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Saturday, May 10, 2003

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The city of Pittsburgh must warn homeless people when it plans to clean up their belongings and it will have to store anything left behind for a year at a South Side boathouse.

Those are the basic terms of an agreement finalized yesterday between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union to settle a federal suit charging that the city violates the rights of the homeless when workers seize and destroy their property.

The ACLU filed the suit Monday on behalf of four homeless men, saying the city deprives the homeless of their belongings without enough warning and doesn't give them a chance to retrieve their stuff.

After haggling with city attorneys before Chief U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose over the last few days, the ACLU got what it wanted.

Witold Walczak, ACLU legal director, said the settlement amounts to one of the best protections for the homeless in the country.

"We needed an airtight agreement that is enforceable in federal court," he said. "Just because you're downtrodden doesn't mean you don't have constitutional rights."

The agreement says the city's Department of Public Works has to post signs at homeless camps seven days before a sweep and also send the notice to homeless service agencies. Any items left behind despite the warning have to be bagged and stored at the boathouse at the intersection of South Fourth Street and the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad tracks on the South Side.

The building will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. for three days after a sweep so homeless people can pick up their belongings. After that, items can be retrieved on the first Tuesday of each month between 1 and 4 p.m. If an item is unclaimed after a year, the city will throw it away.

The agreement allows the city to discard "refuse," such as paper trash, food remains, bottles and the like. But other items, such as radios, blankets and bagged recyclables, aren't supposed to be thrown out. If a city worker has any doubts, he's supposed to store the item.

The ACLU and homeless advocates Moon Johnson and Mac McMahon said they were pleased with the settlement, but Walczak also leveled criticism at city lawyers for being "insensitive" to the plight of the homeless during the negotiations.

"This administration does not give a whiff about homeless people or about homeless people's rights," he said.

He also said city lawyers exhibited an "upper middle class mentality" that didn't recognize that the homeless might define trash differently.

"We had to overcome that mindset," he said.

City Solicitor Jacqueline Morrow had left for the day yesterday and couldn't be reached. Assistant Solicitor Susan Malie didn't return a call.

Public works director Guy Costa said a meeting will be held Thursday to work out the details of the agreement and to address employees' concerns. Previously, he said, city employees removed the items with pitchforks, and they will now need to handle the belongings. That's something employees "expressed concern" about.

"It's not the cleanest job to do, and it's not the easiest job to do," Costa said.

Costa said a system must be devised to inventory and store the items and make sure that people get their belongings. He expects that notice of the next sweep will be posted within two weeks.

"We're hoping that once the notices go up, the homeless people will remove all of their belongings," he said. "We're hoping there won't be anything for us to clean up."