Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed the City Council’s approval of a new homeless encampment ordinance on Thursday, saying requiring the city to provide bathrooms and trash collection for unauthorized tent settlements would encourage people to live in unsafe conditions instead of working toward housing.
“Once shelter and services are offered at an encampment, they must be closed,” Frey said in a statement. “This ordinance does the opposite — encouraging them to grow and people to live in unsafe conditions. Our focus has to stay on safety, dignity and housing solutions that actually work.”
The City Council passed the ordinance 8-5 last week. Nine votes will be needed to override the veto in a future vote.
Proponents of the ordinance argued that while no one wants encampments to exist, people who end up in them require a public health response that includes places to relieve themselves in private, and fire extinguishers to prevent propane fires that can spread to neighboring houses.
The ordinance also would have required a 10-day notice to encampment residents and homeless outreach workers before closing an encampment, as well as more accessible storage places for the belongings of people displaced by sweeps.
