The City of Armadale intends to crack down on rough sleepers camping near kid zones in an attempt to pacify growing discontent from some sections of the community.
At its April 28 meeting, council voted to change the city’s draft homelessness policy to stipulate a 200-metre camping exclusion zone around playgrounds, schools, and childcare facilities.
The council also beefed up the language of the policy, asserting the city’s readiness to hand out prohibition notices by altering the word ‘may’ to ‘will’.
“The most important change was that city rangers are now automatically directed to issue prohibition orders … after a warning has been issued,” Deputy Mayor John Keogh said.
After a prohibition notice has been served on someone, the city will team up with the police to then move the person on.
That initial warning was slipped into the policy amendment at the eleventh hour by Cr Paul Hetherington.
He also altered the motion so that a person camped near a playground etc, would only be prohibited from that specific location, rather than the whole city.
Councillor Hetherington drew attention to points in the city’s homelessness policy that frame their approach to homeless people as “compassionate” and that city officers are to show “empathy” and “a disposition to assist”.
“These changes essentially allow people who are unaware of our policy, and unaware of the rules, to be given a chance. It just allows that compassionate approach, I think,” he said.
Mayor Ruth Butterfield backed him up saying she believed the changes were “reasonable and pragmatic” and that prohibiting a homeless person from ever coming in to the City of Armadale again was a “rather Draconian approach to take when they might never have even known that that was a policy of the City of Armadale”.
But Cr Scott Mosey argued against the changes, saying “I don’t think that sends a loud enough message to our community that is frankly pretty sick of the fact they can’t use their beloved parks and facilities because they’ve been overrun by homeless people”.
Cr Keogh also expressed frustration and his opposition to the last-minute changes, citing the numerous times this issue had previously been debated and discussed, with a majority of councillors present.
“We’ve agreed to this to a large extent already – there’s been countless discussions surrounding that,” he said.
But Cr Sarah Stoneham argued that the changes were necessary from a practical standpoint.
“It’s since come to light that parts of this are unworkable from our city officers’ point of view,” she said.
“In fact, we have the Officer In Charge of the Armadale Police Station here because they have raised concerns about the actual implementation of this policy.”
Cr Jiby Joy, who volunteers as a local street missionary, uncovered a pertinent point about the new exclusion zone: would there now be any locations within the City of Armadale suitable for people to camp overnight?
There are a number of other reasons a person might be issued a prohibition notice from camping on council land including if there are no toilets nearby, if they are ‘disturbing the peace or amenity’, or if they fail to clean up after their animals.
A person might also be banned from the entire City of Armadale if they break the law, or receive a second prohibition notice.
In response to Cr Joy’s question, CEO Joanne Abbiss said officers had not “mapped the city to put 200m radiuses around every playground, school and childcare centre” and explained that “the difficulty of the criteria is that most of our public toilet provision in parks is where we have playgrounds”.
But if practically every public toilet in the City of Armadale is located within a 200m radius of a playground, then has the city effectively just created a Catch-22 for homeless people, without even knowing it?
The Examiner has since spoken with several volunteers who actively work with homeless people here, and all have raised concerns about the real-world implications of the policy changes.
“I’m incredibly concerned about the impacts this will have on the people we work with in the City of Armadale,” Homelessness We Care Serpentine Jarrahdale CEO Stuart McLellan said.
“When authorities talk about issuing move on orders, the question I always bring up is: move on to where exactly?”
Nevertheless, Cr Keogh celebrated the changes as a win, sharing that the group of tents at Rushton Park in Kelmscott had recently been removed, and thanking the community for their patience.
“I am happy to report that on Monday night council voted to change the City of Armadale homelessness policy,” he said.
“I appreciate this has taken a while and share many community members frustrations.
“I have been advocating to change the policy for more than six months and am glad to see that we have finally got here.”
