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Williams said residents are putting more pressure on Boulder City Council members to make improvements. The city could respond in various ways, potentially prolonging the resolution process. It’s about not having any options.”ĭaniel Williams and Annie Kurtz, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said Boulder had until later in the week to respond to the complaint. “It is not just about being in public spaces. “The lawsuit is specifically saying there aren’t enough places for people to go, so you can’t take them out of the only spaces they have,” Sweeney-Miran said. Boulder police have confiscated each one. She has built 13 shelters like it and gifted them to others in Boulder. Since being ticketed, Shurley has given away her “gypsy wagon” to another unhoused person. She said many officers come to encampments early, between 6 and 7 a.m., when most unhoused residents are sleeping. Shurley said each time the officer interacted with her, she had moved to a new spot around Scott Carpenter Park. She recalls the officer saying to her, “Go anywhere but Boulder,” leaving her to believe that had she listened to the officer and left the city, she would have been caught amid the flames. Shurley received her second ticket five days before the Marshall Fire erupted in Boulder County. 24 before finding her again on Christmas morning, when she was ticketed once more. Second, the officer issued a ticket to Shurley on Dec. First, the officer issued a warning on Dec. She calls it a “gypsy wagon.” The officer who issued the ticket had interacted with Shurley twice before. Shurley has personally experienced this “power imbalance.” At the time of her second citation in December, Shurley was living in a converted bike trailer she built herself. “I don’t know that there’s anybody who could really witness an interaction between the police force and an unhoused person and look at that power imbalance and look at the dynamic of fear and feel like this was the best solution,” she said. While she remembers there always being an unhoused population in the city, Sweeny-Miran says demographic changes have led to increases in “vitriol and harassment” against it.įrom encampments being torn down to disallowing unhoused residents to participate in Boulder’s farmers market, the police enforcement of the camping ban has juxtaposed Boulder’s supposed inclusivity with reality, Sweeney-Miran said. Like Livovich, Sweeney-Miran, who is participating in the lawsuit individually as a taxpayer, lives in Boulder and has for the majority of her life. The organization focuses on peer support, street outreach and distributing supplies such as food and clothing. When Livovich was unhoused, she suffered from frostbite, which partly inspired her to organize Feet Forward. She says her time in Boulder has given her firsthand knowledge of what unhoused people experience in the city. She was unhoused until she received assistance from the state in 2018. Livovich has lived in Boulder for the past decade. Jennifer Livovich, the founder of Feet Forward, and Lisa Sweeney-Miran, the Boulder Valley School District board vice president and executive director of Mother House, a shelter for people who identify as women, transgender or nonbinary with children, are participating in the case as taxpayers. Two other plaintiffs say the same thing as Shurley – unhoused residents have no alternatives. Sarah Huntley, a spokesperson for the city of Boulder, speaking on behalf of the police department and city administration, said the city received the lawsuit from the ACLU and will be filing its response through the court process. “(Boulder’s camping ban) makes something we don’t have an alternative for illegal,” Shurley said. The lawsuit alleges that the city’s camping ban, which prohibits unhoused residents from sleeping outside while using a shelter beyond clothing, is unconstitutional. Shurley is one of the unhoused plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado in a lawsuit against Boulder. She can’t stay at a shelter because of her pet dogs, and Boulder’s high rent rates have left her with few choices.
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This was the third interaction between the two, leading to Shurley’s second ticket for camping outside. On Christmas morning, Jeni Shurley was greeted by a Boulder police officer.