Athens committee asks solicitor to review right-of-way rules after public testimony on homelessness

A committee of Athens city officials asked the solicitor’s office to draft options to clarify local rules on sitting, lying and storage in public rights of way after extended public comment and staff testimony about downtown street encampments and enforcement practices.

The move followed public comments from community members and outreach workers who said people experiencing homelessness regularly use sidewalks, greenways and alcoves to store belongings and sleep, and that current practice risks criminalizing poverty. City staff and the solicitor’s office described how the existing obstruction ordinance is enforced and sketched possible operational approaches, including a downtown 72-hour hold policy for stored property and a proposal for mobile storage lockers.

The issue matters because speakers described overlapping concerns about pedestrian and cyclist safety, the limits of police authority, and the use of local jails to hold people who lack stable housing. Committee members said they want clearer, written standards that staff can apply consistently and that can be reviewed by the commission at the next voting cycle.

Steve Williams, a member of the Athens Court Lock Group, told the committee that people experiencing homelessness “have their homelessness, their poverty is criminalized” and that many arrests he sees are for misdemeanors such as criminal trespass or, more recently, “pedestrian in the street.” Williams said those arrested sometimes remain jailed for “weeks and even months” because they cannot pay, and relayed that the sheriff has told the commission the jail lacks adequate staff; Williams added that “we've had 3 people who died at the jail over the last 6 months.”

Will Klinger of the solicitor’s office said the state traffic code (Title 40) includes pedestrian-in-roadway offenses and explained enforcement practice: citations for Title 40 offenses are ordinarily payable citations with a required court date and are “rare” grounds for immediate arrest. “I did just a cursory search in the jail while we were sitting here and didn't see anyone being held on that charge,” Klinger said, describing his search for current custody records tied to that specific charge. He also noted the county sees thousands of citations annually and that many ordinance or traffic citations are handled without custody.

City staff described how the local obstruction ordinance (codified as ordinance 3-5-23, “Obstruction of public sidewalks and streets”) is presently applied. The ordinance prohibits remaining on a public sidewalk, street or road so as to “obstruct, hinder, or impede free passage” or to obstruct ingress or egress to businesses or institutions; it also requires an officer to ask the person to move before enforcement. As deputy chief Daniels (police) and other staff noted, that rule is fact- and circumstance-dependent: a person lying against a building might not be cited if a usable walking corridor remains.

Parks and downtown operations staff described current handling of stored property and debris. Suki (city parks/operations) said downtown has an internal practice of tagging or removing stored items: staff place a notice and typically allow 72 hours for retrieval before removal, except where immediate obstruction threatens business ingress or safety, when staff remove material more quickly. Suki and other staff said before removal they try to contact outreach partners (including Advantage Street Outreach) so people can reclaim belongings and be offered services.

Community and outreach speakers proposed alternatives and mitigations. Michael Moss, community engagement coordinator with the Athens Coalition, described a model used in Lancaster, Pennsylvania: a mobile trailer with about a dozen secure lockers that allows people to store belongings off the public right of way. Downtown staff said the coalition has offered to help pilot such a locker program and that, in their view, 12 lockers would serve a portion of the downtown population who use the area as their daily base.

Committee members raised related legal and operational questions: whether the definition of “public right of way” should be explicit about bike lanes, multiuse trails and grass verges; how park rules and greenway policies intersect with sidewalk ordinances; how Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) walking-clearance standards (for example, a minimum clear width) affect enforcement decisions; and whether expanding an ordinance to ban sitting or lying in the entire public right of way would produce unintended consequences such as increased arrests or fines without alternative shelter or storage options.

After discussion the committee directed the solicitor’s office and city staff to return with specific options for ordinance language that would (a) clarify the scope of the public right of way for enforcement purposes, (b) address storage of personal property and the time thresholds that trigger removal, and (c) note exceptions such as permitted special events. Staff also were asked to provide operational and fiscal implications and examples from other cities. The committee set a follow-up meeting to review draft options and operational costs in the commission’s next vote cycle; staff and commissioners discussed meeting dates and indicated a target to meet in early October.

Votes and formal motions recorded during the session were procedural: the agenda was approved by voice motion early in the meeting, and the committee adjourned on a subsequent motion. The transcript records voice “aye” responses but does not list individual roll-call tallies for those procedural motions.

The committee’s next materials are to include the current ordinance text (3-5-23), a legal memo on interactions with Title 40 and state permitting for roadside fundraising, examples of expanded ordinance language used by peer cities, and an operational plan that addresses storage, tagging, outreach contact procedures, and staff capacity and cost estimates.