The city of Manitowoc is addressing homelessness in the city.
The common council updated an ordinance Monday that reduces the number of days temporary housing like tents or RVs are allowed to be around from 30 days to 10 days.
Interim City Attorney Eric Nycz says this will make temporary housing violations enforceable.
The issue was discussed at the city’s Public Safety Committee meeting where two people who represent organizations that help the homeless said that the change would hurt what they are trying to do.
After some discussion, the committee only recommended requiring property owners of single-unit rental housing to provide garbage collection.
But Alderman Jim Brey ended up reintroducing the temporary housing reduction and the council approved it.
Common Council President Eric Sitkiewitz says he thinks it’s an important change.
“We do have a homeless population that needs assistance,” he admitted. “It’s just this change cleans up some of the language in our current code so it’s more enforceable when it wasn’t as enforceable.”
Most of the council agreed that the change is good, but Alderwoman Darian Kaderabek says there needs to be a good support system because not all homeless people are bad people.
“I’ll say I will support this knowing that it’s not going to prevent organizations in town trying to address this,” she told Seehafer News after the Council meeting. “But I think we need to be mindful and think about this especially after we have been able to identify that housing is one of the biggest problems in Manitowoc.”
Public Safety Committee Chairman Matt Cummings says he is also okay with the change because it doesn’t affect the groups that try to help the homeless, but he says this will be looked at again, especially now that this can be enforced more than it was before.
He gave his opinion on the topic, saying, “You know they’ll remove the shelter and then fine them up to $2,000. To me personally, that is pointless because you are probably homeless because you don’t have the $2,000. I think that’s counterintuitive on that point.”
No one was at the meeting to speak for or against the change, however, someone did publicly comment about issues she found with an abandoned property on Chicago Street.
