DPCCC membership approved the following resolution at the April 21, 2022 regular meeting.
WHEREAS local jurisdictions in Contra Costa continue to engage in the confiscation and/or destruction of the survival-related property (e.g. tents, sleeping bags, tarps) of unhoused persons on land owned or controlled by such jurisdictions in cases where these persons are not offered immediate and actual shelter to replace the improvised shelter taken from them (operations referred to hereafter as “desheltering”); and
WHEREAS the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September 2021 in Garcia v. Los Angeles, upholding an injunction by the District Court for the Central District of California, that municipalities may not discard homeless individuals’ “Bulky Items” that are stored in public areas; and
WHEREAS desheltering causes intense trauma to those desheltered, up to and including their deaths; and
WHEREAS desheltering is a policy which harasses and marginalizes individuals in need, and the California Democratic Party commits in the “Labor, Justice, and Poverty Elimination” section of its Platform to “oppose policies that harass and marginalize individuals in need”;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Democratic Party of Contra Costa County calls on Democrats in elected local offices in Contra Costa with authority over law enforcement agencies to agendize, move, second, and vote for ordinances directing their jurisdictions’ staff to cease and refrain from removing any homeless person’s survival-related property from land owned or controlled by those jurisdictions, except when such a person is actually and specifically offered immediate shelter.