Homeless to face misdemeanors for camping in Chico parks

The council voted 5-2 to implement the ordinance beginning Dec.

9, the following day.

Is.## the city of chico will now take action by sending out target officers to give warnings to homeless people to get out of the parks.

Starting today-- they will have 72 hours to leave the park before receiving a citation.

Councilmember sean morgan believes that this with some other actions will help in solving the homelessness issue.

Sean morgan/chico city council member (0-23 seconds) giving people citations which wasn't even happening isn't going to have a lot of an effect so now if you are an habitual offender, you move from one park to the next and just keep degrading it and ruining it, you are actually going to be arrested or cited as a misdemeanor.

I don't think this is likely to happen very often but it should town down abuses that we are seeing.

Morgan says that the city will look at possible ways to to put affordable housing into effect so that the homeless have a place to go to.

He says the council asked city staff to talk to public health-- to see if some of that agency's 80 million dollar budget could be used to help