Homeless effort returns to closed park in downtown Tucson — for now

About a dozen people slept overnight Monday around Veinte De Agosto Park downtown, part of a new effort by activist Jon McLane to help the homeless.

McLane sees the new encampment, which focuses on helping homeless veterans, as a successor to the controversial effort several years ago that had “dream pods” — wooden boxes that homeless people sheltered in — lining sidewalks around the park.

That effort, called Safe Park, resulted in a lengthy legal fight with the city, which eventually closed the park to the public and forced the homeless to remove their possessions.

City officials note that Veinte De Agosto Park, near Congress Street and Church Avenue, is still closed and the city is prepared to enforce its new rules — upheld by the courts in the first legal fight — in the area around the park.

“After the 9th Circuit’s (Court of Appeals) decision, the rules are very clear on what can and cannot occur in city parks and on city sidewalks, and we’ll be following the guidance the court has provided,” said Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.

McLane, who recently became an ordained minister, said Veteran Rescue Mission will focus on helping homeless veterans, pairing them with services and helping them get off the street. McLane said he is going through the process to register his church as a nonprofit.

In what he identifies as the first of four phases for this outreach, “Operation Home” is 24-hour-a-day “education, resource and sleep site” near the park where homeless veterans can pick up donated items, get a meal, meet with social workers as well as get some sleep. Several people have spent the night near the park, he said.

Later phases envision a 5-acre camp somewhere, run by other veterans, that is outfitted with “tiny homes” for people to live in. He also wants to build a small, nondenominational church.

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The veterans mission he’s set up near Veinte De Agosto Park, however, has one of the same problems that plagued the last homeless camp that sprang up: opposition from city officials.

McLane and another homeless advocate, John Cooper, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking millions in damages for harassment from city officials over the previous homeless encampment. The men won a court injunction that temporarily prevented the city from enforcing a policy of what possessions a person could have while sitting on the sidewalks in downtown.

The city eventually closed the park, and an appeals court in May 2016 sided with the city, allowing it to enforce the rules over possessions that can be kept on a public sidewalk.

Tucson settled with Cooper and McLane, giving them each $20,000 with no admission of fault from the city.

On Tuesday morning, McLane found himself in jail again after a Tucson police officer saw him smoking marijuana near the park. McLane — who was arrested on drug charges during the first Safe Park effort — admits he was smoking pot but maintains it was legal since he has a medical marijuana card.

A spokesperson for the Tucson Police Department said that having a medical marijuana card does not give the cardholder the right to smoke in public. McLane was released a few hours after his arrest, going directly back to the park.

Councilman Steve Kozachik said there are plenty of nonprofits that help the homeless in Tucson, and he vowed to continue to work closely with those groups, but not McLane.

“There are plenty of homeless advocates who are doing a ton of work on behalf of the less fortunate in our community,” he said. “That’s where the focus should be, not on a guy who’s out promoting himself, getting busted over and over, and just playing into the stereotype the homeless unfortunately are all too often shackled with.”