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Allow sender | Block sender <br />From:Kate Hiester <br />To:GRP-City Council <br />Subject:Please Amend Camping Ordinance <br />Date:Monday, August 25, 2025 3:45:49 PM <br />Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization. <br />Dear Councilmembers, <br />I am writing to ask that you remove criminal punishments from the camping ordinance. <br />The City can still address encampments safely, rapidly, and humanely without these <br />punishments, which cause undue harm. I am asking you to remove them because: <br />Incarceration increases mortality, for both incarcerated individuals and <br />nonincarcerated individuals in the community.1 <br />Arrests and convictions create barriers to stable housing, with 4 in 5 landlords <br />using background checks.2 <br />Fines and fees increase court involvement for low-income people.3 <br />The model ordinance from the State does not include criminal punishments. <br />Roughly 4% of the people in the world are American, but about 21% of all prisoners in the <br />world are American. If incarceration and criminal punishment were effective, we would be <br />among the safest countries in the world, but we are not. These criminal punishments will <br />not create more community safety. They will cause harm. Please do not include criminal <br />punishments in the camping ordinance. <br />Thank you, <br />Kate Hiester <br />-- <br />Member, RWC Housing and Human Concerns Committee <br />Redwood City Resident, District 4 <br />SMC Public Health, Policy, and Planning <br />1: “In a nationally representative cohort study of approximately 3.26 million adults observed <br />from 2008 through 2019, individuals incarcerated at the time of the survey experienced a <br />39% higher risk of all-cause mortality and more than 3 times the risk of overdose mortality <br />compared with nonincarcerated individuals. County incarceration rates were also