A Republican senator from Mesa's personal experience with mental illness and homelessness derailed a bid by another GOP lawmaker to make sleeping on a sidewalk a crime.
Bob Christie Capitol Media Services PHOENIX — A Republican state senator from Mesa's personal experience with mental illness and homelessness derailed a bid by another GOP lawmaker, this one a former cop, to make sleeping on a sidewalk a state crime.
"As an adult with children, I ran away from home, so to speak, went up to Seattle, spent weeks up there sitting next to a park,'' he said."During that time period, I was homeless even though I owned a home in Mesa.'' The numbers of homeless in the state’s two largest metro areas, Phoenix and Tucson, have grown significantly in the past five years. In Pima County, last year’s annual homeless count estimated more than 2,200 people did not have housing, compared to just under 1,400 in 2018. In Maricopa County during that same period, the number of homeless grew from about 6,300 to more than 9,000.
Hobbs' executive budget also takes on the crisis in homelessness by putting $150 million into the state housing trust fund, money that can be used for homeless shelters, rental and utility assistance, and to leverage federal funds to build new affordable housing. The sidelining of the ban on sidewalk sleeping was the second Kavanagh bill that hit a roadblock this past week in the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Public Safety and Border Security chaired by Sen. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista.
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