Homeless folks in Santa Monica might quickly be prohibited from sleeping open air as the town considers altering its anti-camping ordinance to adjust to a latest U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling on the contentious subject.
The prevailing ordinance prohibits tents and makeshift shelters on public property. The revised ordinance would additionally prohibit the town’s unsheltered residents from utilizing blankets, pillows and bedrolls whereas sleeping outdoors, exemptions that had been added in 2022 to adjust to a court docket of appeals ruling.
Santa Monica officers had been anticipated to debate the proposed ordinance together with different suggestions throughout Tuesday night time’s Metropolis Council assembly, however officers postponed the merchandise to be mentioned probably as early as subsequent week.
Homeless folks have lengthy been drawn to Santa Monica, particularly to its promenade and seashores the place vacationers collect. They’ve been blamed for a number of headline-grabbing crimes.
Final summer season, a person who seemed to be homeless assaulted Mayor Phil Brock on the Third Avenue Promenade. Brock was a council member on the time of the assault. This previous Could, a homeless man assaulted three folks on the identical road, stabbing no less than two German vacationers. The next month, Santa Monica police arrested a homeless man who attacked three folks on the seashore, together with an aged lady and a 17-year-old lady.
There are 774 folks experiencing homelessness in Santa Monica, a 6% drop from 826 in 2023, in accordance with the town’s latest homeless depend. At the very least 62% of the unhoused inhabitants lives open air.
Tuesday’s proposed ordinance drew dozens of residents to the Santa Monica council chamber, a few of them addressing the merchandise at the beginning of the assembly.
Wade Kelly, a resident, informed the council throughout public remark that he disagreed with the town’s plan to ban folks from sleeping open air and straight addressed the mayor over it.
“You don’t stand for human rights,” Kelly informed him.
Brock didn’t hesitate to reply again to his remarks.
“I’m beholden to my residents, I’m beholden to our enterprise pursuits and I’m beholden to the individuals who want compassion on our road,” he stated. “The query is, is [it] compassion to let folks lay in our streets and die — I are likely to say that’s neglect, not compassion.”
Some residents wrote to elected officers expressing their disapproval of the proposed ordinance; amongst them was resident Patricia Meyer.
“To concurrently deny an unhoused particular person a blanket and another place to sleep is each imply and absurd,” she wrote.
Kathleen Sheldon, a longtime resident, additionally wrote to officers, saying that stopping folks from sleeping outdoors wouldn’t make the homeless downside disappear.
“It’s going to merely expose determined folks with nowhere to go to much more inhumane situations, additional jeopardizing their well being and security and fairly probably their lives,” she wrote. “Please don’t give in to the loudest and most hateful voices in our neighborhood. As a substitute, withdraw these merciless and counterproductive proposals and do what’s greatest for our metropolis.”
The proposed ordinance that was to be thought-about Tuesday night time stems from a July Metropolis Council assembly through which Mayor Professional Tem Lana Negrete and Councilmember Oscar de la Torre requested metropolis employees to “consider and supply choices to amend the town’s municipal code” in an effort to adjust to the latest U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling.
In June, the nation’s excessive court docket overturned a ruling by the U.S. ninth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals, referred to as the Grant Move determination. That ruling stated that tenting and sleeping ordinances violate the eighth Modification by constituting merciless and strange punishment for individuals who had no different place to go.
The Supreme Courtroom ruling to overturn the Grant Move determination meant cities and counties had been free to ban folks from sleeping or tenting on public property, even when there was no obtainable place to go.
Shortly after that call, Gov. Gavin Newsom directed state businesses to start clearing homeless encampments from state lands; he urged cities and counties to do the identical and threatened to take cash away from cities and counties that didn’t make progress in clearing homeless camp websites.
Final week, the town of Lengthy Seaside started implementing its anti-camping legal guidelines by giving police full discretion to situation citations and make arrests when mandatory. Metropolis officers additionally sought to clear homeless encampments that posed a risk to public well being and security and prevented folks from accessing libraries, parks and seashores. Authorities have additionally focused encampments the place folks had been immune to providers.
In Los Angeles, elected officers stated the governor’s order didn’t change something of their method to clearing encampments.
Though it’s unclear what elected officers plan to do in Santa Monica, metropolis employees have additionally offered them with different suggestions, together with taking no motion. Town’s anti-camping legislation presently prohibits tents and makeshift shelters on public property however does enable folks to make use of blankets and pillows whereas sleeping.
Workers additionally advisable that the town may wait and observe how different cities are approaching homeless encampments amid the Supreme Courtroom ruling.
Tuesday’s controversial proposal additionally got here on the identical night time that metropolis officers had been contemplating buying a industrial constructing on the 1400 block of Wilshire Boulevard for use for a everlasting supportive housing undertaking.
Many residents who dwell across the proposed web site confirmed as much as communicate out in opposition to the undertaking saying it will make their neighborhood extra harmful and fewer interesting to consumers whereas impacting companies.
“We should do one thing to help the unhoused,” Mary Stewart, an residence proprietor, informed the council. “It will truly not do a lot of something however considerably injury the neighborhood for no profit to anybody.”
She and lots of the different residents stated they might be okay with the undertaking so long as the tenants had been low-income seniors.
George Guttman echoed that sentiment, but additionally made a further suggestion to metropolis leaders.
“In the event you’re going to do low-income housing, hopefully you may put households there to allow them to go to our nice college system.”
