The City of Davis strengthens its ban on homeless encampments in 2025.
Beginning January 1, camping is banned on all public and private property in the city. Violators will be charged with a misdemeanor. Davis City Council narrowly passed this change 3-2 in November.
The Dirt invited former City of Davis Council Member and Mayor Robb Davis to explore a different approach to supporting the unhoused community in Yolo County. The following are his words.
By: Robb Davis, for The Dirt
The names have been changed. The stories are true.
Doug came in for the last time in early summer. He had come in several times before, left his tent, the grind, and the meth, and gotten clean. Each time, it was after the staff at the respite center asked: “Doug, is today the day you will come in?”
And each time, he had flamed out and returned to the street and the drug his body needed. But after weeks and months of hearing the same question and experiencing the same concern from staff, he said “Yes.” And that time, it stuck.
Doug is clean today. He is housed. Why he came in that day, who knows? It’s complicated. Maybe, as he alluded to me one time soon after, it was because he had seen his mortality barreling towards him like a train, and he wanted out. Maybe it was because people who cared about him were present when he was ready to make a change.
Jack’s drug of choice was alcohol, and he drank it with abandon. At the drop-in center where he went to get out of the heat or cold and get a meal, the Director built a relationship with Jack, and, as was the case with Doug, she asked Jack every time he came in: “Do you want to get into a program, Jack? I can get you in.”
After a nasty fight with a drinking partner that could have resulted in his partner’s death, he came in. He said “yes” to treatment and has been sober since. After years of asking, the Director could finally drive Jack to a nearby town and get him clean. Why he came in that day, who knows? It’s complicated.
As the former Director of a local program for unhoused folks once told me, “We need to be in relationships with these folks, so when they have a moment of lucidity, we can help them move off the street into something else.”
In a relationship. Arguably, that is what helped get Doug and Jack, but also Doris and Jeannie, Carl, and Will off the streets, too. Someone pursued a relationship with them, and they were present when the moment came to “come in”.
I am not going to sugarcoat this. For every Doug and Jack, there is a Sam or Don. People who never came in. They died in our town in various ways, an overdose here, organ failure there—some walked in front of trains when the pain of it all was too much. Being present is not foolproof. Sometimes, the path back is just too far to come.
But, if we can mobilize a cadre of trained and supported citizens—let’s call them community navigators—whose job it will be to pursue relationships with our unhoused community members, to be present with them in their moments of lucidity, I am convinced that we can invite many to “come in”. And they will.
This is not a job for everyone; it is full of disappointments and even feelings of betrayal. For every “Thanks for your help” you receive, you are likely to receive an equal number of “Leave me the fuck alone.”
I can anticipate your skepticism about the feasibility of this. So here’s a story.
I stood on a dirt road in a small crossroads town up on the Plateau Central of Haiti. AIDS had sprinted through this community, and hundreds died. Paul Farmer, a public health doctor, decided to do something about it. When antiretrovirals became available, Farmer proposed creating an army of community volunteers who would visit patients daily to administer the drugs directly.
Farmer faced lots of skepticism because his “community health workers” were primarily illiterate, poor women from the same communities. But, they were trained, supported, and carefully supervised to complete this task.
And it worked.
When I visited, many in those communities believed that Paul Farmer was Jesus Christ because they had seen people return from the dead.
I stood on that road, chatting with two program supervisors. Behind me, a small hill lay. They stopped suddenly, looking up the hill in shock. I turned to see a woman descending on horseback. When she reached us, she leaped from the horse, ran, and hugged my two colleagues, who still stood in shock.
After the greetings were over, they explained that they believed this woman, who suffered from AIDS, had died. But her community health worker kept showing up and here she was, returned to health.
This was at a time when the AIDS pandemic seemed unstoppable. A problem so massive and complex that millions of deaths worldwide seemed inevitable.
But thanks to the work of community health workers, people came back from the dead.
The challenges faced by unhoused people in our community can feel intractable, the problem too complex to resolve. But if we commit to a process that places community navigators in relationships with our unhoused neighbors—relationships that lead to regular daily or weekly invitations and that create trust, connections, and opportunities—I believe we can invite many people to the kinds of lives that Doug, and Jack, and Doris, and Jeannie, and Carl, and Will went on to enjoy.
I believe they will come in.
