds up,” Councilwoman Deb Deboutez said. “It’s just mean to do this when they have nowhere to go.”
Deboutez and Councilman Tommy Butler took up arms against the ban, saying that without a shelter, it’s only a matter of time before the police start arresting homeless people under the ban, effectively criminalizing homelessness. Police Chief Adam Turk and members of city staff and council have repeatedly said this is not something they want to do.
“We know we aren’t going to arrest ourselves out of this,” Turk said. “I look at it more as a deterrent. Our homeless know the rules and will learn where they can and can’t be.”
City staff have discussed how encampments create health and safety concerns such as open fires that can quickly get out of control and human waste in the waterways that can introduce E. coli. In addition to those concerns, Councilwoman Melissa McDonald said the city’s lack of serious restrictions both draws in homeless people and prevents other groups from coming to the table.
“We have to create some kind of restrictions to deter people that are coming to our community from other communities because it’s easy to be homeless here,” McDonald said.
City staff ran a survey about the potential ban after a community meeting on Feb. 19. Of 352 responses, 53% strongly favored the camping ban and only 17% strongly opposed it.
However, according to city staff, most respondents also indicated a desire for the city to prioritize shelter and mental health services for homeless people.
Though no official actions occurred at the meeting, the city council generated a consensus to move forward on implementing a camping ban in the city that also targets locations experiencing the greatest issues.
The ordinance will be brought to a public hearing at a time that has yet to be determined so that city council members can get more public input on the issue.
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