Mayor Gary Singh doesn’t anticipate Manteca’s homeless strategy will change after the United States Supreme Court decision allowing jurisdictions to impose bans on outdoor sleeping.

If anything, the ruling will allow the city to step up its plan to pressure the homeless to use the 50-bed emergency shelter at 555 Industrial Park Drive while work continues on building the homeless navigation center.

It also added legal certainty that the city will be allowed to deal with problematic homeless that refuse help by basically having police roust them to move on if they refuse to use an available bed at the shelter.

Singh, while noting there is not one “magical solution” to trying to reduce or solve the homeless situation, believes the methodical course Manteca is on is the best for the community given the scale of the problem.

His reasons for that position are multi-faceted:

*It is the right thing to do as the homeless need help.

*Simply issuing citations or even arresting the homeless for violating a ban doesn’t solve the problem, costs money, ties up public safety resources, and leads the homeless to keep violating the law because they have to sleep somewhere.

*Affordable housing is a growing problem.

*The city’s approach is designed to address issues of what causes homelessness.

*It has been an effective approach so far.

*With the course the city is on working with the homeless to get them off the streets on the level that  navigation center will allow, the city will be able to continue to chip away at the problem on an accelerated level.

*By abandoning the city’s efforts in favor of issuing a flurry of citations it won’t change anything given the homeless can’t be jailed for being homeless even after Friday’s court ruling.

Singh, who received posts from those that believe the city should become more aggressive based on the court decision, noted that wouldn’t solve the problem.

If anything, that would make it worse.

The court ruling covered public places such as parks and downtown.

Freeway right-of-way, while it is illegal for anyone to use such areas, is a different story.

“Right now, many of the (Manteca) homeless are along the freeways,” Singh said.

The freeways are not within the city’s jurisdiction.

Liability concerns and other protocols imposed by the courts to move encampments makes it clear Caltrans has to be the agency addressing homeless encampments in its right-of-way.

The problem  is Caltrans District 10 covers Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, Mariposa, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tuolumne.

There are homeless issues throughout the district and Caltrans has limited staffing.

Sigh said it would be short-sighted to simply pressure on a wholesale basis those homeless encamping or sleeping within the city limits.

In doing so, they would more than likely just move to right-of-way along the 120 Bypass and Highway 99 where Caltrans — given other problematic areas they are responsible — would only be able to do a “cleanup” every 60 to 75 days.

In doing so, that would significantly increase the visual numbers of homeless encampments as it has in many larger cities.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com