Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

OGDEN — Tuesday afternoon, several people were laying in the grass in Lester Park in central Ogden — sleeping, basking in the shade of the trees and otherwise taking it easy.

Donnie Malone, sitting in the pavilion at the park just off 24th Street, said they were probably homeless, like himself.

“A lot of them come in and get a nap before dark. They get up and leave before the cops come,” he said. “I don’t know where they go. They got their own spots they go to.”

As is, camping in public places in Ogden, including its parks, is against the law. Ogden police, Malone said with chagrin, don’t shy from enforcing the ordinance, though they’ll back off in rainy weather, letting people take shelter in the pavilion.

“I don’t understand it. Where do they want us to go?” he said, a second homeless man, shirtless and in jeans, spread across a picnic table in the pavilion. Lester Park sits at 663 24th St., near the Main Branch library.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

At any rate, Ogden officials are now mulling change to the camping ordinance, not necessarily to make it tougher, but to clarify the language and to make it easier to enforce.

Camping in unauthorized areas is “a public health hazard for the citizens,” said Monte Stewart of the Ogden Public Services Department, which oversees everything from parks to public works operations. “It’s not a manner people should be living. It’s dangerous.”

He addressed the Ogden City Council on Tuesday on the proposed change, which leaders will likely formally consider at a future meeting.

Aside from more precisely defining illegal camping, it also contains a provision prohibiting people from leaving their personal items on public property for more than 15 minutes. Leaving belongings in public places — like bags full of clothing and toiletries — can impede pedestrians and cars, Stewart said.

The proposed change also contains a provision giving police leeway to steer clear of enforcing the ordinance if the city’s shelters are full.

While key aims in preventing camping in public places, leaders say, are to keep them clean and to make sure the space — parks, for instance — can be used as intended, directing the homeless to resources at their disposal is also an aim, Stewart added. Furthermore, Ogden is required to have an ordinance prohibiting unauthorized camping as part of a state program that provides the city with some $1.7 million a year to deal with homelessness.

Justin Anderson, deputy director of public services with Ogden, said the homeless will camp in city parks, along the trail aside the Ogden River, by golf courses and elsewhere.

“It’s all year. It’s never-ending,” he said. “It overwhelms city resources and employees.”

Malone, the homeless man who was in Lester Park, thinks the issue is getting worse. He’s not comfortable staying in shelters and, notwithstanding officials’ goal of getting the homeless assistance, bemoans moves to keep them out of parks and public places.

“It’s not getting any better, more and more homeless every day. We have to find a spot and lay low so they don’t come in and harass us,” he said. “To be treated like this because we’re homeless is not right. It’s inhumane.”

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