I had my hopes up for this lawsuit out of Grants Pass but now I realize the whole thing is completely meaningless as long as we don’t have a jail to put these people in.
Our jail has long been known to be sub-code, and I’d say, inhumane. The Grand Jury reported years ago that the womens’ jail was sub-par, plumbing didn’t work, the place was filthy. There were court cases involving sexual assaults, including one guard found to have been coercing women into sex for tampons. A recent lawsuit involved a prisoner allowed to wander the jail free at night who assaulted two other prisoners so badly they are left with permanent injuries.
The above article, from 2023, promises updates that have been promised for about 20 years. Sheriff Kory Honea received $44.5 million almost 10 years ago – I saw agenda items indicating that money was being used to pay down the sheriff’s office pension deficit. According to the article, the county still needs to come up with almost $5 million to complete this update.
In 2015, Butte County supervisors established “jail impact fees”, to be tacked on to the price of your home. Yes, they charge a lot of fees for the building of a house, which are passed along to the home buyer.
https://www.buttecounty.net/256/Fees
But according to this article, jail impact fees didn’t last very long.
Jail fees were eliminated in 2017 due to a lawsuit brought forward by several of Chico’s major developers. I don’t know what happened after that, I can’t find anything further about jail fees. I do know the county received annual funding from AB109. Here’s a post I wrote about how they were spending it as of 2020.
I’m too busy to cut excerpts, so read this article, thoroughly, before you ask me any questions or accuse me of anything. But let’s see how this lawsuit plays out – a new game of Whack-a-mole, involving a round trip to an overcrowded jail, is what I’m expecting.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
“The [recent Supreme Court on Grants Pass] ruling epitomizes why housing [and safe shelter] has become a crisis in so much of the country: It does nothing to make communities confront their role in causing a housing shortage, and it upholds their ability to inflict pain upon that shortage’s victims.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/martin-v-boise-supreme-court-ruling-grants-pass-oregon/678834/
I don’t agree that illegal camping is caused by a housing shortage. There are shelter beds at both the Torres Shelter and pallet shelter, just to name two of the numerous county and city agencies that are funded and set up to handle the unhoused population. And, as we speak, Chico is going through one of the biggest development benders since the early 2000’s – I just drove past one new subdivision and another three-story apartment building in the works, both on East Avenue, that were not there when I drove by within the last year. Look at Bruce Road and Hwy 32, it’s like mushrooms. So we have housing for a wide variety of people.
I don’t mean to be argumentative or cruel, but people who willfully camp on public land that is not designated legal campground are breaking the law. Leaving garbage not in trash cans is against the law. Public intoxication/drug use is against the law. Public defecation and urination are against the law. Destroying vegetation, camp fires, vandalizing fixtures – against the law. Most of those will only get you fined, as long as you agree to cease and desist – but disobeying an officer of the law will get you arrested, as it should. Anybody who doesn’t respect a cop is dangerous around other people, including other unhoused and vulnerable individuals. These people need to be taken off the streets, for public safety, and answer for their offenses like everybody else. In this case, jail is “housing”.
My problem with the court ruling is that it would lead to fines these people can’t pay, and arrests – as Dave predicts – that would mean a round-trip to Oroville and back to the camps. Those people need to be taken out of the equation, so we can deal with the rest of the unhoused who truly deserve our consideration but we need a decent jail to put them in. Dave also mentions the backlog at the DA’s office that has people who can’t get out on bail in jail for months waiting for trial.
So I think the jail should be a bigger part of this conversation.
My husband would like to add, that the “homeless” are as bad as the cops. They’re less than a percentage of our population but they get a disproportionate chunk of the budget. It’s not fair to law-abiding citizens, 99.5% of the public, are left to watch this shit show.
“Where will they put these people when they arrest them for having nowhere to go?” Great question, thank you! Drive them to Oroville, book them, and release them there? Great use of police time. Going to take them to court? Ramsey has already clogged the court calendar with frivolous cases that he eventually drops because there’s zero evidence. Whack-a-mole works long enough for City to take a PR picture, but then, months later, THEY’RE BACK. …
thanks Dave, that’s my point, it’s just a joke. We really need to talk publicly about the way Butte County spends it’s money, especially given this new sales tax measure.
I’ve watched people’s names on the court case register, they spend months waiting around the jail, having been coerced into waving the right to speedy trial, then coerced into waving the jury, just to be eventually sent to state prison, or released, time served. Others are released much more quickly, to be arrested again and again. How this all works, is a mystery stew. It just sounds like the crazy people are running the asylum.