Is That Even Legal?
Is That Even Legal?
Can the Law Stop Homelessness? Suing the Cities for Nuisance...
When cities lets homeless camps spiral out of control...who are they serving? A constitutional scholar and law professor is suing big cities on the premise of nuisance laws...and he is winning. In one instance, his action cleared a massive
homeless encampment in Phoenix, known as "the zone."
Listen in as Bob spars with our special guest, constitutional expert and author, Ilan Wurman. We delve headfirst into the legal complexities and human disaster is homelessness and inadvertent implications of old court decisions.
Listen as we expose what the court found was a city's negligence in enforcing laws against public camping and sleeping, leading to the unfortunate living conditions of up to a thousand individuals, struggling with issues ranging from drugs and violence to human waste. Discover how public nuisance lawsuits are being used to address the crisis without adding to the criminalization of homelessness. We are reminded the pervasive role of addiction and mental illness in the homeless scenario.
Will we see nuisance lawsuits nationwide? Gain insights into this ripple effect and the fierce stance of organizations like the ACLU against the removal of homeless camps.
We discuss if it's high time for cities to prioritize the well-being of their residents over lawsuit fears. Spoiler alert, it is.
This is a cutting edge episode you don't want to miss.
It's a phrase from popular movies. It's also a question that comes up in our daily life. The question is is that even legal? We talk about the things that drive you crazy, the things you won't believe and the things you need to know and understand. I'm attorney Bob Sewell and this is the podcast. Is that Even Legal? Let's get started. Today on the show is Ilan Wurman. Ilan is a professor, he is a return guest. He is a constitutional genius, he's an author. I'm going to say he's also a hellraiser. Welcome to the show.
Ilan Wurman:Thanks for having me Raising Hell is definitely the favorite part of my occupation.
Bob Sewell:Ilan, you've done what a lot of people wanted to do but just didn't know how. What you've done is you've cleared in Phoenix what's called the zone. Let me explain to our listeners. The zone is a section of Phoenix that had a large homeless encampment. My first encounter with the zone was a couple of few years ago. I was second or third chair on a really important case. Our clients were the Netherlands. I'm patting myself on the back right now, but our clients were the Netherlands. With me are my co-counsel, our counterpart, council for the Netherlands in the Netherlands, a high level bureaucrat with the Netherlands, the Netherlands ambassador. We're driving from the courthouse downtown. We're heading downtown Phoenix for some food. That was my first encounter with the zone. A couple blocks of just homeless encampment. Frankly, it was dangerous. What the zone it was unsanitary human excrement, urine all over the place. They were blocking sidewalks, tents everywhere, Prostitution was everywhere in their zone, Drugs, violence. It wasn't a good scene. How was it cleared?
Ilan Wurman:This all started when one of my friends and actually a former client in another matter in which I tried to raise hell involving some COVID litigation lives down there. He has a building down there and he also lives down there. The situation became untenable. We had effectively what was a 1,000 person open air public encampment on the streets and sidewalks of downtown Phoenix. It was a humanitarian disaster. It basically looked like a third world country in the middle of a rich country rich first world industrial economy. Most of this problem I mean there had always been some homelessness there, in particular, because there is a shelter there, there are services there it had always attracted that area in downtown Phoenix, had always attracted some amount of vagrants. But something happened in 2018 that dramatically changed the nature of the situation.
Ilan Wurman:That was a court decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case is called Martin Against City of Boise, in which the Ninth Circuit, which is this traditionally very progressive circuit it's become less so, but still has that progressive pedigree, I would say, and progressive inclinations. That decision basically said that there was a constitutional right to shelter in public. Now, I should be clear that the decision did not actually say that. That's how it's been interpreted, and that's the problem. What the decision really said was that you can't criminalize involuntary homelessness or involuntarily being unsheltered, which, when you think about it, actually makes sense. If you literally have nowhere else to go, you're homeless, there's no shelter available to you, you have a biological need to sleep and to lie down and you have nowhere else to do it. There is something odd about criminalizing that if it's truly involuntary. The problem, of course, is that all of these cities use that decision as an excuse to stop enforcing the laws against public camping and public sleeping altogether. In other words, although the decision only applies to a few individuals who are truly involuntarily homeless, the cities have basically used that as an excuse to say well, if you don't want to go to a shelter, we can't force you to go to a shelter because you're homeless and we can't criminalize being homeless.
Ilan Wurman:But that's not what it says. If the decision say, if you have a shelter bed available to you and you refuse it, you are not involuntarily homeless. You are now voluntarily homeless, or rather voluntarily unsheltered, but that didn't matter to the city. What basically happened was, after this decision, a bunch of advocates drove down in buses handing out tents to the hundreds and hundreds of people who had been there. The city, basically, with threats of ACLU lawsuits, basically said look, based on these Boise decisions, based on this night circuit decision, we're not going to enforce the camping ban. As a result of that, the city totally abdicated its responsibility over the homelessness crisis or I really should say the public camping crisis and led to a truly abhorrent, untenable situation. Up to a thousand people at some point live there, as you indicated when you were doing your Netherlands case. There is violence, there's drugs, there's human waste and excrement, it's unsanitary, illegal environmental discharge all sorts of things going on there, very dangerous and unsanitary conditions. That's the background to this.
Bob Sewell:It made it untenable for anyone else to live there, anyone else to run a business in the area. Frankly, I don't think it was incredibly humanitarian to allow it to go on to the people, because a lot of it, if you're choosing that environment, it's because you are heavily addicted to drugs, it's because you have mental illness. You are in need of the services that are provided in the shelters, do you?
Ilan Wurman:think I'm wrong. Not at all. We think you're very much right about that. We filed a lawsuit under a theory called public nuisance. It's very important to understand that in this lawsuit we were not seeking damages. We were not even seeking to overturn the Ninth Circuit decisions. Nobody wants anybody to go to jail.
Ilan Wurman:But what we claimed is whatever if these decisions which they do don't prohibit the city, don't preclude the city from enforcing some sleeping bands and some camping bands, some of the time, part of footnote in one of the decisions say well, you could still ban in public parks. Well, that's true, you can't allow these encampments in a condition that constitutes a public nuisance. A public nuisance is a super traditional common law claim about interference with rights, property, rights of the general public, the use of streets, odors, noises that affect the public in general. What we claimed was not only would abating this nuisance be better for the businesses, as you suggested, because it's become untenable to live there, untenable to do business, it's better for the unsheltered community as well. They don't want to be in those conditions. It's true that some of them prefer to be out in a tent doing drugs as opposed to being somewhere else, but at the end of the day. Being in a situation where there's public nuisance conditions is not good for anybody. That was the theory of this case. We won.
Ilan Wurman:We got a court order declaring the zone to be a public nuisance. It met the various statutory definitions of a public nuisance. The court ordered the city to abate that nuisance. The deadline was November 4. Of course, the city appealed and tried to stay the injunction pending appeal and all that stuff. They lost all those appeals and at least the temporary appeals about staying the injunction pending appeal and so on.
Ilan Wurman:They had to clean up and it turns out they did. Turns out they did. All it took was a court order telling them actually you can enforce the law against people who have shelter available but refuse to take it. Actually you can do that. Actually you can open what we call the, what's called often a sanctioned campsite or structured campground, with the city called a safe outdoor space. In other words, you don't have to allow them on the streets and the sidewalks. You could open up a city lot or a state lot, like many other cities have done Las Vegas, santa Rosa, denver has done this too. Keep it orderly and clean. Give some order parties. It doesn't have to be on the streets. This is the point. It doesn't have to be indoors, necessarily, but it doesn't have to be on the streets. The court agreed with us and, turns out, this city was able to clean it up.
Bob Sewell:Yeah, that's so important. I often think about this case because it's starting to catch on in other cities. Have you heard of this catching on? You're not the only one bringing these action. You brought this action. Have you brought another one?
Ilan Wurman:Actually, yes, we have. We brought a similar action in Tucson, on behalf of only a small number of residents, though, and we brought a lawsuit in Salt Lake City. There has also been a similar lawsuit in Sacramento that was not brought by us. That's the only lawsuit I know of that wasn't brought by us. But, yes, we are actively looking to replicate this elsewhere. We are happy if there are copycat lawsuits in other cities. We think it's time to end this truly insane policy with respect to homelessness and public encampments, because it doesn't work and it's not humane.
Bob Sewell:The reason why I was to follow up on what I was saying. As I was thinking about this case and the other cases that are rising. It seems like what the cities want is to be sued. I know that sounds insane, but if they're sued and they lose, they have to do what they really want to do.
Ilan Wurman:That was our suspicion. I don't think it's been borne out exactly because at the end of the day, what city officials want is power and they don't want to be told what to do. But there were certainly elements in the city governments who welcomed the suit because they thought it gives them cover against critics, progressive advocates in particular, who might otherwise interfere or claim that this is bad or unlawful. It also gives them cover against lawsuits filed by the ACLU. The ACLU has been filing lawsuits against cities left and right. The moment they try to remove a single homeless camp. It's really insane. The ACLU, it is not what it once was. Boy has that organization fallen. They just filed a lawsuit in Berkeley and the complaint is insane. It's outrageous.
Ilan Wurman:Berkeley, on the face of the complaint, the ACLU admits Berkeley offered every single person that they wanted to remove from the street a hotel room. A hotel room. That is the gold standard for an unsheltered person because there are no rules. It's non-congregate setting. It's your own room. No one can be there inside with you. You can do whatever you want in that hotel room. No one can tell if you're doing drugs or not. It is the gold standard.
Ilan Wurman:And yet the ACLU sued. Say well, if they want to have two tents on the street because that gives them more freedom and they like the fresh air, then they're allowed to be there instead of choosing a hotel room, which is absolutely insane, because you have to remember at that point when you actually have that choice put to you and then you choose to be on the streets. There are other people involved. There are other residents involved. There is the public rights that are involved. The ACLU is bringing these, quite frankly, terroristic lawsuits to terrorize the cities against doing anything about any unsheltered people. It is totally insane and outrageous. Our view is cities have to stop worrying about what is the ACLU going to do? Are we going to be sued? We can't do this because that threatens a lawsuit. They have to start worrying about what if Professor Werman and the residents are bringing a public nuisance lawsuit? That's what they want to start worrying about. That's what I'm trying to instill that fear in these cities.
Bob Sewell:The thing is, the ACLU stance to me is incredibly inhumane. I enjoy riding my bicycle. I ride my bicycle to and from work frequently. As I ride my bicycle, I ride along the paths that cars don't drive, those areas that are frequented by homeless people. I see humanity there. A lot of the people there are on drugs and you can tell they're strung out. A lot of them are able-bodied. Some of them are not able-bodied. A lot of them are visibly struggling with mental health. You see them talking to themselves and the looks on their faces. You can tell they're struggling with mental health. When I see this, I realize without intervention, if they're just lectured their own devices, they will die on the streets. It's hot out there. In areas where it's cold, they'll die on the streets. It's cold out there.
Bob Sewell:When I see these organizations and the name of humanity take an incredibly inhumane stance for people that are struggling to make decisions regarding their person that are reasonable, reasonable decisions, it's this weird flip of false charity. It's a weird situation. It's more humane, in my opinion, to say, hey, look, come on into the shelter. Then, when social workers see that you are struggling with mental health, that you can't keep it together, that you get court-ordered treatment Because no one wants to hear voices in their head. They want to be well. Drug addicts don't want to be drug addicts. They want to be well, but they lack the ability to get well.
Ilan Wurman:I don't quite understand what the progressive theory is here. By progressive, I don't even know if this applies to all progressives. It certainly applies to these hardcore progressive advocates in the homelessness space, but their ideology seems to be that. I mean, there are two things going on here. This might get a little conspiratorial, but prove me wrong.
Bob Sewell:Let's just do it, let's just go for it.
Ilan Wurman:The first element of this conspiratorial thinking that I'm about to advance here again, I'm not sure it's actually wrong. The presence of these public encampments makes capitalism look bad. It makes capitalism look like a total failure. How can you be in this rich, wealthy, free-market, capitalistic society and let a certain segment of the population languish and swallow like this? To them it makes capitalism look bad, and they want capitalism to continue to look bad. They want this problem to fester.
Ilan Wurman:Now, what is the solution, then, to this problem? Free housing for everybody, the most anti-capitalist solution, the most collectivist, socialist solution available, which is literally what they say. This is what the housing-first policy is. Housing-first is this ideology about how you solve homelessness. It is this idea that you don't solve public encampments, you don't solve mental health crises, you don't solve drug abuse. The problem is well, they're homeless because housing is too expensive. They're homeless because they need a free house, and what we need to do is provide free housing for them and ultimately for everybody, but of course, free. And so that's the theory. I think they want this to fester, unless the solution is this anti-capitalist solution of free housing for everybody.
Ilan Wurman:Now let me add that I don't think free housing actually works, for the reasons you mentioned, bob. Okay, because they don't need a house. I mean, of course, all else being equal, having a house or having shelter is better than not having a house or having shelter. But the problem is, once they get into the house, what are they doing? All the same destructive things that they did before they were homeless. So I try to practice what I preach. I try to invest in this condo project where we would rent out the units to an organization that would pay the rent on behalf of un-sheltered people or housing insecure people, people on the cusp of homelessness or who are actually homeless. And when you get the right person, this is a great deed. It's free market capitalism working.
Ilan Wurman:The landowner makes money and this homelessness organization helps place people in housing. When it works, okay. But more often than not it doesn't actually work, because they get into the house and then they utterly destroy the unit. I mean, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars in damage. Doesn't make it worthwhile for the landowner and of course, nothing's changed about their situation, because then they get kicked out and they're right back on the street. Turns out, the house is not what they needed. There are certain preconditions that need to be met right. Mental health issues, substance abuse issues, productivity issues, and housing is certainly. Housing is necessary, but it is not first and again. That's what they call it. Housing first will deal with it all later. That's exactly backward. That's exactly backward because they're not going to improve in a house, right, let me?
Bob Sewell:push back a little bit, okay, and on the similar vein, if the government doesn't have facilities to address the mental health issues, if the government doesn't have the facilities to address the addiction crisis, then what are you actually doing here?
Ilan Wurman:Well, again, it's their policy, right. They call it housing first. What about a substance treatment first? What about mental health first? Why don't people talk about any of that?
Bob Sewell:right, but I want to push back a little bit further, because if all we do is clear the encampment which is important, right, I mean we could agree it's important, aren't we just clearing the encampment if we don't address the addiction issue? If we don't address the mental health issues that put them in their gen-.
Ilan Wurman:I agree. The question is, where are these problems going to be solved? They're not going to be solved on the street, okay, and they're not going to be solved in a hotel room that nobody monitors. And they're not going to be solved in a free house that nobody monitors okay, you need to get these people help. Where do you get them help? Where the services are, where the continuum of care is, and that tends to be in congregate and non-congregate shelter, emergency shelter spaces okay, that's the question.
Ilan Wurman:Now, that raises this issue of, well, what happens if there are unavailable spots or if there are insufficient spots for everybody? Well, it turns out in most of these cities, okay, there are spots available, there are. It's just the city chooses not to force anybody into them because of this ideology that I mentioned that, well, we can't force anybody to go anywhere. If they don't want to go into a shelter and stop doing drugs, I can't force them to do it. Of course you can, okay, so when we filed this lawsuit in Tucson, okay, there's an annual point in time count. Every city must do this under various HUD rules, housing and urban development rules. Every year in January, they count the number of unsheltered people, the number of sheltered homeless people, the number of beds available for homeless individuals. It turns out in Tucson, on the point in time count, in January of 2023, there were over 1,000 and unoccupied beds available for unsheltered people in Tucson, basically enough for 70% of the unsheltered population. Okay, why aren't those beds filled? Why aren't those beds filled? Because the Tucson policy is well. If you're on the street, in a camp, in a wash, at a bus stop, we can't force you to go into one of these beds if you don't want to go. But of course you can. In the same way, you could force anybody to stop violating the law. Who's violating the law? The people who are out there camping in public. If they have a choice to go into a shelter but refuse that choice, their being outside is now conduct and is prescribable conduct. It's illegal conduct. It is conduct that has been illegal for centuries and nothing prevents a city, a state or any level of government from enforcing the laws against those individuals.
Ilan Wurman:Now, to be sure, okay, there isn't a one for one. You know, there isn't a bed for every single unsheltered person. Now, of course, you don't need it because most of the unsheltered people won't take the bed because they have those other issues we talked about, right? Well, that goes back to sanctioned campsites, structured campsites.
Ilan Wurman:Las Vegas has a lot with shade, very cheap to set up, right. It's like think of a carport, okay, where the shade is provided by some structure overhead, so it's not a closed facility, but there's the sun is being blocked by some structure. Think of like a carport, okay, in Arizona they can house or house might not be the right word shelter 800 people on this lot in Las Vegas, in this community I think it's called the Esperanza community, so it's not a shelter, okay, it's low barrier. So, you know, you could I believe you could bring your partner or you could bring pets, you could bring property. I don't know. If you can do drugs, okay, that would be extra low barrier if they were allowed to do drugs there. But the point is it gets them off the street for people who aren't ready to accept shelter or if shelter isn't available, and it improves the environment. It's better for everybody, and so I just it's the cities, it's the city's policy choices that are causing this.
Bob Sewell:Oh, okay, let me push back a little bit. It's hard for me to push back on these arguments because I tend to agree okay, but I gotta push back. As you know that you mentioned, one of the issues that was mentioned by the court is there are people that have animals and they want to be with their animals. That's something I see frequently on my ride is people with dogs, and the reason why the unsheltered, the homeless population have dogs and they're frequently vicious dogs like the pit bulls and things like this is for security reasons. They want to make sure that they're safe while they're sleeping, and so if they can't bring their dogs, they're leaving someone very important to them and for their safety, for their companionship, and you can't bring a dog into the shelter.
Ilan Wurman:What do you do about that? Yeah, that's an excellent question. Of course, the first thing I'll say is most people don't actually have pets. That stop the reason Some do, and that's why they claim that they can't go into a shelter. Now, of course, the theory is when you're in a shelter, that should be safer than being out on the street, to the point where you don't need a vicious dog to alert you to possible issues. Now, of course, the response is usually well, actually, congregate settings are not safe.
Ilan Wurman:A lot of people feel that they aren't safe in congregate settings. I think that's a bit overstated. Obviously, at the Phoenix trial, everybody agreed that a congregate shelter space is safer than being outside on the street. But it's true that the individuals, the sheltered individuals, who refuse to go out there, claim they don't feel safe, claim they feel safer. Look, obviously there are things that could be done in congregate shelter settings to make people feel safer Better police for weapons, drugs and things like that.
Ilan Wurman:Obviously, we segregate domestic violence, shelters, domestic violence, survivor shelters and things like that, and so I am not an expert on the data in terms of crimes that are committed in congregate shelters, attacks that are committed in congregate shelters, but we do know what goes on in the unsheltered community in the zone in Phoenix. What went on there, and that was crime-ridden violence, attacks, assault, gunshots routinely, and so anybody who claims, well, I'd rather be outside on the street, yes, with my dog, than in a congregate shelter where I could also get help, incidentally, and be protected from the heat, incidentally is just there's something else going on there and I don't think that's a real excuse.
Bob Sewell:Let me ask you when I read that you're going to bring a case in Salt Lake City, I was a little surprised. A few years back I don't know how many years ago the Salt Lake City as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints they got together and they decided they're going to solve the homeless crisis. They invested millions of dollars into the homeless crisis and really felt like they made progress. And since then I don't know what's happened. What's going on?
Ilan Wurman:Is it?
Bob Sewell:this problem with this case, this Boise Idaho case.
Ilan Wurman:So the Boise Idaho case is not binding in the 10th Circuit, where Utah is. But yes, the city officials routinely cite the 9th Circuit decision as a constitutional limit on what they can do, and the ACLU, in fact, has filed a brief in our case claiming that there are Eighth Amendment protections and so basically trying to get a Boise ruling for that. Now look, the state can have whatever policy it wants. At the end of the day, the state doesn't have its own police force. The state depends on city officials or county officials, of course to enforce state laws, and county officials don't even really enforce state laws within the jurisdiction of the city. I mean county sheriffs don't. There are county attorneys. I don't know exactly how it works, but there are county attorneys and city attorneys. In Phoenix, in Salt Lake City, there are city attorneys, for sure. I'm sure there's also county attorneys. But you rely on local officials, you rely on the mayor. Well, if the mayor, mayor Mendenhall in Salt Lake City, believes.
Bob Sewell:By the way, she's an old college friend of mine.
Ilan Wurman:Oh good, well, tell her what I think. Center this, center this. Well, ok, if you're yeah, yeah, because let me tell you I don't know what she thinks, though I can tell you what her lawyers think in the city attorney's office and I wish I had fired up the briefs on my computer here but they literally said in their briefing we can't force anybody to go anywhere. Exactly the same line that they said in the Phoenix case, like what do you mean? You can't force? What you mean is you don't want to force anybody to go anywhere. What you mean is your policy is that, well, if they don't voluntarily choose to accept a shelter and voluntarily choose these restrictions, we're not going to force them in there. How do we force them in there? Right, of course that's not what they're saying. They're saying we can't force them. What do you mean? That's like saying, well, I can't force somebody who committed a murder to go to jail. How do I do that? I don't know. Handcuff them, you know. It's like the government has the legitimate use of force here.
Ilan Wurman:Ok, phoenix proved you could absolutely clean up a 1,000-person encampment with a court order. Turns out they were saying how are we supposed to do? It? Turned out. When they were told you don't have a choice, they figured it out. You know who else figured it out San Francisco and Gavin Newsom.
Ilan Wurman:All it took was a visit from Xi Jinping the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, and it turns out they figured it out. Turns out we can't force them to go anywhere. So we're joking with our clients that we're working on getting an invite to Salt Lake City in Tucson from Xi Jinping, and we'll get the cities cleaned up right quick that way.
Bob Sewell:Well, you know it's interesting. I used to live in that area and I went to university in Utah from my undergrad and it was an issue that people were angry about then back in the late 90s, where the city would routinely clean out drug infested areas. So if Bob Sewell and a bunch of his friends decided to have a drum circle and do a bunch of drugs in the Pioneer Park, the city would get together and the police would take out Bob Sewell and all his friends and there was a certain crowd there was like oh, we can't do that. All they're doing is causing a ruckus that is bothering everyone in the neighborhood and doing a bunch of illegal drugs. That's all they're doing. And people that side was upset. And of course, you can't take your kids to the Pioneer Park when Pioneer Park is full of people who are stoned and being idiots. So there is a certain amount of common sense has left us and so I'm surprised where they went with this.
Ilan Wurman:By the way, pioneer Park is the area that we've sued over in Salt Lake City Pioneer Park and Gateway Plaza, which I think are kind of joining or something like that the Gateway Plaza area. So that is exactly turns out we replaced all you know, marijuana using hippies, with fentanyl, using drug addicts and so on, and it's pretty bad, pretty bad over there.
Bob Sewell:Is this a solution? There's a problem in our communities, in a lot of the inner cities like Baltimore, with Trink, where people are. You know Philadelphia has a huge Trink problem. People are coming out, they're publicly intoxicated. Do we now get to collect them up under the public nuisance theory?
Ilan Wurman:Okay, there are a few things that are important to recognize about this suit, this claim. The claim isn't that the city is failing to enforce laws, though of course they are, which is the problem. If you have a vagrant on the street or a panhandler on the street, that alone does not amount to a public nuisance. The single use of an intoxicated person in public is not, in most jurisdictions, of public nuisance, though there are statutes, by the way, that label drug dealing a public nuisance. If it's in your house, if you're running a drug den, your den can be declared a public nuisance and you can be evicted, destroyed whatever. The claim here is that the city owns the land on which these public encampments are and that the attempts, the illegal discharge, the human waste, the sanitation problems and the drug use and the crime together amount to this public nuisance on the city's land. This isn't a matter of failing to enforce the laws against third parties and particular individuals.
Ilan Wurman:The problem is that the city is operating a nuisance on its land. The city is maintaining a nuisance on its land. It's not the city's failure to do X. The problem is the city is doing Y and Y is illegally. Y is maintaining a public nuisance. That's the theory. Yes, if the city allows a drug den to operate in a public park, then yes, the city is liable for a public nuisance in the same way that any private landowner would be. Would a private landowner get away with saying, well, it costs money. I have other priorities with my life, other things I'd like to do with my time. No, of course not. No, of course not. That's the problem here. It's not isolated drug addicts, it's not isolated panhandlers, it's these conditions together on the city lands.
Bob Sewell:What's interesting is in Phoenix, if it correctly from wrong. I'm going back to when I read the opinion from the judge, but I believe there was an accusation that the judge confirmed that people were just dropping people off in the zone. I don't know if there are city officials or if they're just nonprofits or they're just like. They drive to the zone and say you are now homeless. Since you are homeless, this is your new house.
Ilan Wurman:That was our claim. The testimony showed that there were police courtesy rods that were given, which of course makes sense in the sense that, okay, you're un-sheltered, you're homeless, you have this problem, let me send you to Central Arizona Shelter Services or the Human Services Campus or St Vincent de Paul, all these service providers down there. But the problem was they would give them a courtesy ride down there and then say, okay, see you later. They had no idea whether they actually went into the service providers, whether they actually accepted services. The result of it was that people would just set up tents there. They would see oh, this is where we can be, the police won't send us anywhere. It became the de facto sanctuary zone in Phoenix, where the public camping and sleeping walls would not be enforced. That's right, that's exactly what was happening.
Bob Sewell:Permit me to be a little probing. But how are you funding this? This is not cheap stuff.
Ilan Wurman:The good news is we were granted attorney's fees by the court under the public attorney general excuse me, the private attorney general doctrine, and so our property owners did raise some money initially, and they were hoping to fund this lawsuit, and so I think you can see this in our application for fees. They raised something like $60,000, a lot of which went to that was long since gone.
Bob Sewell:That's nothing. That's not real money.
Ilan Wurman:Right, and a lot of it went to the parallel ACLU lawsuit in federal court, for which we'll never get attorney's fees. And there are other things that we might not probably won't, get attorney's fees for, and the hope, I think, was that they'd be able to finance us and fund this lawsuit. Obviously, they benefit greatly in the sense of property values now that the zone is cleared, but that doesn't mean that they have cash on hand. A lot of these people are very small businesses. A lot of them have been hurting for a long time but at that point.
Ilan Wurman:So we ran out of money pretty quickly, but we said look, this is a public service, this is a public service and we were willing to continue pursuing the lawsuit in the hopes of getting attorney's fees, and so we're very grateful that the judge granted us fees. He has not granted the specific amount yet. That's still being argued and litigated, and so hopefully we'll get an answer about that soon. But whether we get paid or not as much as I would love to get paid it was all worth it. It was all worth it for the public service that we did.
Bob Sewell:Oh yeah, absolutely, and then without people like you, I mean, we wouldn't be able to solve problems.
Ilan Wurman:It's we need sort of the lack of the hellraisers, the hellraisers like you Tell you what it helps to be a law professor with lifetime tenure. There are some things that I can do and to suit certain risks that other normal lawyers can't. Now, of course, turns out I was right about it all. So if we were worried about the public reaction to this lawsuit, turns out I was right about it. People were nervous about. I was nervous about the reaction to the COVID lawsuit I filed against Governor Ducey Back in the day when I represented 130 bars that were shut down while Governor Ducey let restaurants stay open, including restaurants that turned into night clubs at night.
Ilan Wurman:That restaurant turned out to be really cool guy and he's now a client and like some other stuff. But still it's unfair discrimination and of course, everybody excoriated us at the time was being anti COVID public health measures and it's like nonsense or against discrimination or against unilateral executive action. Of course it turns out we were right about all of that too, and the public is now starting to see it our way. So, but it certainly helps to have tenure when you're a little bit ahead of the public sentiment.
Bob Sewell:Professor, thanks for coming on.
Ilan Wurman:Thanks for having me.
Bob Sewell:Thanks for listening to. Is that Even Legal? Remember this isn't legal advice. If you have a legal question for yourself, reach out to an attorney. Remember that we're fun, we're lovable and we are here to help you To my listeners in 93 countries across the world. If you have something you want to explore, email us at produceratevenlegalcom and don't be shy about leaving a review for this podcast on your favorite podcast forum. See you next time.