Jackson Looks Like LA With Homeless Camped in Front of the Library
The community became more concerned after learning that two of the men in the encampment were convicted sex offenders
Jackson — The Carnegie Library branch of the Jackson Public Library is one of the downtown landmarks here, a place where families have been coming for more than a century to read, explore, or check out the latest bestseller.
For the past few months, it’s also been the site of a homeless encampment. Dozens of homeless people have been camped out on the sidewalk in front of the library—sometimes in tents, sometimes just sleeping on the pavement. Some locals say the encampment has been mostly quiet and peaceful, while others have reported hearing loud music, foul language, and people asking for money. They’ve seen fights and drug use.
Among the homeless people camped out in front of the library have been at least two convicted sex offenders.
All while families and children are just trying to get to the library.
It’s been an unsettling scene, and people in Jackson are at their wit’s end trying to come up with an answer. Homelessness is an issue in many communities in Michigan, and it’s been a lingering problem in Jackson for years, but this is one of the only times that an encampment has sprung up in front of such a prominent location.
This is what you see in Los Angeles, not what you see in a town like Jackson.
The problem is that there’s no city law against it. There’s a sign at the library saying that nobody is allowed to camp out on the library grounds proper, but there’s nothing that prohibits the homeless from sleeping on the sidewalk in front of it. So that’s what they’ve been doing.
The Jackson City Council held a five-and-a-half-hour meeting last week to consider an emergency ordinance to deal with it (the ordinance basically says you can’t keep your belongings on a public sidewalk), and when they opened it up for public comment, everybody had their say.
“I’m a regular patron of the downtown library, and what I’ve seen there in recent months is just appalling,” said Jackson resident Phil Berkemeier. “People have been encamped there arguing, fighting with each other, playing loud music. We’ve been there when we’ve come out and there’s loud music playing with lots of F-words, vulgar language—it’s just a terrible situation.”
There’s no lack of compassion in Jackson. Several community-service organizations have been bringing food and water to the homeless at the library, and several speakers at the council meeting said that what’s needed is support and kindness, not an ordinance that will kick them out.
The prevailing opinion in town, though, is that while the homeless need a place to stay, that place shouldn’t be in front of the historic downtown public library.
The situation got even worse last week when it came out that two of the people who have been staying at the homeless encampment are convicted sex offenders—men who were found guilty in separate cases of criminal sexual conduct with victims under the age of 13.
A reporter from MLive unwittingly uncovered this fact when she went to the homeless encampment for a story that was meant to elicit compassion for the people living there. The headline was, “‘I’m still a person.’ Jackson homeless residents respond to proposed encampment rules.”
One of the homeless men quoted and photographed in the article was a 61-year-old man named Tim Horton who admitted he had an old felony conviction, but said, “I was a good guy, but wasn’t acting it.”
What the article didn’t say was that Horton’s felony offense from 2005 was a second-degree criminal sexual conduct conviction for videotaping an 8-year-old girl in sexual situations. He’s on the Michigan Sex Offender Registry for it.
Another homeless man quoted in the MLive article, Troy Wireman, is also on the sex offender registry for a 2006 conviction for second-degree criminal sexual conduct, also with a victim under 13.
These are two of the people who have been living in the homeless encampment while families have been going to the library. So yes, people are a little concerned.
Several Jackson residents at the city council meeting also expressed outrage that several neighboring communities, including Kalamazoo, Pleasant Lake, and Jackson, have reportedly been bringing their homeless people to live at the Jackson Public Library, too. Berkemeier said he personally witnessed a Chelsea Police Department officer dropping a homeless woman off at the library’s rear entrance.
There was also some outrage when the Jackson City Council, at the conclusion of the five-and-a-half-hour meeting, failed to adopt the emergency ordinance that would have broken up the encampment. Instead, the council adopted the first reading of a regular ordinance, which means a resolution to the problem is likely weeks or months away.
So the homeless people living on the sidewalk still aren’t breaking any laws, which means they likely aren’t going anywhere for a while.
It’s a mess with no end in sight.
