We know camping bans don’t work.
It’s time to try something new.

Last month the Reno City Council voted to extend the ban on camping in cars. With Reno, Sparks, and Washoe County all having enacted such restrictions, it is apparent that the measures have not done what they promised to do, and the unhoused and housing insecure continue to suffer. Reno has had this ordinance for over 25 years and the numbers have not abated, in fact, they continue to climb.

Such ordinances have three aims: to protect the river and the environment; to protect the beauty and aesthetics of the Truckee River Corridor, and to help get the unhoused to stable and safe housing. As to the first goal, a laudable and important one, the measure does little that has not already been done. Dumping is already prohibited by city and state codes. As for aesthetics, there are beautiful parts along the river. There is also a casino, an airport, an auto body lot, and a storage facility for Waste Management’s garbage cans. I struggle with the idea that it would be better to look at garbage than a human being.

The City of Reno is proud not only of the natural beauty of the area but of its use. The Reno-Tahoe tourism website advertises and invites camping, but only when it is attractive to do so. Only when it is rich tourists or headline-friendly thrill-seekers. Even in a place where trailers and campers are part of the culture, they are still being stigmatized, because in this case, they are filled with poor people.

The final argument, that this measure will help people get to resources and safe places, does not appear in the ordinance itself. Nothing in it indicates this as a goal. Forcing people to take shelter or move under threat of punishment cannot be the least restrictive means of doing so. The Washoe County Ordinance followed quickly on the heels of the updated Sparks one.

That argument, as was made by Sheriff Darrin Balaam, was that similar policies in Reno and Sparks were pushing people away from services. If the intent was to get people the resources they need, these measures would seem to have the opposite effect. The other implication was that Reno and Sparks would merely be pushing the problem onto county property. However, with 25 years of this ordinance on Reno’s books, it has neither run the unhoused out of the city nor has it flooded Sparks or the county with displaced individuals.

It does have unintended consequences — namely, criminalizing homelessness. The unhoused have a number of barriers that prevent them from obtaining stable housing. The lack of affordable housing is certainly the chief reason, but there are others. One of those is a criminal record. Even a misdemeanor can increase the difficulty in getting housing, not to mention that it costs money, money that most of these individuals do not have or can afford to lose. The fine for illegal camping can be as high as $1,000.

Making this a problem for law enforcement is not ideal for anyone, including the police. Craig Turner, Washoe County Sheriff’s Deputy, said that arresting everyone who violated the ordinance would damage the relationships he and his officers have spent the last two years building. Well-established relationships could also enable officers to guide people to better locations or resources — or better yet, trained professionals like social workers or counselors could do so, without the specter of guns and violence or coercion and punishment.

Many people have offered their opinions on these measures, from law enforcement to religious leaders. There is another demographic, whose voices should not be discounted, and perhaps should be elevated even more: those who are or were part of the unhoused community. I heard many of them speak at the meetings in Washoe County, and they attested to the personal cost these measures had on them and would have on others. They explained where the inadequacies of the shelters were and why those places, as beneficial as they are, do not always work to serve everyone.

So, what is the solution? A number of politicians who supported this ordinance seemed less convinced of it than as a “tool of last resort.” If this is truly the case, let’s get some other tools. Homelessness is a problem with an obvious solution: give people homes. If someone has a home, they are not homeless. Giving someone a home will not solve all of their problems — they may still struggle to find adequate employment, they may still have health issues, they may struggle interpersonally, or any number of other things that any of us could have in our lives. But once someone has a home, that is one less problem, and often enables them to address their other challenges.

We may not have empty and available homes that we can just give to everyone who needs them. The shortage of affordable housing goes beyond that. The median home price or rental price is well beyond most people in this area. Addressing the shortage of affordable housing would go a long way to addressing homelessness. If criminalizing does not even get people to shelters or other resources that might help them get out of homelessness, spending time and energy on ordinances like the one at hand is wasted energy. If our government spent time working to create real solutions, the need to keep people from camping at the river would also decrease.

We can also adapt to accommodate what we already have. In some communities, they have addressed vehicular homelessness not by trying to push the cars out, but by making safe spaces for them. When the anti-camping ordinance came before the County Commission, Commissioner Garcia suggested a pilot program for safe parking.

The United States has somewhere between 700,000 and 2 billion parking spaces. In commercial lots alone, there are two spaces for every registered vehicle. Some of this could go to private entities — WalMart used to welcome RVs, and some houses of worship have made their lots available as well. But it is not a reality for every faith community or house of worship to allow people to park on their property. It would be unfair and an abdication of the government’s duty to care for its people to put this solely on volunteers from faith-based organizations. Nor is it a reality for every public space to be opened up to encampments or overnight parking.

There is, however, a possibility for resolution somewhere in between. There is enough space for everyone.