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Homeless Court
Homeless court is an alternative way for homeless people, seniors and other disenfranchised citizens to tackle minor but niggling legal problems without having to face a fine-wielding, jail-threatening judge in a traditional courtroom. (Charges of major offenses, such as assault, drug dealing or domestic violence remain the purview of regular court.) For example, if someone is busted for being drunk in public, they might agree to go to five Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and perform community service at one of the homeless service facilities. Or if a homeless person is cited for stealing food, he might agree to seek out a homeless service facility and learn about where to get free food, as well as complete community service. If he's cited for loitering, he might agree to enroll in a job-training course.
Humboldt County's homeless court is scheduled to be held at the North Coast Resource Center In May, July, September, November in 2010, while it is held at St. Vincent de Paul in Eureka April, June, August, October and December, 2010.
Applicants should come by the NCRC, ask for a drop in appointment with the Case Management team, and participate in completing the intake process.
The legal team
Judge Feeney, who presides in Humboldt County Superior Court, was born and raised in San Diego and says he has "been admiring their homeless court from afar for years." So when Christina Allbright, a deputy public defender in the main public defender's office, and Tiffany St. Claire-King, an attorney in the county's Alternate Conflict Counsel office, asked at a California judges' meeting if any local judge would be interested in holding a homeless court in Eureka, he was ready. In September, he went down to San Diego to observe a homeless court. "I was impressed," he says. "In the traditional courtroom, the judge sits up high and looks down on you. In the homeless court, the judge was eye-to-eye [with the homeless defendant] and it was just much more personal." The judge still wears a robe and is attended by a bailiff, clerk and court reporter -- it's a real court of law, even if the setting's relaxed, and the defendant has the same constitutional rights as in a traditional court setting. But, most important, nobody gets taken into custody at homeless court.
"For the most part, the DA and the defense attorney will work out ahead of time how the case is going to be handled, and I'll likely call the case and say what the disposition's going to be," says Feeney. "They'll have, say, three months to do it, and then they come back with proof they completed the program."
Feeney says he expects homeless court to save the county money and time. It'll clear up old cases, and likely keep some people from re-entering the court system. Homeless court will be conducted by existing staff within normal business hours, with court just being diverted once a month to a homeless provider setting.
"The court -- we see this as a community outreach to assist these folks," Feeney says. He compares it to a successful pilot mental health court the county had for four years, until state funds dried up, and to the county's existing drug court. "Courts, in general, are going more toward rehabilitation than the punitive, which is good."
Feeney allows that homeless court alone isn't going to eliminate homelessness. "Many homeless people have substance abuse issues and mental illness, and for those people it's more complicated," he says. "But I think for some homeless people, they just need a helping hand. The way I look at it, even if we only help 10 to 20 people a year, that would be great."
Allbright and St. Claire-King likely form the core defense team for homeless court. For St. Claire-King, it was at a meeting earlier between judges, district attorneys, public defenders and law enforcement to talk about the regular court process that she found the impetus to push for a homeless court here. "Several law enforcement officers expressed frustration about writing citations for people without addresses, and then they would just get lost and nothing would be done," says St. Claire-King. Since she had worked with Sacramento County's homeless court, she knew enough to start promoting the idea. Allbright was also at that meeting where police officers told the judges that "people are just tearing up tickets ... and the court doesn't even issue warrants sometimes to people they've cited" because the people don't have addresses. "I think [homeless court] is going to make the police happy, because they'll get to see some accountability."
The Provider
The No. 1 bootstrap dealers will be the homeless services providers, such as St. Vincent de Paul, North Coast Resource Center, Arcata Night Shelter, Mobile Medical, the M.A.C. and the Eureka Rescue Mission. Providers will refer a person to homeless court and facilitate the process with the legal team. Michael Twombly and Susie Van Kirk are board members of the Humboldt All Faith Partnership, which runs the private non-profit Arcata Night Shelter (the only emergency shelter in Arcata), and likely will be at the forefront of the new court program. Around about when the judges, attorneys and cops were creeping up on the idea of a homeless court, Twombly was already a few steps ahead of them. Twombly has worked with homeless people and the mentally ill for more than a decade, and says he'd been reading about homeless court when, one night, something happened that convinced him it was needed in Humboldt County.
"I was driving back to Arcata from teaching substance abuse courses at the jail in Eureka," he recalls. "It was dark, it was raining, it was cold. And I picked up this guy. He'd been working all day -- he's a painter. I said, 'Wow, that's hard to do without a car.' And he said, 'I got in a twist with a fix-it ticket for my taillight.' He said he didn't pay the fine, and then he got cited again for the same taillight. He didn't have any money to fix it. Then he was issued a warrant. So, he couldn't get his car registered. So, then he drove an unregistered car to work, and he got three more tickets for failure to register. He owed $1,000 by then. So then he stopped driving. And now he was hitchhiking to work to feed his family. And I thought, there really ought to be an amnesty day for this guy."
Twombly called Binder to talk to him about San Diego's homeless court, and Van Kirk wrote to Judge Feeney. Twombly went to San Diego to observe homeless court in action, recorded interviews with Binder and another attorney, then came back and joined forces with the players in the traditional court system -- and Humboldt County's homeless court was born.
