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They’re at shopping centers, along alleys, around parking lots and at homes.

I’ve talked to fence company owners and employees a couple of times in the last year and a half, and they confirm business is booming. One of the main causes: a desire to keep street people from hanging out, breaking in or doing drugs on their property.

“It’s definitely still a driving force for people wanting to get fences,� Tom Tronsdal of Canyon Fence Co. told me Tuesday. “Strip centers, places like that, (are) fencing off their properties or trying to eliminate nooks and crannies for people to congregate in.�

Starting this year, putting up a fence because the city engaged in a “pattern, policy or practice� of failing to enforce its laws ought to be something that a property owner could get a tax rebate for. In November, Arizona voters passed Prop. 312, which allows property owners to get a property tax rebate if the local jurisdiction fails to enforce its own laws on misbehavior like loitering, illegal drug use or urinating in public.

But the law has limited applicability in the metro area. And in Tucson, the city with the most potential exposure because of the extent of the problems here, the government is looking for ways to minimize its exposure by amending applicable ordinances.

“In order to best position ourselves legally to deal with potential claims under Prop. 312, it’s really important that we go back and clean up some of our existing ordinances that fall within the scope of this new law,� Tucson City Attorney Mike Rankin told the City Council Jan. 22. “We have a number of existing laws that we don’t enforce because over time, federal law or state law has changed, and those ordinances that are still on our books are not enforceable.�

Unenforced ordinances

Among those the city is looking at amending: The ordinance that bans people from loitering on medians.

“When it went on the books, it was legal and the federal courts approved it,� Rankin told the council. “But then federal law changed and the decisions of federal courts changed over time. The courts recognized that soliciting is a protected First Amendment activity and ordinances written the way ours is written cannot be constitutionally enforced.�

I asked Rankin Tuesday to explain why the city’s median ordinance is unenforceable when Pima County considers its similar ordinance valid and in force. The key is, he said, that the city’s ordinance prohibits solicitation while the county’s ordinance simply prohibits people from being in the median except to cross the street.

“We do have a policy of not enforcing it, because enforcing it would violate people’s constitutional rights,� Rankin told me. “We need to revise it to make it content and speech neutral.�

The same goes for the city’s ordinances that ban camping on public property, Rankin said. The city needs to amend them to make them constitutionally enforceable. And then the city needs to enforce them.

It’s not just the city’s efforts that could make it hard to collect on damages. Under the terms of the proposition, property owners can only get a rebate of their primary property tax. But in some cities, including Marana, Sahuarita and Oro Valley, there is no primary property tax.

And in Tucson, the tax is so small that property owners might only be able to collect a rebate of hundreds of dollars per year for an expense that could cost thousands.

Monica Carlson, for example, told me her HVAC company has spent about $195,000 on extra security over the last three years. The company’s three properties on East Fort Lowell Road have been the site of constant drug use, urination and defecation, property damage and even fire, she said.

Carlson, a leader of the Tucson Crime Free Coalition, said she expects to file a claim eventually. But the amount she’s likely to be able to collect is relatively small. That’s because the proposition allows property owners to collect a rebate from the primary property tax they’ve paid to the local jurisdiction, and the amount paid to the city of Tucson is small. It’s in the low hundreds of dollars for properties like hers.

“We keep our lots very spotless, but every day, it’s a struggle,� she said. “If it’s $20 we can collect (via Prop. 312), we’ll collect it.�

First-time fencing

I talked with Rebecca Wilder, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Revenue, to find out how people can get rebates for amounts that they spend remediating these problems that are greater than their property-tax bill. The answer: They’ll have to file year after year until the total spending is covered.

But that’s only if a claim can be made and either accepted by the city or confirmed by a subsequent lawsuit.

Pima County is more exposed because it charges a much higher primary property tax, but that would only apply to the properties in the unincorporated county, where it has authority to enforce the relevant ordinance — or not enforce them as the case may be. County Administrator Jan Lesher said in a Dec. 30 memo, she thinks the county is well-protected.

“The threshold for demonstrating a ‘policy, pattern or practice’ of non-enforcement is significant protection for Pima County, which can document a long history of policy and programmatic actions taken to mitigate the impact of public nuisance damages associated with unhoused individuals,� she wrote.

But Tronsdal told me about a recent fencing job from which the county may be able to expect a Prop. 312 claim.

“We just fenced a property on the Rillito down behind Tucson Country Club,� he said. “It’s because the homeless encampments were all just coming up on their property. They were having to call the sheriffs almost every day.�

“This person had to invest thousands of dollars to fence off a property that has probably never been fenced off in Tucson’s existence because the encampments were so bad.�