New law could penalize neighboring cities for sending homeless to Fresno

The Fresno City Council preliminarily approved a new ordinance meant to penalize neighboring cities and jurisdictions for transporting unhoused people to Fresno’s city limits. 

The new city law, authored by councilmembers Mike Karbassi and Nick Richardson, needs to be approved again before going into effect. It would penalize the employees of neighboring cities or jurisdictions in violation of the ordinance with a misdemeanor, along with a $1,000 fine per each unhoused person they transport. 

In an interview with Fresnoland, Karbassi didn’t provide any specific examples of neighboring cities transporting unhoused people to within Fresno’s city limits. He also said he’s not aware that Fresno County sheriff deputies are doing that either. 

However, Karbassi said there has been “a huge influx in homeless activity” in Pinedale, according to reports he said his office received from community groups.

“They’re reporting to us, ‘Hey there were these vans coming and there are people that aren’t from here being dropped here,’” Karbassi told Fresnoland. 

He did not share which community groups flagged the matter to his office. He also said he can’t speak to many details because of an active investigation into the matter. Karbassi also said he couldn’t comment on who is investigating the matter.

During the Jan. 30 Fresno City Council meeting, Councilmember Miguel Arias said on the dais that the issue of nearby cities taking unhoused people to Fresno is a longstanding one. Arias said a hospital outside Fresno, along with several other cities in Fresno County, have transported unhoused people to within city limits in recent years.

“The rationale is that the county doesn’t operate warming centers and the respective cities don’t operate warming centers, so they get bussed in by family members, by organizations, by municipalities into our facilities,” Arias said at the council meeting Thursday. “We have always welcomed them and provided as much services as we can, but it has been a strain on city resources.”

The city ordinance exempts agencies that take unhoused people to services that they’ve independently confirmed will intake the person they are transporting. It also exempts transporting unhoused people to court hearings and appointments with a social service provider.

A slight change to warming center policy

Several community members attended Thursday’s City Council meeting to call on city officials to open up its warming centers more often this winter and to stop penalizing the unhoused for being in the streets.

“Let’s keep (warming centers) open for the duration of the winter,” said local advocate Bob McCloskey. “Let’s have compassion for those people that are suffering out there. A lot of them are elderly.”

City Manager Georgeanne White announced at the council meeting Thursday that the city will change the timeline to open warming centers from 72 hours to 48 hours. She explained that in the past, the city has run into challenges with staffing warming centers at night, which used to require city employees signing up for graveyard shifts on short notice. 

Now, White said the city is contracting out warming center staffing to the Poverello House and they recently discussed whether they could open warming centers sooner than 72 hours. 

“We did find out late yesterday that we are able, with the (Poverello House) staffing force, to mobilize within a 48 hour notice,” White said at the council meeting Thursday. “I’m going to go ahead with a 48-hour notification instead of a 72. We cannot do anything less than a 48-hour notice.” 

So far this year, officials have opened warming centers only twice — when temperatures were projected to be under 35 degrees 72 hours in advance by the National Weather Service’s forecasts. 

If actual temperatures dip below 35 degrees, or if NWS projections change within 48 hours, the city will still not open its warming centers. A longstanding criticism of the city’s policies is that the current below-35 degree threshold is too low. 

With the city’s ordinance that prohibits unhoused people from sleeping in public — and homeless shelters remaining at full capacity — unhoused people and their advocates have repeatedly said there’s nowhere else to go but the streets.

No budget committee for second year in a row

Councilmembers also unanimously approved council committee assignments Thursday. For the second year in a row, the council is not convening a budget committee, following an August 2023 Fresnoland investigation into how the city’s budget process may have violated California state transparency law.

Fresnoland found that the Fresno City Council convened an annual budget committee with meetings closed to the public from 2018 to 2023. It also found that Fresno was the only one out of California’s 10 largest cities to have a private budget committee.

In November 2023, the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition sued the city over the council’s budget process. The lawsuit is still ongoing. 

Two months after the initial investigation, the Fresno City Council disbanded at least 10 council committees that met privately. The council went from having at least 20 committees in 2023, to just 11 in 2024. This year, the council has nine committees. 

The council also changed its policies on committees last year, introducing a working group structure that skirts requirements for documentation. It’s unclear what working groups councilmembers convened after the policy change, although they didn’t make one to discuss the budget. 

Karbassi told Fresnoland last year that the old private budget committee process was efficient. Additionally, Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz has said in the past that the lawsuit over the city’s budget process is “an attempt to impose a radical unworkable process on a City that does good work for its taxpayers.”