At their regular meeting Tuesday evening, the Antioch City Council told city staff to look into creating a position for an "unhoused resident coordinator" to address the needs associated with the housing crisis and homeless encampments.
The move came after a six-month fact-finding mission undertaken by the council's ad-hoc committee on homeless encampments that involved multiple workshops, meetings with stakeholders and briefings from subject-matter experts in an attempt to identify problems and solutions.
"It does not matter whether you live in a house or not," Councilmember Lamar Thorpe said. "Our job on city council is to represent everybody."
Following the fact-finding effort, Thorpe and Mayor Pro Tem Joy Motts came back to the council Tuesday with a series of recommendations, including possibly establishing the position mentioned above, and directed city staff to draft a resolution that could be voted on at a future meeting.
Thorpe and Mott also suggested a safe parking facility where Antioch residents living in cars or RVs could park overnight.
"We found that many of our unhoused residents are living in vehicles," Thorpe said. "There's no place for them to go to safely park."
Other recommendations to address the impacts of homelessness and homeless encampments included tiny house communities or Oakland-style Tuff Shed shelters, establishing a program to rent out hotel or motel rooms, making sharps containers available to minimize the risks posed by used syringes, providing portable restrooms/showers and dumpsters to address the high volume of solid waste often found in and around homeless camps.
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Thorpe stressed, however, that these are temporary solutions. Once they're put in place, the city may see to enact a no camping ordinance.
Separately, the council gave itself a salary increase by a 4-1 vote, with Councilmember Lori Ogorchock dissenting. The last pay increase went into effect Jan. 1, 2007.
"At this time I just personally can't pass something like this, I think the money could go someplace else," Ogorchock said, referencing low staffing levels in the Police Department and the need to fund programs to address homelessness.
For more than 12 years, councilmembers have been taking home about $940 per month. Starting Jan. 1, 2020, they'll start earning roughly $1,600 per month.
