Wichita, Kan. January 3, 2025 – The Kansas Green Party and the Wichita Green Party condemn the Wichita City Council’s decision on December 17, 2024 to pass a city ordinance which amends Chapter 5.20 of the Wichita City Code relating to camping on public property without a permit. The ordinance not only retains excessive fines for individuals who are found to have violated the law by being homeless, but it also eliminates an exception which previously allowed homeless individuals to camp on public property without a permit and adds several new sections to the code.

Kansas Green Party
kansasgreenparty.org

For Immediate Release
January 6, 2025

Contact:
Nick Blessing, Kansas Green Party Secretary, [email protected]

These new sections include a mandate that a homeless individual be given a mere 48 hours notice to remove their personal property before it will be seized and impounded by the city. While 48 hours certainly is not a reasonable amount of time for anyone to move everything that they own, the new law actually allows for immediate removal without notice of a homeless individual’s possessions if the camp is located in an area “which pose[s] health and safety concerns or where Camping directly adversely affects the economic development of such area,” or if the “Personal Property poses an immediate threat to the health and safety of the public.”

The new law is misguided, short-sighted, ill-conceived, and ignorant in its purported justifications. It fails to recognize the causes of homelessness in Wichita and fails to provide any semblance of due process for the people who will be affected by it.

The City Council should instead look to the unregulated housing market with its increasing housing insecurity, skyrocketing rents, and license for cruel landlords to evict families from their homes. Poverty and homelessness among families has meant that many children depend on school lunch for their only meal of the day and that the lack of a stable home erodes the ability of children to learn. The new law will only add to that instability.

Instead of tackling the exploitative housing policies which have led us to this homelessness crisis, the City Council would prefer to sweep away the blight of homeless encampments, so the public does not see it. Hide the symptoms without addressing their cause. Any purported justification by the City Council or by Mayor Wu that this new law is meant to help those experiencing homelessness is made even more tone deaf when one recognizes that one of the justifications in the law for “immediate removal” is when “Camping directly adversely affects the economic development” of an area.

The law is also short-sighted and lacks consideration for how it will affect homeless individuals because it fails to provide due process. The law provides circumstances where the 48-hour notice is not required, but what protection exists to ensure that the arbitrary circumstances which allow for this exception will be strictly adhered to? What will prevent a police officer or other city employee enforcing the law to simply find the immediate removal exception exists in all circumstances? If a homeless individual’s belongings are illegally removed without notice, what is their recourse? Suing the City after losing all of their earthly possessions?

The Kansas Green Party and the Wichita Green party believe all people have a right to a home and to be secure in their tenancy and demand economic security and the promise of prosperity for all people in the US, instead of economic power and affluence for the privileged few. We demand that the City Council reconsider the new law and vote to reverse their previous vote.