CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – It fell to Charlottesville police chief Michael Kochis to present a proposed ordinance to city council on Tuesday that was designed to curtail the presence of homeless people in public spaces.
But city councilor Brian Pinkston said the drafting of the ordinance was a collaboration between multiple city council members and city staff.
Still, Tuesday night, it was Kochis standing before the council getting heckled by audience members who opposed the measure, with the council ultimately decided to table.
“I’m a big boy. In this world, you have to take reasonability for things. I was asked multiple times, ‘Why are you bringing this forward. Why are you brining this forward. Why are you bringing this forward,'” Kochis said during an appearance Wednesday morning on WINA Morning News. “This is a process that has taken some time. We began this process back in April when I met with council members about this.”
Kochis said one of the main points of the ordinance – written by the city attorney – was to give his officers a “framework” of how to respond when it receives calls from community members concerned about homeless people in public spaces. Without an ordinance, Kochis said, his officers cannot do much when citizens contact them.
The council, meanwhile, expressed its reluctance to pass any ordinance until the city opens a new low barrier shelter, effectively giving police somewhere to send homeless people when the police receive complaints.
Kochis said that while his office received a coordinated email campaign opposing the ordinance, he also has heard as much or more support from a wide swath of community members.
“We get these messages about the situation either on the Downtown Mall, on the Rivanna Trail, other areas, we get them daily, and they are individual messages,” And then i meet with folks in the unhoused community and talk about the safety issues. So, council understands the challenge that we have.”
But Tuesday night, council chambers were filled with people opposing the proposed ordinance.
“It’s like five rich guys who paid someone to come speak for them,” said city resident Matthew Gilliken. “That’s not who we should be listening to. Obviously, we need a thriving business community, but they do not have solutions to this issue. They haven’t for decades.”
Gilliken accused them of not participating in the political process or showing up at any meetings. He characterized the organization of working to push the homeless out, and other speakers claimed the timing echoes a Trump Administration objective of pushing the unhoused out of DC.
While Kochis said he could handle the heckling and that presenting topics like this to the city council is part of his job, Pinkston objected to the treatment of another speaker, Greer Achenbach, who spoke in support of the ordinance as executive director of Friends of Downtown Charlottesville.
“She was heckled, she couldn’t get through her speech without people treating her in a way that was discourteous and unkind, and people justify that because they think their vision about how to deal with the unhoused must be the right one,” Pinkston said told Morning News. “If we can’t even have a conversation without being shut down, then that’s I think a shame,” Pinkston said.
As it stands now, Kochis said there are ordinances that cover illegal substances or activity at a campsite, or if the campsite blocks a business entry. However, there is no authority to make the person move for which the tabled ordinance would have laid out a legal framework.
