Homeless Law Fails / Eversmeyer Asks Attorney and Police Chief to Write Another Version

By Pauline Masson –  

After five months of debate and delay, a controversial law to make it illegal to be homeless in Pacific ran into a stumbling block at the Jan. 17 board of aldermen meetng.

Bill 5156, AN ORDINANCE PROHIBITING THE OCCUPANCY OF STRUCTURES DEEMED UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION, would have made it a crime for citizens to allow people to sleep in tents, campers or RVs on their property for longer than three days. 

The proposed law was introduced to aldermen August 16, 2022 and given preliminary approval. On Sept. 7, it was tabled for review by the Operations Committee, where it was viewed on the Jan 6. meeting agenda and returned to the full board of aldermen unchanged.

Alderman Jerry Eversmeyer, who chaired the Operations Committee, made a motion at last Tuesday’s board meeting to approve the bill and make it an ordinance, but when no aldermen was willing to second the motion the controversial bill failed to become law.

“There is no second, therefore bill dies,” Mayor Heather Filley said. 

Not so fast.

Eversmeyer said failure to approve the ordinance was mainly due to private property issues and he wanted the City to redo Bill 5156 to cover City property. He said the City had ordinances in place to protect City parks, but he was concerned with the flood lots and property the city had acquired along the Meramec River for possible future trails.

He said the State had recently announced its intention to remove homeless camps from the Pacific Palisades area and when that happens the homeless will move into Pacific. When that happens, Eversmeyer said, he wants a law that is strict enough that they City can remove the homeless camps from City property.

Mayor Filley said the City already has ordinances or code in place for no trespassing and City Attorney Bob Jones, agreed. He said if someone is on city property and if the are asked to leave and they don’t then the remedy would be to send them to municipal court, which can happen pretty quickly.

But Eversmeyer said that sounded like the process of citing people for not cutting their grass, where it can be months on end before violators end up in court. He wants them removed.

“Where does the city stand on removing them, in moving the camp off our City property?” He said. “If it was a law, they would be arrested. They would be removed.”

“Well, you could,” Jones said. “But we’re not going to be arresting them, I mean were not going to hold people for days on a trespassing charge. The city would probably print them and send them out with a bond.”

Eversmeyer said that would not protect the City. He said he wanted a new bill that could provide a remedy.

Alderemen James Cleeve said the reason the first bill failed was because the Operations Committee did not do the things aldermen had asked them to do. He said if the bill is rewritten a new bill would face some of the same challenges as the bill that failed.

“We asked for specific things to be done on the first bill and it didn’t happen. I haven’t seen any report of police reports where action was needed,” Cleeve said. “We asked for language to be changed and it came back the same way it left here. If we redo it and it is the same, from my perspective it will be a no action or a “no” vote.

Alderman Scot Lesh also said the lack of the requested police reports would hamper a new bill.

He had requested that the police provide the Operations Committee with a report on how many times police had been sent to invistigate homeless camps and the nature of the complaints.

Chief Melies, who had asked to attend the Operations Committee to explain why they law was needed, was asked to provide a report of his department involvement with the homeless for the Operations Committee but did not report on police calls during the meeting. 

When no report was presented, Lesh made a motion, which Mayor Filley seconded and the entire committee approved to direct the Chief to have the reports ready for the Jan. 17 Board of Aldermen meeting.

“If we go forward with this motion for a new bill, do we have that request that we asked for at the Operations meeting?” 

Chief Melies seemed to nod yes, but could not be heard to speak.

Mayor Filley, who serves on the Operations Committee said she had not seen any logs of police calls.

“We don’t have any of those and I think it’s going to come up again if we move forward with this,” Lesh said.

Looking at Chief Melies, Lesh said, “Will you please get those reports of police reports on action instances.”

On a motion by Eversmeyer, seconded by Alderman Rick Presley, Attorney Jones was asked to get with Chief Melies and draft another bill, which could come back to the board of aldermen as early as the Feb. 14 meeting.

Hoping to report on the seriousness of the homeless problem in our city, I sent a Sunshine Request to City Clerk Kim Barfield asking for police reports, logs or lists of calls where police had needed to investigate. She responded that she had forwarded my request to the police department.

Ms. Barfield later forwarded to me a summary report from the police department that listed five incidents that involved “alleged homeless persons.” No specific dates were listed but they appear to all have occured in 2022. One incident listed an ordinance violation for camping in the city park. Four additionsl calls investigated peace disturbance, missing person, stealing and child neglect/abuse. The location of those incidents was not listed. 

The conclusion is that even though the citizens concerned about their private property rights scored a victory, some officials are not relenting in their campaign against the homeless.