Phil Hemphill is mad. He says he and others, including downtown merchants, have been duped by the city’s Task Force on Homeless Services.

“I’ve been snookered,” he said. “Hoodwinked.”

Hemphill, who lives across the street from both the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen and Lawrence Community Shelter, said he’d been assured the task force intended to hold the homeless accountable for engaging in unruly behavior.

But when the task force met earlier this week, its members, he said, balked at imposing sanctions on antisocial behavior: trespassing, panhandling, public drunkenness.

“They’ve pulled off the best PR job I’ve ever seen,” Hemphill said. “They convinced everybody they were there to listen to the public’s concerns, when, in truth, they didn’t pay a bit of attention.”

The task force meets again Monday. It’s expected to present its recommendations to the City Commission in late March or early April.

Several members of the task force said Hemphill’s interpretation of their deliberations was off target, and that several get-tough measures are likely to be included in the group’s final recommendations.

“Everyone on the task force is concerned that (Hemphill’s) voice be heard,” said task force member Steve Ozark. “The problem we have is that some of the proposals put forth by Mr. Hemphill and others didn’t pass a majority vote because some portion of the proposal wouldn’t or couldn’t work.”

Ozark said the task force would post its reasons for accepting, rejecting or modifying recommendations from the public.

But Hemphill said that after the meeting Monday, it was clear task force members oppose background checks, penalties for bad behavior, limits on how long a person can stay at a shelter, or creating a single site for homeless services.

“I keep hearing how the public needs to get behind this and put up the money for this,” Hemphill said. “But I don’t see any accountability being built in.”

Merchant concerns

Hemphill’s concerns about unruly homeless people and ways to correct their behavior match those of several downtown merchants.

“From what I gather, it’s looking like the task force’s approach is going to be status quo with a greater degree of city funding,” said Peter Zacharas, who owns a business downtown. “That’s pretty disturbing.”

Zacharas asked that his business not be identified, saying that the last time he publicly criticized the city’s approach to homelessness his store was vandalized.

“What we want is accountability,” Zacharas said. “But right now, all the caregivers say they can only be responsible for what goes on in their facilities. So if someone aggressively panhandles or urinates in public — as long they’re not on facility property, they can still stay at the shelter.”

‘Another can of worms’

But defining accountability isn’t as clear-cut as it sounds, Ozark said.

“Let’s take sanctions, for example,” Ozark said. “Banishing someone (from LINK or the shelters) sounds reasonable, but what usually happens is the person who’s banished ends up causing problems someplace else, usually downtown. So instead of making things better, we’d be making them worse.”

Also, he said, the shelters and LINK have systems in place for denying services to troublemakers.

“But that opens another can of worms,” Ozark said. “At one of our meetings, a homeless individual said he’d been kicked out of one of the shelters for arguing with someone who had the power to kick him out. So because two people disagreed, we wound up with another person sleeping on the street.”

Mayor Mike Rundle, the task force’s chairman, said he remained confident in the group’s processes for building consensus.

“I understand Mr. Hemphill’s frustration, and he’s certainly been more than patient with us,” Rundle said. “But our goal is to come up with effective recommendations, and that remains our goal.”

The task force’s Monday meeting will be in the form of an all-day retreat at the city Department of Neighborhood Resources conference room in Riverfront Plaza. The meeting will not be open to public comment.

A coalition of downtown merchants intends to file a separate list of recommendations with the City Commission.