Tag Archives: Martin v Boise

Pathetic Mayors Ignore Catastrophe By Twisting The Law

by

What transformed the formerly safe neighborhoods of the American west into the post-apocalyptic bazaars of meth, trafficking and murder they are today? Within less than a decade tent cities rapidly emerged from public parks and sidewalks and grew into shantytowns and Hoovervilles like the ghastly disgrace called “the Zone” in Phoenix, Arizona. Over the past five years, these symptoms of societal decay have grown visibly worse. In the face of this humanitarian crisis, many public officials have made an institutional commitment to ignoring the problem, claiming that their hands have been tied by a decision made by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018. This technocratic abdication of duty is not only legally inappropriate, it normalizes a sadistic indifference toward human suffering that dramatically accelerates the urban decay of the American west. After a five-year long headache, this colossal policy failure now lies before the US Supreme Court for reconsideration.

Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute writes:

“Five years ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided a case called Martin v. City of Boise that radically transformed how local governments address the problem of homelessness and vastly worsened the nation’s homelessness crisis. Now, the Supreme Court is poised to consider whether to overrule that decision—and a subsequent decision called Johnson v. Grants Pass.”

Both Martin and Johnson proclaimed that it is unconstitutional to enforce anti-vagrancy laws unless there are adequate shelter beds available for homeless persons. These lawsuits rely on a ruling from the 1962 case, Robinson v. California, wherein the Supreme Court held that people cannot legitimately be punished for immutable characteristics; in this case, the immutable characteristic of being “involuntarily homeless” – a term that has yet to be defined.

That argument held sway in the case of Martin v. Boise. This case began after a Boise man named Robert Martin fell asleep on an Idaho park bench and was cited by police for doing so. Martin and five other homeless Boiseans in turn sued the City after being cited for sleeping in public spaces. The decision climbed up the ladder to the Federal Appellate Court who eventually ruled against the City. In that case, a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that punishing homeless persons for sleeping in public violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” if shelters are not available for them. As a result, this ruling conveyed to every western court that the City of Boise had violated the constitutional rights of homeless people by imposing criminal penalties for sleeping and camping outdoors.

The expansion of the Martin ruling began in 2018 when a homeless woman named Debra Blake (alongside fellow plaintiffs John Logan and Gloria Johnson) sued the city of Grants Pass, Oregon in federal court for similar reasons. “The city of Grants Pass is trying to run homeless people out of town,” the lawsuit stated. “On any given day or night, hundreds of individuals in Grants Pass, Oregon, are forced to live outside due to the lack of emergency shelter and affordable housing in their community.” The Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, citing Martin v Boise as precedent.

These rulings were meant to reiterate that people have an inherent right to exist in public spaces. Martin established that municipalities cannot criminalize people for sleeping in public and Grants Pass ultimately reiterated the human need for insulation against the elements.

Lazy bureaucrats have twisted these legal decisions into the end-all absolution from municipal responsibilities. Duly-unelected interim-mayor Jordan Hess demonstrated this point perfectly in his County Courthouse Address on 26 April 2023:

“We don’t have – the reality is that we do not have enough indoor shelter in our community for everybody. … Uh, cities across the west have, of course, seen a high increase to the cost of living and the cost of housing as, um, these – as our desirable communities have become destinations for, uh, for people moving into our communities. …

“Municipalities cannot criminalize homelessness, uh, nor can we ticket nor arrest or remove people who are camping in public places because there are no shelter beds, um, because there are no shelter beds for them. So since we don’t have, uh, shelter beds we cannot remove, uh, someone from an encampment, um, in a public space.”

Hess strategically actuates the predictable “criminalizing homelessness” strawman. Relying on public ignorance, lazy bureaucrats ladle out helpings of such logical fallacies frequently and generously. In this case, Jordan relies on the intentionally misrepresented proposition of “criminalizing homelessness” because such fallacies are easier to defeat than the real arguments concerning the actual issues like addiction, mental illness, and financial collapse. Hence “attacking a strawman”.

Arizona Judge Freddy Brown expounds on the folly of “criminalizing homelessness”:

“Martin’s presumption of helplessness is also manifested in such rhetorical tricks as the Respondents engage in when they accuse Petitioners of “criminalizing homelessness.” This is a semantic device intended to substitute intimidation and accusation in place of rational legal analysis. It’s safe to say that no party or amicus in this case seeks to criminalize homelessness. Rather, the laws in question are laws against sleeping in public parks, polluting public areas, and other acts which are voluntary, at least in the vast majority of cases, and that the exceptions can only be discerned on a case-by-case basis.”

Despite what lazy officials and mayoral liars may allege, City governments can still enforce anti-camping ordinances. But Martin’s bizarre application of the concept of “involuntary homelessness” has created a legally unworkable situation that combines a lack of shelter beds alongside a declaration of “involuntariness” that then entitles a person to reside indefinitely in public spaces—while completely exempt from law enforcement intervention as a matter of constitutional entitlement.

“At least that’s how many municipal officials interpret Martin. Notwithstanding the caveats in that case, such officials have taken Martin’s bizarre “involuntariness” theory as an opportunity to shrug off their responsibility to enforce laws that are wholesome and necessary for the public good. The result is a stark homelessness crisis in cities across the west.”

Since the Ninth Circuit enjoys jurisdiction over the entire American West from Arizona to Washington and even Alaska and Hawaii, their rulings set precedent for all lower courts of nine western States, including Montana.

With Grants Pass up for review before the US Supreme Court, the city attorneys from that case point out the obvious effects of this ludicrous policy in a separate brief:

“This Court can see the track record under Martin in the Ninth Circuit — sprawling encampments, rising deaths, and widespread harms to the community, as localities are forced to surrender their public spaces.”

Timothy Sandefur’s amicus brief elucidates on this observation:

“One need only look at the multitude of dangerous and dehumanizing homeless encampments and open-air drug markets in cities under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit—such as the Zone in Phoenix—to see the profound impact that Martin and Grants Pass have had. … And the decisions also provide a convenient excuse for other city leaders that wish to do nothing while such encampments grow and fester.”

In January the Supremes agreed to hear an appeal from the City of Grants Pass of the 2022 ruling by the Ninth Circuit that expanded the 2018 Martin ruling. As Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle reported in January:

“The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case that could dramatically reshape how cities across the West respond to the homelessness crisis. Gov. Gavin Newsom, governments in 20 other states and organizations of cities and counties had asked the court to review and overturn a September 2022 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that prohibited local governments from sweeping homeless encampments unless shelter was available for the camp’s residents.” …

“Families can no longer walk the streets of Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle in safety,” said lawyers for the 20 states, led by Idaho and Montana.

Writing for Planetizen, Irvin Dawid clarifies that the appeal was filed under “Grants Pass” even though the case that originally created this monstrous precedent was Martin v. Boise:

“Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal, the case goes by title, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. Note that the high court refused to hear an appeal of Martin v. Boise in December 2019. Since the Grants Pass ruling involved precedent set by Martin, consideration of appeal means that both are up for reconsideration.”

MISSOULA RESCUED BY THE STATE OF MONTANA, AGAIN

When Missoula drops the ball on enforcement, the State of Montana must often mop up the mess. Both the $250,000+ Reserve Street shantytown eviction as well as the $20,000 burrows rebuild came out of the State budget because both areas are owned by the Montana Department of Transportation. So while Jordan Hess and other pathetic bureaucrats whine about the State legislature hoarding budgets from Missoula, these overwhelmingly expensive mistakes—made by Missoula ideologues—were paid for by all Montanans.

Why was the State of Montana allowed to do what Hess said couldn’t be done?

Jordan Hess reflects on time in office

Jordan Hess demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the law when he claims—falsely—that his government wasn’t allowed to protect innocent taxpayers against people who are unable to control their own actions. By this nincompoopery, if a shelter runs out of vacancies then the police and citizens must stand down and watch the town burn.

While the City of Missoula claimed its hands were tied regarding the Clark Fork Colonies proliferating around the Reserve Street Bridge, the State of Montana took legal action against Missoula County to enforce an eviction of 100+ John Does “from accessing, residing on, or otherwise occupying the Property.” The 2022 complaint from the State of Montana addresses factors like health, dangerous fires, improper disposal of waste, the building of permanent structures on land owned by MDT, and vandalism:

“The lawsuit includes five counts including forcible detainer, trespass, a claim for public and private nuisance, a request for injunction and a declaratory action.”

According to the complaint:

“One such health and safety risk involved the continual risk of contamination to the Clark Fork River due to the encampment’s improper waste disposal system and the encampment’s proximity to the river. …

“In Montana, a nuisance is defined as anything that is injurious to health, indecent or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property, or that unlawfully obstructs the free passage or use, in the customary manner, of any….public park, square, street, or highway.

An abandoned sliver of the 2022 Reserve Street Shantytown

A similar situation arose this past November when Chinese President Xi Jinping was due to arrive in San Francisco, whereupon California’s Governor Newsom cleaned up his city literally overnight. Presenting a kind of Potemkin Village, the entire downtown was barricaded by miles of black fencing while authorities purged the district of tents, garbage and homeless. Newsom didn’t hide behind the Ninth Circuit decision, admitting that the cleanup was only performed for Xi’s arrival.

By legal precedent, Federal law is supposed to supersede state and local laws, but with several caveats. Since individual states exist within the regional boundaries of the Ninth Federal Circuit District’s jurisdiction, the Martin and Grants Pass decisions are technically binding. But since Federal rulings are not supposed to infringe on states’ rights, decisions can be lawfully challenged and presumptions rebutted.

The State of Montana would seem well within its rights to file a complaint petition, as it did two years ago in the case of the Reserve Street Shantytown. Article IX of the Montana Constitution guarantees that “the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”

Furthermore, the Ninth Circuit never declared the west was a free-for-all to make encampments wherever anyone desires, nor did it legalize public endangerment, the contamination of public waterways or the degradation of public spaces. Their ruling was narrowly defined. But that hasn’t stopped municipalities like Missoula from twisting the decision into a one-size-fits-all excuse to ignore a profitable catastrophe while redirecting public funds into private partnerships and blaming fallout on those dastardly Republicans at the State Legislature.

Sandefur elaborates:

“The Martin/Grants Pass rule has not only worsened the homelessness problem—by confusing and frustrating city officials who want to do something to clean up their communities and help the unsheltered—but it has also encouraged irresponsible and foolhardy policies that only exacerbate the homelessness crisis. Cities such as Phoenix and San Francisco responded to those precedents by adopting the failed policy known as “Housing First,” which has actually increased homeless populations. And some cities, including Phoenix, took Martin and Grants Pass as handy excuses to do nothing about the homelessness problem—ignoring the laws they’re supposed to enforce, and endangering the hardworking taxpayers who have the right to police protection. We saw the practical consequences of that in The Zone.”

“The idea behind “Housing First” is simple: there will be no more homelessness if everyone has a home. The fault with that logic is that there are many individuals who do not want housing—at least, not at the cost of giving up their addictions—and for that reason choose not to take advantage of available aid.”

Despite what their pushers may allege in the corporate media, so-called “Housing First” policies have overwhelmingly proven themselves a failed strategy in the west. From 2014 to 2020, the States of Oregon, California and Washington all initiated “Housing First” initiatives that resulted, quite ironically, in dramatic increases in homelessness on the streets of their cities.

Liberal mayors in both Missoula and San Francisco committed to ending homelessness within a decade. Missoula’s ten-year plan to end homelessness was called “Reaching Home” and ended in such utter failure that by its conclusion in 2022 none of its former proponents were enthusiastic about its mention.

In the meantime, Missoula burns while mayor Andrea Davis fiddles with her “urban camping” working group, which concluded earlier this month “without clear recommendations” for policymakers. This doesn’t seem particularly surprising given that Davis introduced her working group back in February on KGVO with murky statements like this:

“So, our plan here is in addition to obviously, long-term community planning that we’re doing, to come up with our next plan to address homelessness, is to make homelessness rare, brief and one time only.”

Andrea Davis discusses the unhoused in Missoula

It is already the case that most people who become homeless are only so for a day or two, according to Dennis Culhane’s Five Myths about America’s Homeless, which reveals that chronic homelessness is usually the result of addiction or mental illness. Once again, the reality on the ground doesn’t fit with the narrative being forced down from above.

The reality-averse bureaucrats pulling the purse-strings of local government will constantly assert that the solutions lie in constructing more affordable housing. They’ll never discuss whether it’s possible to make existing housing affordable because their developer donors want subsidies to build new apartment complexes. Whether the proposed solutions are effective at “eliminating homelessness” becomes completely irrelevant once the money changes hands.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL

Prohibiting homeless persons from sleeping, camping, and lodging wherever they want, whenever they want, cannot be construed as torture. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what the lawyers in these cases argued, and the Ninth-Circuit-Numbskulls bought it. The arguments bolstering the Martin ruling (and by extension, Grants Pass) hinge entirely on the bastardization of the Eighth Amendment’s clause prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishment”. Timothy Sandefur expounds on this misinterpretation:

“The Martin and Grants Pass cases declared that it’s unconstitutional to arrest people for living in tents in public parks or other public property, any time there aren’t enough beds available in government-run homeless shelters to accommodate the city’s unsheltered population. Relying on a 1962 precedent called Robinson v. California, which said that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” bars the government from punishing people for things that are outside their control, the Ninth Circuit reasoned that if the number of homeless people is greater than the number of shelter beds available, those who sleep on the streets must be doing so because they can’t help it. Everyone must sleep, after all, so a person who can’t find a place to stay, and falls asleep on a sidewalk, is doing so as part of what the judges called the “inevitable consequences of being human.”

It seems obviously dubious that anyone who chooses to live indefinitely outdoors can be said to be doing so only as an unavoidable “consequence of being human.” Nevertheless, this is where legislators and bureaucrats tend to get lost in the weeds.

From the appeal:

“Dissenting, Judge Bumatay stated that nothing in the text, history, and tradition of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause comes close to prohibiting enforcement of commonplace anti-vagrancy laws, like laws against sleeping on sidewalks and in parks.”

While homeless individuals are certainly entitled to the utmost respect and compassion, they are not therefore immune from the law. Breathing in public is quite different than building structures into the riverbank and polluting the waterway with dangerous chemicals and hazardous substances. Judge Bumatay describes how the Martin decision flipped the Eighth Amendment completely upside-down:

“Today, we let stand an injunction permitting homeless persons to sleep anywhere, anytime in public in the City of San Francisco unless adequate shelter is provided. The district court’s sweeping injunction represents yet another expansion of our court’s cruel and unusual Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Our decision is cruel because it leaves the citizens of San Francisco powerless to enforce their own health and safety laws without the permission of a federal judge. And it’s unusual because no other court in the country has interpreted the Constitution in this way. …

Based on this innovative reading of the Clause, our court thought it was “compel[led]” to prohibit enforcement of Boise’s anti-camping and disorderly conduct ordinances whenever shelter is not offered. Id. Martin reasoned that sitting, lying, and sleeping are “universal and unavoidable consequences of being human” so that the “conduct . . . is involuntary and inseparable from status.” … So Martin felt that governments cannot criminalize the “state of being homeless in public places” if “there is no option of sleeping indoors.”

Sandefur illustrates the logical fallacy inherent in this reasoning:

“By the Ninth Circuit’s logic, if a person drives home intoxicated from a bar, and gets into a collision that kills someone, she cannot be held criminally responsible—because the government failed to provide her with a taxicab. That is illogical. Likewise, someone who chooses to start a fire that gets out of control and consumes a neighbor’s house has no “involuntariness” defense to an arson charge just because the government did not give him an electric heater. And a person who pours poisonous waste into a river is not “involuntarily polluting” simply because the government failed to provide her with a toxic waste disposal service.”

Among other “unintended consequences” of the Ninth Circuit’s dimwitted decision was the explicit validation of an extraordinarily vague term: “involuntarily homeless”. According to dissenting judge Patrick J. Bumatay, “The district court didn’t even define what it means to be “involuntarily homeless” and gave conflicting signals on the point.”

But comparing involuntary homelessness to voluntary substance abuse seems an inappropriate conflation on the verge of non sequitur. Voluntary intoxication is not a defense in criminal proceedings per Montana v. Egelhoff. Sandefur further explains the absurdity of associating human behavior under the auspices of “involuntary”:

“[…] both rulings embody an untenable assumption that people lack free will—and therefore cannot be held responsible for their actions—whenever the government fails to provide them with a free-of-charge alternative to breaking the Law. …

“A corollary mistake in both cases is the assumption that the government cannot penalize “involuntary” conduct—and is thus powerless to protect innocent citizens from harms inflicted by people who are unable to control their actions. … The law cannot punish people for who they are, but it certainly can arrest and incarcerate people for what they do.

“To regard the homeless as lacking free will—or, in today’s fashionable jargon, as lacking “agency”—not only paralyzes public officials and harms the hardworking taxpayers who expect their public employees to enforce the law for the protection of their neighborhoods; it’s also dehumanizing to the homeless themselves. To treat the destitute as choice-less underestimates their capacities and, by failing to regard them as ordinary people, risks denying them full humanity.”

Sandefur further describes why overly-simplistic declarations like “the answer to homelessness is housing” represent the flawed reasoning of low-effort thinkers and their antisocial shepherds who ignore the phenomenon of “shelter resistant” individuals:

“Take, for example, the plaintiffs in an ongoing federal lawsuit brought by the ACLU involving Phoenix’s infamous “Zone”—which until recently was occupied by as many as 1,000 people living in tents on downtown sidewalks. In that case, the plaintiffs are a man who admits he’s lived on the streets for nearly 25 years, and a woman who is not only physically and mentally competent, but even maintains a credit card account. These people are clearly not incapable of making decisions in their lives, and characterizing them as “involuntarily homeless” is ludicrous. So is giving them a constitutional right to reside indefinitely in tents on public property.

The infamous “Zone” of Phoenix, Arizona

SCOTUS REVIEW WILL LIKELY OVERTURN DISASTROUS NINTH CIRCUIT DECISION

The Supremes appear to be siding with the City of Grants Pass in this case, though they haven’t ruled yet and probably won’t until the very end of their session next month. According to the New York Times:

“A majority of the Supreme Court appeared inclined on Monday to uphold a series of local ordinances that allowed a small Oregon city to ban homeless people from sleeping or camping in public spaces. … The conservative majority appeared sympathetic to arguments by the city of Grants Pass, Ore., that homelessness is a complicated issue that is best handled by local lawmakers and communities, not judges.”

Another factor that makes a SCOTUS overturn of Martin very likely is the multilateral support the appeal has garnered from a wide variety of unlikely allies. The San Francisco Chronicle notes that, “The case has become a rare instance in which officials across the political spectrum, from Newsom to conservative state senators in Arizona, are seeking the same outcome.”

Jamie Parfitt of KGW8 likewise notes that:

“Dozens of parties have submitted amicus curiae or “friend of the court” briefs, many of them backing Grants Pass in its bid to overturn the ruling. And the case has produced some strange bedfellows, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the conservative Goldwater Institute, not to mention the attorneys general of Idaho, Montana, Nevada and other western states. …

“What’s really striking is how many states, how many counties, how many cities here on the West Coast — governments run by liberal Democratic mayors and governors — have filed briefs with the court saying that ‘This is unworkable.’”

Beyond being unworkable, the Martin ruling results in policies that ironically mock the very compassion their authors purport to embody. Sandefur’s amicus brief concludes:

“Leaving people to remain living indefinitely on the streets, or in tents in a park—precisely on the grounds that they are unable to do otherwise!–is not a compassionate response. On the contrary, it simply reasserts, under the strangest of disguises, the cold attitude of a past era that viewed the poor as a mere “surplus population” beyond possibility of rescue. …

“A compassionate response would consist of providing people with the care they need—including taking them into custody against their will if they are unable or unwilling to manage themselves. … Finally, the law-abiding, taxpaying public deserves compassion, also. The victims of municipalities’ abdication of their law-enforcement duties aren’t just the homeless—who certainly deserve better than to be left to live on the streets—but also members of the community who must suffer threats, pollution, damage to their properties, and the ruin of their businesses as the consequence of a legal principle that is indefensible.”

Picking Up Trash in Missoula, Montana Could Land You In Jail

by

It’s a dark and snowy morning in Missoula, Montana. A billow of smoke rises up from beneath a pedestrian bridge where several hooded figures huddle around a morning campfire near the river’s shore. A path through the foliage leads away from the campfire toward a shoreline shantytown of tents and lean-tos. Further down the trail a man solemnly lugs a large section of tree recently chopped down by the Parks department that he plans to use for firewood. The morning traffic of the city hums anonymously overhead along the bridges that span the Clark Fork River.

A new society has formed on the banks of the Clark Fork River within the Missoula Valley. From Deer Creek to Deep Creek, an anonymous community of laborers, vagrants, addicts, gypsies and criminals has embedded itself into the riverbanks and adjacent parks. In the spring, this dissociated network tends to cluster into a central village near the California Street Bridge where the real estate is wide and inviting, at least until the river rises with the April runoff.

This was the location of an incident on 02 January 2024 involving several propane tanks that ignited and exploded. The discharge launched flaming shrapnel past several firefighters.

Near Yoke‘s grocery store on West Broadway, the steep banks leading down to the Clark Fork River are smothered by multicolored detritus blobs. Gnome homes stand sculpted into the turf alongside tree houses, meth-dens and shanty settlements built onto the vertical banks above the beach. An abandoned hammock swings in the morning breeze as the tarp suspended above it rattles between the trees. The band of contiguous settlements lines both sides of the river for as far as the eye can see. This is Missoula’s New Hellgate Village, a living topography that shifts with the tides and continues to grow.

When Missoula was first getting started as a trading-post town in the mid-1800s it was originally called “Hellgate Village” and it was a very violent place where duels and killings were a regular occurrence.

Today, paintball shootings and tent stabbings characterize the more charming incidents that transpire in New Hellgate Village. The now infamous Authorized Camping Site (ACS) was the home of so many instances of meth dealing, human trafficking and violent attacks that it had to be shut down in November of 2022 after only ten months in operation. A body was also purportedly found hanging from a tree near the Reserve Street Bridge.

As a result, Missoula’s riverfront has transformed into a veritable dumping ground for what’s left of the American dream. Endless strings of discarded refuse coagulate into sloppy amalgamations of plastic bags, broken glass, rotting fabric, human feces, aluminum cans, hypodermic needles, rubber gloves, disintegrating bed mattresses, bicycle tires, sex toys and cigarette butts.

Many locals are understandably heartbroken by the condition of the city’s riverfront. Citizens with jobs don’t have the time or the energy to clean up after the shantytown catastrophe unfolding all around them, or address the structural reasons for its existence. Taxpayers expect their government to do something about the problem but popular will gets stifled by the red tape of bureaucracy. Eventually some citizens inevitably grow tired of the lack of response and simply take matters into their own hands.

ARRESTED FOR UNAUTHORIZED BEAUTIFICATION

The trouble began when an apparently “mysterious private group or solitary citizen” removed “an entire dump-truck load of garbage” from Missoula’s West Broadway island and left it on the sidewalk. According to the Missoulian, the trash included dozens of syringes and was castigated as unauthorized:

“We don’t really know who’s doing the cleanup, that’s still being investigated,” said Charmell Owens, the city’s code compliance program manager. “We were just surprised early (Monday) morning by six larges piles of garbage and trash that had been collected and was placed adjacent to the sidewalk on Broadway. When that occurs, we have to then pull crews from streets to do a cleanup.”

In the days that followed, NBC Montana noted trash was continuing to find its way up the riverbank and sought the identity of the “Clark Fork Custodian”:

Ryan Tollefson and his dog, Avaya, often stroll along the Clark Fork River, and recently Tollefson says he’s noticed things piling up, like needles, human waste and garbage he never expected there. Tollefson grew up in Missoula, and he’s never seen it like this before, so he did what he thought was right. In late February, he took it upon himself to start cleaning the bank of the river — spending his time off from work to tidy up the place he loves.

Ryan Tollefson and his dog Avaya

“There has to be a solution, man,” Tollefson said. “I just don’t think that giving them syringes and clothing and food and watching it all end up in the river is the solution.”

When he started cleaning, he placed the trash where everyone could see it — on the sidewalk — reminding others that just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it should be out of mind. That’s when he got in a little trouble. In early March, Tollefson received a citation from the city for blocking the sidewalks. He said police showed up and questioned his motives.

“I said, ‘Are you going to take me to jail for picking up garbage?’” Tollefson said. But the citation didn’t deter him. Now he’s just strategic about where he’s placing the debris.

Tollefson was initially cited by law enforcement for blocking the sidewalk on 05 March 2024.

While his efforts were appreciated by local taxpayers, they managed to attract fury from several of the Village’s more aggressive residents. On 14 March 2024, Ryan was assaulted with a chain and lock that were whipped down on top of his head by an unstable individual. He wasn’t concussed, unconscious, or bleeding, but law enforcers were reticent to press charges against his attacker.

“The first incident, when I got hit with the lock with the chain, they came and they didn’t even arrest that guy. After he hit me with the chain, he pulled out a big knife –like a Crocodile Dundee knife– that was at least 12” long. But they just said it was my word against his and there were no witnesses or evidence so they let him go scot-free. I asked the officer to feel the back of my head because there was a big lump back there. She just said, ‘“’That could just be your skull.’”

On 20 March 2024 Ryan returned to his beachhead and continued his work, and was again physically assaulted, this time by a different homeless individual than the week prior, and with a different weapon. As reported by Travis Mateer:

“A man allegedly pushed Ryan three times, resulting in Ryan calling 911, but according to Ryan nothing was done to address the issue, so he continued working to remove trash from near the river bank. The man who pushed Ryan got increasingly agitated, then chucked two hockey sticks at him, so Ryan broke the hockey sticks in half and added them to the trash pile, which is when the man began “wailing” on Ryan. When the police responded to a passerby who called 911, they allegedly accused RYAN of stealing the man’s personal belongings.”

Authorities charged Ryan with disorderly conduct, the one-size-fits-all excuse to arrest anyone at any time for any reason. According to NBC Montana:

“Ryan Tollefson said police arrested him after he defended himself when a homeless person attacked him. The man accused Tollefson of taking away his possessions.”

Ryan elaborates:

“This incident happened a week and a half later [than the chain lock incident] at the same spot. A different guy was pushing me around at first so I called the police because he was pushing me. He got upset and they warned him about putting his hands on people. And right after they left, that’s when he threw a hockey stick at me. I broke the hockey stick and that antagonized him. So he started punching me in the face. And then a passer-by called 911 and the police came back. They arrested him for assault and they arrested me for disorderly conduct. But they didn’t have to arrest anyone.”

Three weeks after Tollefson’s arrest, internationally-recognized “firebrand” journalist Travis Mateer conducted his annual cleanup with a crew of volunteers on 08 April 2024. Within a week of this effort, Mateer also was arrested and detained in the Missoula County Detention Center.

In effect, it appears these individuals were cited and arrested for picking up garbage.

Meanwhile the individuals doing the littering are shielded from prosecution because they’re protected by the law. So-called “involuntary homeless” individuals can litter the river, cause a scene and assault citizens with impunity. But if anyone tries to do anything about the trolls living under the bridge, the authorities throw them in the clink.

As someone who oversaw homeless outreach for the Poverello Center from 2008-2016, Travis Mateer sees Ryan’s arrest as symptomatic of a notable deterioration in substantive outreach by relevant authorities:

“If I was still coordinating the Homeless Outreach Program–a program I grew from its infancy in 2010 to a well-respected part of the service delivery system when I left in 2016–this incident with Ryan Tollefson would NEVER have happened.”

Speaking of things that would never have happened, that gaping hole in the burrows beneath Broadway that MDT repaired was only discovered because Tollefson excavated the mountain of trash piled in front of it.

Ryan began his work across the street from the Yoke’s grocery on Broadway. “That’s where I was concentrating my clean up efforts because that’s where it’s the worst,” he said. In the process of excavating this area, he discovered the hidey-hole.

“I found that. [Authorities] didn’t even know that was there until I started cleaning up. … all I was doing was putting the garbage on the sidewalk. And I took such a huge amount of trash out of the river when they came to clean it up, they saw that the hole was there. All the garbage was all around that and was covering it up before I removed it.”

The burrows below Broadway were so badly damaged by the illegal settlements that Montana taxpayers paid upwards of $20,000 for the repair:

“When NBC Montana started reporting on trash cleanups in the West Broadway Street area, we learned about holes dug into the bank of the Clark Fork River. After removing some of the retaining wall, individuals dug underneath the sidewalk, creating nooks for belongings.”

Whether anyone will be charged for the damage remains to be seen. Ryan reflected on whether the people on the beach committing offenses are breaking the law or not.

“No, they’re not. They’re protected somehow. And these guys are just running the streets, stealing, building houses on the river, and throwing needles everywhere. These people aren’t even getting a misdemeanor. And I understand that the court system is flooded and the prison is flooded. I don’t see any point in locking anybody who is addicted to substances up because there is a better way around addiction.

“I said [to police], ‘Why aren’t you guys doing anything about the needles on the ground?’ I mean, if you were investigating a crime that I had supposedly committed and there were syringes all around my feet, would you or would you not assume those were my syringes? And wouldn’t you want to search my person to see if I have drugs on me? You have probable cause to search any one of these people that have syringes within their reach and you don’t do it. You have all the time to encourage them to go to the shelters and places where they can get help, and you’re not doing that either. You guys are sitting in your cars, driving around, doing nothing’.

“When I called the police about the lock and chain incident it took them 25 minutes to respond to the scene, and they drove by three times without stopping. And I was so sick of them driving by without stopping I finally flagged down a Sheriff who was driving by. And then a city police officer called me five minutes later and was like, ‘Where are you at?’

“Instead of helping the issue, instead of helping to solve the problem, they’re going to ticket me for cleaning?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, you’re breaking the law’.”

This isn’t the first time that a citizen has ignored institutional limitations and taken the responsibility for cleaning up the riverfront onto their own shoulders. Last year a group of volunteers directed by Travis Mateer launched the 2023 Earth Day Meth-Den clean-up and successfully removed nearly 3 metric tons of garbage from a segment of riverfront by the Missoula College at great personal cost to its organizer. Mateer spent $1,200 of his own money to ultimately be ignored by the City and local media. A fellow journalist from the Missoula Current purportedly covered the event only to have the story axed by her boss, Martin “Gomer” Kidston. Mateer has a long history of assisting such clean ups.

Tavis Mateer gives the thumbs-up following the successful liquidation of the Meth-Den in 2023. Above: before and after pictures of said beachfront Meth-Den.

The 2023 Meth-Den clean-up yielded literally thousands of glass test tubes along the riverbank. It seems ironic that summertime river floaters are constantly reminded to make sure they never ever bring glass onto the water lest they be cited by law enforcement for potentially littering the shorelines with dangerous shards of fractured glass.

If you have an address and a life and things to lose, the authorities can threaten you with fines and court as a means of controlling your behavior. But the vagrants living on the riverbank don’t have anything left to lose so fines and court won’t do much to change the situation.

So what will? And who’s responsible?

A JURISDICTIONAL JIGSAW PUZZLE

Many local Missoulians have become outraged in recent years at the accelerated deterioration of their community. Permanent residents who pay taxes to the City and County and State are rightfully beginning to wonder why no organization or agency of government can coherently name who is responsible for maintaining cleanliness and order along the riverbank. As it turns out, determining who bears responsibility depends on which part of the riverbank we’re talking about.

All land below the low water mark along the riverbank seems to be managed exclusively by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) as corroborated by this 2020 DNRC announcement:

“Based on historical evidence the Bitterroot River is commercially navigable from the mouth of Jenning’s Camp Creek on the east fork (SW1/4, Sec.27, T2N, R18W) to its confluence with the Clark Fork River. Therefore, the state claims ownership of the riverbed below the low water mark between these two points. … DNRC has no jurisdiction above the low water mark.”

Meanwhile, the land above the low water mark along the riverbank is managed by a plurality of agencies and offices including (but not limited to) the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), US Army Corps of Engineers, Conservation District, Floodplain Administrator, and others. Depending on which segment of Missoula’s riverfront jigsaw-puzzle we’re talking about, the jurisdictional finger-pointing can also regard lands owned by the US Forest Service, the University of Montana, as well as Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP). For example:

“The two major camps – off the Kim Williams Trail and under the Reserve Street Bridge – are on U.S. Forest Service and Montana Department of Transportation ground, respectively.”

Meanwhile, the West Broadway Island is operated exclusively by Missoula Parks And Recreation, who’ve closed it for reasons of “vegetation management.” It certainly is true that vegetation has a hard time competing with propane explosions.

Riverfront jurisdictions carve their way through a gauntlet of boundaries and the resulting confusion allows for selective enforcement of the law. Some of these agencies belong to the City of Missoula, some represent Missoula County, and still others are managed by the State of Montana. That’s a lot to juggle, and we haven’t even covered the relevant Federal jurisdiction that’s thrown a wrench into this already byzantine structure.

MDT was placed between a rock and a hard place in 2020 when they faced steep fines from the Missoula City-County Health Department for the human waste ending up in the river as a result of unchecked illegal camping settlements under the Reserve Street Bridge. There were also serious concerns of rampant fires that threatened to close said bridge and necessitate detouring Highway 93 through the heart of Missoula.

Under the constraints of a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision known as Martin v Boise, MDT couldn’t legally move the encampments without an answer to the question of “Where do they go?” So the now infamous Authorized Camping Site experiment was created as a temporary landing platform in January 2022. MDT spent more than $163,000 on a chain-link perimeter fence to deter future settlements. This fence was soon thereafter cut and penetrated by persistent individuals. So in mid-April of 2022, MDT sought a court order to begin a formal eviction process of the remaining encampments under the bridge.

According to the complaint:

“At its peak, approximately one hundred and forty individuals resided on the Property in tents and temporary structures built with scavenged materials.”

Following a summer where literally dozens of fires ran ablaze below the Reserve Street Bridge, the area was cleared of illegal camps in 2022 and remains mostly clear to this day. MDT Maintenance Chief Steve Felix was happy to report that the site formerly home to more than 100 “urban campers” remains largely empty following the eviction.

Felix’s name comes up whenever repairs are necessary due to illegal settlements that threaten to destroy the highway infrastructure flowing through Missoula, as was the case with the 2022 Reserve Street Camps eviction:

“The fires, propane tanks, and other heaters present in the encampment also posed a risk of significantly damaging the integrity of the Reserve Street Bridge, a vital aspect of Missoula’s public infrastructure. The fires have already caused damage to the Reserve Street Bridge in the form of concrete delamination. … “The only way to abate the ongoing health and safety hazards and threatened damage to public infrastructure is to remove Defendants and their personal belongings from the Property.”

EARTH DAY SCHMEARTH DAY

Government is not capable of solving our problems, as more people are beginning to realize. The riverfront got cleaned up in spite of the City government’s attempts to keep it contaminated. As Mateer attests:

“I can coordinate a safer, cheaper, more efficient cleanup than ANY individual or entity in this town, and if you doubt me, just scroll through the 20+ links featured in yesterday’s post if you want proof about how kick-ass I am.”

Regardless of what any individual or organization might claim about the complexity of managing this ongoing zombie apocalypse transpiring in our streets, it’s obvious to everyone that the problem is growing worse, and government’s solutions are haphazard at best. Activists are exhausted and community clean-up efforts become more difficult to organize when everyone is struggling financially.

Institutions can never solve our problems. They are an impediment to change. The moment they are formed their existence hinges on fooling us into believing we could never live without them.

You don’t need your city officials and you don’t need your government. Your government needs you. No matter how the corporate forces might try to twist “the consent of the governed” into some kind of religious obligation to the state, the power ultimately lies in the hands of We The People no matter how many of us have fallen asleep at the wheel. Public servants exist at the pleasure of the electorate. They’re not our overlords and we’re not their subjects. They’re employees of the public trust.

The inhabitants of New Hellgate Village aren’t bad people. Most of them are a bit rough because they have to be to survive in difficult circumstances. The city’s riverfront was not meant to house tent dwellings, and our society did not have to choose the cruelty of publicly ignoring such profound human suffering on such a massive scale. The City of “Missoula has spent roughly $138,000 on ‘urban camping’ cleanups” in the past year with no end in sight. Will Mayor Davis’ Urban Camping Working Group task force yield competent solutions or prove to be one more instance of institutional cruelty? If Engen’s 10-Year-Plan-To-End-Homelessness is any indication, the answer won’t feel encouraging.

It’s no secret that our miserable status quo actually benefits some people and organizations. Hence the business that is the Homeless-Industrial-Complex and its cousin the NonProfit-Industrial Complex. The people and organizations who profit from the lethal misery in our streets tend to expand the powers of government to benefit authoritarian cronies. These parasites don’t want to problem to be solved because it would end the disaster-capitalism gravy-train.

Tucker Carlson elaborated this point last week on the Joe Rogan Podcast:

“There’s an entire sector of the economy now that feeds off of human misery. The drug treatment centers that don’t work, the homeless advocates who create more homeless migrant workers, American-born aid agencies, … the arms manufactures that help kill people in foreign countries; people are making money off of this.”

Those who profit from industries related to homelessness are keenly aware of how the optics of what they do could work against them. As a result, a tremendous amount of effort has gone into maintaining public ignorance.

County Commissioner Emails recovered during a FOIA request revealed a conspiracy of silence in 2021. According to Mackenzie Smith, the Emails are evidence that Missoula County officials have deliberately kept constituents in the dark regarding “collaborations” with the private nonprofits who consistently profit from the homelessness crisis:

Emails released in a Freedom of Information Act request appear to show Missoula County commissioners using private partnerships to advance their projects in an effort to intentionally keep plans out of public view.

“We asked United Way to start convening to try to tackle this issue outside the public/media eye,” wrote Commissioners’ Office Chief Administrative Officer Chris Lounsbury to the three Missoula County commissioners in a March 27 email.

“We definitely want to structure this in a way to avoid media parachuting in and derailing productive staff conversations,” replied District 2 Commissioner David Strohmaier.

“The commissioners’ emails regarding the TSOS are riddled with this type of language and blatant desire to conceal their actions from the public and media. And with the aid of United Way of Missoula County, it appears they are able to do it.“

Nonprofits like United Way alongside private sector partners like Blue Line Development (owners of the real estate beneath the Transitional Safe Outdoor Space) work with governments to profit from the disaster while their government counterparts flasely claim their hands are tied. None of the companies or individuals want the causes and conditions of the disaster to be addressed because that would end their gravy train. It would seem community outreach has become co-opted by corporate forces.

HOMELESSNESS IS NOT THE ISSUE HERE, DUDE!

While homeless Americans freeze in the makeshift dwellings of illegal “urban camps,” 15.1 million empty houses remain unoccupied at the behest of their owners, primarily BlackRock. If the answer to homelessness is “housing” – as United Way Executive Director Susan Hay Patrick contends – then why can’t “the richest country in the world” free up some of the 15.1 million empty homes that Wall Street continues sitting on?

There’s no doubt that Missoula’s homeless catastrophe pales in comparison to that of San Fransisco, Portland or Seattle. It is, however, representative of the same institutional indifference toward human suffering that the 9th Circuit has apparently mandated for Western States. The common excuse that “it’s not that bad here” seems quite obtuse when considering that San Fransisco didn’t burn in a day. There were incremental steps that led formerly great cities down this skid-row abyss, such as their deliberate indifference toward theft, vandalism, arson, assault and murder.

As the former homeless outreach coordinator for Montana’s largest homeless shelter, Travis Mateer knows the difference better than most between the legit local homeless population and the harmful criminal elements taking advantage of services meant for said locals:

“I’m including the deteriorating situation in San Francisco in today’s report because of my concern that fear will lead our own community to degrade our ability to make distinctions between houseless people who are dangerous and need to be held accountable, and houseless people who are NOT dangerous, and face just as much risk, if not more, from the dangerous people riding the carousel between the jail, the hospital, and the streets.”

While it’s true that society cannot ethically outlaw homelessness or addiction or mental illness, many of the most violent incidents that occur in Missoula (and require taxpayer-funded services) are perpetrated by drifters, not locals. Peaceful people who’ve fallen on tough times cannot depend on our shelters because criminal gangs have taken them over:

“[R]esidents of this camp don’t feel safe staying at the Poverello Center. Incidents of sexual assault and violence INSIDE THE [Poverello Center] is confirmation of those claims that some people feel safer living outside than they do in an overcrowded shelter where active drug and alcohol use has led to some very bad outcomes.”

It has also become an observable reality that local homeless individuals differ significantly from their transplant counterparts. In 2014 the Missoulian reported that transient Gilbert “Jack” Berry “was brutally beaten, tortured and killed by several non-local transients”:

“[Missoula Police Officer Andy] Roy, who is the city’s main bicycle police officer, primarily deals with the homeless and transient population. He said there’s a big difference between the local transient population and the newcomers. The locals heed his warnings and abide by city ordinances, for the most part. But when he approaches the new transients, Roy said he’s consistently met with a “lousy” attitude.”

We shouldn’t welcome everyone because some people are criminals and bending over backwards to provide them services will result in increased exploitation of said services. If too many people overwhelm the life boat, it sinks. As Mateer explained in 2020:

“The majority of humans across the socio-economic spectrum are not bad, violent people. But some are, and Missoula residents shouldn’t be shamed for worrying about that fact. Do I need to remind readers that a sweet, old man by the name of Lee Nelson had his skull bashed in last month because he and the monster who senselessly murdered him were both staying at the Poverello Center? … So yes, I understand the concern about “who our new neighbors are”, but I also understand how the illuminated braintrust operates, and they will hide behind their homeless-people-guilt-shields all day long if critics wade into this area of criticism without the constructive focus on policy.”

Nobody can assert for sure where any of these people are from, and it only takes one psychopath to keep a whole town busy. Train hoppers and seasonal vagrants aren’t from here, but they’ll gladly exploit any services offered by enablers practicing “fool’s compassion”.

Enforcing the law with regards to murder, assault, battery, vandalism, and theft cannot be conflated with “outlawing homelessness”. Regardless of who owns the land beneath New Hellgate Village, criminal activity within the City Limits is the City’s prerogative, and therefore ultimately the Mayor’s responsibility. The highest overlap of jurisdictions occur within the City Limits. In the past Missoula County Commissioners have proclaimed a state of emergency regarding hazardous waste entering the Clark Fork River. But if criminal activity occurs on the riverfront and someone calls the DNRC or MDT, they will tell the caller to dial 911 and report it to City law enforcement.

Andrea Davis can choose to do something about the crime in the streets or she can continue to serve the interests of global elites. Given that she received her training in the “proper” management of her community at Harvard at the start of her term alongside 26 other freshmen Mayors from around the country, she may likely favor the latter.

The Clark Fork Coalition holds an annual Earth Day cleanup that is undoubtedly commendable. But every year the camps consistently reappear the very next day. The task couldn’t be more Sisyphean and locals have taken notice.

In 2021 volunteer efforts successfully removed more than 15 tons of trash from the Missoula riverfront. In 2022 volunteers collected more than 67 tons of trash. Locals are worried the problem is growing worse and believe that people of means and ability can and should do something about it.

On 26 April 2023, duly-unelected interim-mayor Jordan Hess told Missoulians to donate to charity if they want to see these problems solved, because the City apparently lacks the funds to do its job:

“First of all, uh, we, we suffer from a shortage of resources to address these issues. Uh, members of the public can make a meaningful difference by donating to organizations that work in this space, um, such as the Poverello Center or other organizations that help such as Hope Rescue Mission.”

Did you get that, Missoula? As the City of Missoula wastes money on mountains and hotels, Jordan Hess thinks overburdened taxpayers should donate even more money they don’t have to solve these problems.

But the favorite excuse of Missoula “leaders” whenever the abomination of our public spaces are brought to their attention revolves around the now infamous 9th Circuit ruling on Martin v Boise. This is how Hess framed the limitations imposed by the Martin ruling:

“Municipalities cannot criminalize homelessness, uh, nor can we ticket nor arrest or remove people who are camping in public places because there are no shelter beds, um, because there are no shelter beds for them. So since we don’t have, uh, shelter beds we cannot remove, uh, someone from an encampment, um, in a public space.”

He goes on to deputize the public and further eschew any institutional responsibility:

“We’re asking the public to visit the City website and to follow the information on the homepage, uh, to learn how to report, uh, situations that involve threats to help their safety. People need to understand that if we investigate and we don’t find threats, we cannot ask the campers to leave. Uh, nor will we. …

“We receive dozens of complaints each day and we lack the finances and the staff to get to every situation. Years of cuts at the State level and at the Federal level, uh, but especially at the State level, to mental health services and a lack of support at the Federal level, have put us and other communities in a really untenable position where we’re dealing with these issues as best we can.

Mateer jumps to the observable punchline:

“Ok, so is there anything our hamstrung leaders CAN do? Yes, they can blame the state, which they always do. And they can beg the public to give more money to enablers, like my former employer, the Poverello Center. …

“Are we, as a community, going to be held hostage by these petulant tax addicts who can’t achieve their transformative utopia without squeezing every spare penny from taxpayers while complaining all the way to the bank that it’s never enough when evidence of their failure becomes too obvious for the narrative controllers to hide?”

Travis Mateer operates his bullhorn during a post clean-up poetry reading.

Problems that remain perpetually unsolved tend to be profitable for lazy bureaucrats with an inflated feeling of importance. So, we’re told over and over that there either just isn’t enough money to do what needs to be done or sent on a jurisdictional wild-goose chase.

The onus here is not on citizens. Wall Street has hoarded all of the real estate, the economy is in the dumps, people are desperate, our politics are corrupt and our infrastructure is crumbling. This isn’t about solving the problems exacerbated by those who profit from them. Standards of living have fallen nationwide and supposedly “compassionate” communities have overwhelmingly chosen to ignore the ongoing humanitarian disaster. This is simply about survival.

Missoulians already pay taxes to a City government hell-bent on wasting them. The City of Missoula takes in hundreds of millions of dollars, always needs a little more, and can never complete basic objectives—like fixing roads—with what it has. So the Fire Department has to ask the citizens if they’d like to pay more taxes through a special levy that can’t be robbed by City bureaucrats who’ve depleted the tax base from the General Fund toward projects that gentrify the community, driving up housing costs, driving out locals, and starving municipal services.

Due to the fact that government officials seem reticent to accept uniform responsibility for the abortion that our rivers and streams have become, the work of cleaning them up has fallen on community activists and other people who are tired of watching their community rot before their eyes.

Travis and Ryan have both illustrated their unconditional and uncompromising love for the Missoula Valley. If more locals participated in the management of their communities perhaps we wouldn’t have to outsource said management to disconnected bureaucrats.

In the face of all the adversity he’s experienced, Ryan remains committed to restoring Missoula’s riverfront:

“I’m just trying to be a better person and give back to the city, because I love Missoula so much. It’s my home town. I was born here 43 years ago and I love this place so much. And I just can’t stand to see what it’s becoming.”

“It seems like the whole Pacific Northwest is becoming like this, except for Idaho. I don’t know what Idaho does to keep their state so clean. But everywhere else there’s homeless people and fentanyl and meth. It’s crazy.”