As Tucson’s parks have reopened this fall, some after months of closure for renovation, the city is launching a new initiative aimed at easing ongoing tensions over unhoused people using these public spaces.
Along with the ongoing effort to enforce the city’s camping ban, a new parks department unit will keep a weekly census of how many homeless people use park bathrooms and ramadas and instructs park staff to report homeless people they see in the park and who they worry could pose a safety concern.
That new unit, called Parks Assistance and Community Engagement, or PACE, is part of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department and was designed to respond to homeless encampment reports. It comes almost one year after the launch of Tucson’s Safe City Initiative, an effort that uses police enforcement alongside the offer of services to push unhoused people toward shelters or drug treatment services.
The discussion at Tucson’s city council study session Tuesday touched briefly on the launch of the parks program this summer.
Ward 6 council member Miranda Schubert asked how the city would measure whether the park interventions connected people to services and housing, rather than simply moving them from one place to another.
“Ultimately, I want us to have conversations that move beyond tracked contacts, cleanups, and enforcement actions and toward measuring actual reductions in unsheltered homelessness,” she said.
For example, Schubert said, the city council’s discussions on homelessness could include information about how many people went into stable housing and how long the process took, noting that homeless services partners were often already tracking that information.
The PACE team moves into action when an encampment report is submitted to the city’s online reporting tool or through a 311 call, or when park staff reports an unhoused person in the park.
The park staff contact could include “a report from Tucson Parks and Recreation (TPR) staff who notice a homeless presence that may create safety concerns while doing routine maintenance,” says a section on Tuesday’s study session agenda about the city’s ongoing response to homelessness.
In August, the PACE team completed 37 park assessments, the document says. As part of that effort, the unit submitted 13 outreach requests to Community Safety, Health and Wellness, the city-based team that offers housing and substance abuse support.
PACE also posted “no camping” signs near encampments, the document said.
Moving ahead, PACE will start a weekly census to “track how many people experiencing homelessness are using park spaces such as ramadas, open areas, and restrooms.” The goal, the document says, is to measure how effective localized cleanups are and how the ban on camping is impacting park use.
Tucson’s Parks and Recreation department did not respond to a request for comment on how census data would be collected and in which cases a homeless person being present in the park, but not camping, would lead to removal.
The city has recently made a significant investment into city parks: an $8 million renovation at Santa Rita Park, $1.71 million to renovate Armory Park and new bike parks at 100 Acre Woods along with specific relocation funding for hundreds of people living outside in the area.
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