Police removed benches in the City County building in downtown Madison this week, drawing criticism from one vocal critics that the move was a strategy to prevent homeless citizens from using the facility.
According to Tenant Resource Center Director Brenda Konkel, the ostensible reason the benches were removed was to ensure crowds of absentee voters did not block the exits of the building from now until the primaries, scheduled for Feb. 21.
However, she is skeptical of the police’s motives behind moving the benches, and she said maintenance workers and building employees simply became tired of seeing homeless people loitering around the building.
According to Konkel, the ordeal started last summer when the homeless, looking for a place to go when shelters closed during the day, used the outside of the City County building to nap. She said up to 20 people could be napping at the building in any one day.
During the winter months, a smaller number of the homeless moved inside the building to use the benches to rest and bathrooms to wash up, Konkel said.
Across the city, procedures have been put in place to remove homeless from private buildings, leading to greater numbers of homeless meeting at the City County building, Madison Police officer Howard Payne said. For example, in libraries, a staff member can ask a manager to review whether a patron is suitable to use the building.
Konkel added such procedures are used in private buildings to remove the homeless, but that strategy does not work in the City County building because the building is public property and should technically be available to anybody.
As maintenance workers and employees of the building complained of the homeless presence, authorities tried different tactics, with limited success, to rid the City County building of derelicts, according to Konkel.
In an email to city employees, Mayor Paul Soglin wrote, “I understand there have been visitors to the City County Building and some county or city employees who have provided food, money, and blankets to people in the lobby. Please be aware that doing so contributes to an unsafe environment for your fellow employees.”
In the same email, Soglin urged city employees to call 911 to report unsafe behavior at the City County building. Konkel said she reviewed the calls to 911 in the past six months, and that complaints to the police were minimal.
In an effort to make evicting homeless easier, the police initiated a code of conduct that stated among other rules that bare feet were not allowed, sitting on floors was prohibited and no personal space heaters were allowed in the building.
Konkel said many of the homeless that did cause problems in the City County building were alcoholics, and instead of kicking them out of the building, the city should focus on programs that help the struggling citizens.
The police cannot simply evict all homeless from the City County building because most homeless people use the building to vote, Konkel said.
“The reason we have this problem is people just don’t like the way they look or smell,” Konkel said.