LA CROSSE, Wis. — The City of La Crosse said it estimates there are between 150 to 160 people struggling with homelessness on any given night.
Cassandra Francis is one of those people.
“As you can see, it is nothing fancy. It is just my rugs, my bed and some food in there and that’s really all I got,” said Francis, while pointing to a tent.
Francis said she has been living on the streets of La Crosse for five years.
“I got into a relationship with someone who turned out to be really abusive and got me on drugs,” said Francis. “My life fell apart and I stopped being able to go to school and quit my job and got really depressed and then I lost my apartment five months after that, and I have been on the street ever since. “
Recently, the City of La Crosse said it would start enforcing a no-camping ordinance on city property.
The ordinance passed La Crosse Common Council with a vote of 7-5 on August 8th.
Francis said she has known for weeks about the ban, but she has not left her campsite because she said she has nowhere else to go.
“It is going to get cold soon, right? Real cold,” said Francis. “People freeze to death outside in the cold, like what am I going to do if I can’t have my own shelter and you guys didn’t provide housing for me?”
Mark Neumann is a La Crosse Common Council Member that voted in favor of the camping ban.
“There’s no resources, there’s no sanitation, there’s no access to services, vehicles for emergency response can’t even get to you,” said Neumann.
He said encampments throughout the city have been disbanded many times in the past. When this happens, he said the concern among many people in the city is where the city’s unhoused population will go.
“It ultimately is not the local government’s problem to find where an individual will live, it is the individual’s problem,” said Neumann.
Neumann said he hopes that by banning camping it will force the city to come up with a solution to the homeless situation.
“As long as we are accommodating a substandard opportunity to live in a marshland, there may not be the triggering to go to a different plan,” said Neumann.
The Salvation Army and Catholic Charities are the only two organizations that offer overnight shelter services in the city.
Francis said Catholic Charities is one of the only options for shelter in the city.
“The warming center is full because they get full every night,” said Francis. “It is full and I don’t have my own house. What do I do at 10 p.m. when I find that out and it is -4 degrees outside?”
Neumann said he pushed for the creation of an overnight shelter and this was an option the city explored in the past.
“We asked the city, ‘Is it possible? Where could we do it?’ And we got a nice document together,” said Neumann. “The take home in short is, there was not something we could imagine doing as a local government.”
Jennifer Trost is a Common Council member who voted against the camping ban.
“The way that I think about having a growing population of people who are without shelter is that we have a housing shortage,” said Trost.
Trost said the country is in a housing shortage that was caused by the Great Recession.
“When we are talking about people who do not have homes, that’s because those homes don’t exist,” said Trost. “Clearly there are nicer, more expensive homes and less expensive homes, but we don’t even have affordable homes.”
Trost pointed to a housing study that was done recently in the City of La Crosse. The findings show that the city needs between 200 and 230 housing units per year for the next decade to meet the needs of the people who live in La Crosse.
Trost said she believes the way to solve the homeless crisis in La Crosse is to change zoning codes and build more homes.
“We don’t have a housing department, we don’t have social workers, we don’t have staff, we don’t have the resources but we do have power over our zoning codes,” said Trost.
Aug. 27 was the last night Francis was able to legally camp on city property.
On Aug. 28, police and park officials had gathered with bulldozers to clear the encampment.
With the help of local law enforcement, Francis packed up her belongings onto bikes and carts and made her way further down the Vietnam Veterans Trail, where a large majority of the unhoused population were living.
“I knew that time was running out and things had not gotten done how they were supposed to get done and most of the time I spent arguing and just felt like I wasted most of my night,” said Francis.
If caught camping on city property, Francis would receive a written notice to leave. If after one hour she does not leave, she would receive a citation and be asked again.
The third time, she would be escorted off of the property and face possible fines and jail time.
When Francis was asked what it would take for her to get back on her feet, she said she would need to address the trauma that being abused left her with.
“I have been able to work on that for the past two years. I have healed myself a lot,” said Francis. “I still struggle but I mostly struggle with belief in myself.”