Homeless people fight for their property

A federal appeals court found in 2012 that authorities must preserve homeless people’s seized property so they have an opportunity to reclaim it.

In a 2-1 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirmed an earlier ruling which held that “the government may not take property like a thief in the night; rather, it must announce its intentions and give the property owner a chance to argue against the taking.” That’s true even if the property is violating a local ordinance, like a ban on sidewalk camping, Vancouver attorney Peter Fels added.

Taking and destroying such property violates the constitution’s protection against unreasonable seizures, the court found, and not giving its owners notice or an opportunity to reclaim it violates the constitution’s due-process requirement.

In 2012, the federal United States Interagency Council on Homelessness released a report on the “criminalization of homelessness,” noting that many jurisdictions, responding to citizen and business complaints, are turning to both “formal and informal law enforcement policies” that “minimize the visibility” of homeless people.

They do so at their peril, the agency said.

“Class actions brought on behalf of individuals experiencing homelessness and service providers have successfully challenged criminalization ordinances … in federal court,” according to the agency. In 2008, the city of Fresno, Calif., settled, for $2.3 million, a class-action suit brought by homeless people whose property had been taken.

Washington state law includes sections regarding lost and found property, and police and government handling of it; the law says that the original owner has 60 days to claim seized property. In his tort claims, Fels says Clark County has violated this requirement repeatedly.

— Scott Hewitt

Vancouver attorney Peter Fels filed nine tort claims in late February against Clark County, claiming illegal theft and destruction of homeless people’s personal property. Fels plans to sue on April 21 unless the county responds with a change in policy and more than compensates his clients for their lost property, he said.

Chris Horne, the county’s chief civil deputy prosecutor and adviser on civil law matters, declined to comment Tuesday. “I don’t comment on pending litigation,” he said.

Fels is the president of the board of directors of Share, a leading nonprofit operator of local homeless shelters and other assistance programs. But he said he is acting strictly as a private attorney who volunteers for a local free legal clinic for the poor.

He said he will push for punitive damages to punish the county for violating individual property rights when its corrections crews and law enforcement officials have taken and trashed homeless people’s things. That appears to be routine even when the owners are present and protesting, according to personal declarations by several of Fels’ clients.

“The removed items are placed in a trailer and hauled to a dump,” Fels summarized. “If the crews encounter homeless individuals in their camps, the individuals are told to remove what they can within five or 10 minutes and the rest is hauled away, even if the owners protest. People who request return of their property are refused.”

It’s no different if the property isn’t in a camp or hidden away, Fels said. Terry Ellis briefly left his bags at a bus stop while helping a nearby motorist in trouble, according to his account; a county work crew came by and started collecting them.

Ellis was yards away, Fels wrote, and “informed the work crew supervisor … that the bags were his, identified the things in the bags and asked to be allowed to retrieve this things. The county employee refused to allow him to have his property and instructed the work crew to throw them in the trailer behind their van. Mr. Ellis had just obtained fresh new clothes so he could look for work.” Without his new clothes, which were valued at approximately $270, Ellis couldn’t follow through on his job hunt, Fels said.

Madero Moody and Maria Brewer, husband and wife, were sitting on a blanket in the county parking garage for about 30 minutes when it was raining on Feb. 26, 2014, according to Moody’s statement. Police came by and cited them for “illegal camping” and then a van arrived and “a man in a uniform ordered a work crew to take our things. My wife told him to stop and we were picking up our things. He ignored us and the people kept taking our things and putting them in the trailer. He said, ‘you’re just worthless bums’ and we were ‘scavengers and sewer rats.’ “

In several other examples, people had stashed their belongings in bushes or left them at makeshift campgrounds in spots like the shoreline of the Columbia River, the woods in Blandford Canyon and alongside state Highway 500. They returned to find the crew cleaning up, or everything already gone.

What’s ‘abandoned’?

According to Fels, the crux of this matter is whether personal property has obviously been abandoned — that is, “it’s evident that the owner does not intend to return” — and whether the government has made a reasonable effort to locate and notify its owner before it’s disposed of.

You can post a notice at a homeless camp, he said. You can tell people, face to face, that they have 24 hours to clean up and clean out. Even if the property is “apparently abandoned,” he said, you can hold it and try to notify the owner.

How can you tell if it’s been abandoned? By looking. That’s constitutionally guaranteed due process, as far as Fels is concerned.

“You have an obligation to look and make a determination,” he said. “If it’s an empty backpack and empty potato chip bags and it has no value, it’s probably trash. Litter. … But if it has clothing and papers and medications — it’s not obviously abandoned.”

Years ago, Fels said, a deal had been forming to let Friends of the Carpenter, a downtown homeless ministry with warehouse space, become the custodian of property removed from parks and other places — but that deal fell apart.

Important possessions

When you have next to nothing, the things you do own are that much more precious and necessary — and replacing those things can be a difficult and costly problem.

Cellphones, a state ID card, a birth certificate, a new tent, camping gear, a grill, a bike, sleeping bags, clothing and sneakers, cash and a Quran are some of what Moody and Brewer say they lost from the county parking garage that day. They also say they lost their cat and prescription medications.

“I have been unable to replace my medicine and my blood pressure is very high and I have been unable to sleep,” Brewer declared in her statement a few months later.

“Because I did not have my medicines, I had to go to the hospital for breathing treatment,” declared Todd Sparks, who said his property — including a laptop computer, new clothing, prescription eyeglasses and his medication for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — was taken from below the Mill Plain overpass while he was having breakfast nearby at Share House.

The crew was still around when he got back and found everything gone, Sparks said, so he approached a supervisor: “I saw some of my property in the trailer behind the van and asked him if I could at least retrieve my medicine. Because I just had surgery and I have COPD I really need my medicine. The man refused to let me get my things back and threatened to call the police if I didn’t stop asking.”

Sparks later went to the sheriff’s property storage department, where a staffer told him she couldn’t find anything of his.

“Tough (expletive) luck” is what Deana Lentz says a crew supervisor told her one day in August 2012 when she and her fiancé returned to their camping spot in Blandford Canyon and found a crew loading up their stuff. In addition to sleeping bags, clothing, cookware and the landscaping tools and equipment the couple were using to earn money, also gone were irreplaceable keepsakes such as wedding rings, family photos and even Lentz’s mother’s ashes.

“Tents, sleeping bags, clothing can eventually be replaced,” Fels said. “But some of these items, these personal items, family items — they’re gone forever.”

Without official identification and other documents, he added, it can be impossible to access social services, education, job opportunities, rental housing. Taking what little the homeless have keeps them totally marginalized, he said. That’s one reason why he won’t accept face-value reimbursement only for what was lost, he said.

“The suffering my clients faced was disproportionate to the monetary value of the lost property,” he wrote.

Bias at work?

Try out this hypothetical: A smart-suited professional leaves an expensive-looking briefcase beside a park bench to go chat with a friend. The briefcase just sits there for 30 minutes, unattended. Is it abandoned? Would a cleanup crew be justified in snatching it up and tossing it?

A disheveled drunk stumbles away from a torn backpack and stained sleeping bag beside a park bench to go chat with a friend. The backpack and sleeping bag just sit there for 30 minutes, unattended. Are they abandoned? Are they trash?

Fels uses these examples because they underline unspoken bias, he said. It’s so much easier to conclude that shabby-looking items are trash, he said — even if the backpack turns out to contain important documents and medications while the briefcase is a status symbol that contains nothing at all.

“We see more value in some people and their belongings than others. We make assumptions,” said Andy Silver, executive director of the Council for the Homeless. “To me this is another example of the tension we have in this community. We don’t have enough housing, we don’t have enough help for people, so they’re living outside. What do they do with simple life functions? What do they do with their belongings?”