With camping in Sedona becoming an increasing issue for the city and its residents, the Sedona City Council began their discussions about amending the city’s strict no-camping ordinance in favor of a looser code at their meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 27.

“We’re here to weigh in on and begin the discussion on possibly amending the city’s camping ordinance. The current camping ordinance has been in place without any substantive change since 1999, when it was adopted,” Kurt Christianson said. “In 2018, the [U.S. Court of Appeals for the] Ninth Circuit ruled [in Martin v. Boise] that camping ordinances that prohibit all camping within a city when there’s no other available location for homeless persons to sleep are unconstitutional. In regards to that, many cities stopped enforcing their [restrictions on] camping in public places, and some decided to only enforce it if they had available housing.”

In the last 20 months, the Sedona Police Department responded to 237 incidents relating to camping within city limits. As that number increased and public discussion of the issue expanded, the city decided to take action at an upcoming meeting.

The potential amendments would relax camping restrictions within the city, with a long list of excepted locations.

One example of these protected areas is a proposed 500-foot exclusion zone around businesses and any youth-serving building, such as schools, daycares and churches.

Other location exceptions would include roadways, sidewalks and access points. Staying in one area for more than 24 hours would be prohibited and the code would preserve the bans on public camping on private property and on vehicular camping.

“The current ordinance prohibits camping in all the city, public and private, and that includes even a private residence or private church,” Christianson said. “The proposed amendment does remove the penalty against the owner that was there in the past, and so the penalty only applies to the person now sleeping in the private property or public location.”

According to city metrics from this past July, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Coconino County and Yavapai County sides stood at only one and nine, respectively. However, the Sedona Area Homeless Alliance reports around 125 local men, women and children experiencing homelessness in Sedona, along with approximately 330 others in the rest of the Verde Valley.

According to SAHA, around one third of the homeless population in Sedona have access to a vehicle and are not just tent camping.

“We found out about this being on the agenda for tonight’s meeting by accident at the last minute. SAHA would enjoy a working relationship with the other stakeholders on the subject of homelessness, because we are, in fact, one of those stakeholders,” said Lori Moore, co-founder of SAHA. “Putting homelessness on the back burner last year only ensured a bigger problem.”

Representatives from SAHA hope to be included in the continuing conversations, as they support safe sleeping areas and looser city codes involving homelessness. But by being involved, they want to continue to advocate for the homeless in Sedona.

Some members of the public, like Uptown resident Mick Jordahl, are skeptical of the proposed amendments unless the language of the amendments is significantly narrowed.

“I think [some of the amendments] create a host of problems because we’re such a desirable place to come, as we all know. And if people find out you can camp anywhere you want, just need to move every night, that creates problems that we’re not anticipating,” Jordahl said. “In trying to cure this very real problem, the ordinance could be narrowed significantly. It could start with a general public property camping ban, but create delineated exceptions for those who are truly destitute.”

The discussion will continue in a few months, when the council sets its priorities in January, at the same time that SAHA conducts its homeless population count in Sedona.

“I think the retreat is going to be the place to talk about it more to decide just how much you want to dedicate to this …. It would be a good place to start with, trying to determine the scope of the problem and who you can help and maybe who you can’t,” Mayor Sandy Moriarty said. “It is a very difficult issue. It’s going to take a lot of serious, thoughtfulness and deliberation on what is exactly the best thing to do.”