The Santa Monica Metropolis Council is ready to contemplate amendments to its anti-camping ordinance Tuesday night time that will take away a piece that enables homeless folks to make use of pillows and blankets whereas sleeping on public property.
The prevailing ordinance prohibits tents and makeshift shelters in public areas however permits homeless folks to sleep utilizing blankets and pillows beneath sure circumstances.
The proposed amendments would proceed the present distinction between tenting on public property, which is forbidden, and sleeping on public property, which isn’t. To assist outline and determine people who find themselves tenting illegally, the proposed amendments would add sleeping luggage and bedrolls to the record of things prohibited in public areas.
However essentially the most controversial proposed change would strike out a small part of the ordinance that enables homeless folks to make use of pillows, blankets and bedrolls whereas sleeping on public property, exemptions that had been added in 2022 to adjust to an appeals courtroom ruling.
Metropolis officers preserve that regardless of the proposed change, they don’t seem to be contemplating banning sleeping in public locations, nor would they ban the usage of blankets. The adjustments, they are saying, are meant merely to make clear what constitutes “camping.”
Mayor Phil Brock didn’t reply to requests for remark. However in an interview with KTLA, Brock mentioned the adjustments are an try to wash up the streets.
“It’s nothing draconian — nothing onerous,” he instructed the station. “But I feel that if you have someone you’ve offered help to four, five, six times and they won’t move off the street, then we need to somehow get them off the street, get them into treatment, get them into rehab.”
Santa Monica Councilmember Jesse Zwick mentioned that whereas he understood the necessity to management public areas and encourage unhoused folks to go indoors, he didn’t suppose the proposed adjustments had been an efficient strategy.
“I think it’s sort of a fantasy on the part of legislators to believe that if you write down something [as] illegal that it will go away,” he mentioned.
Zwick hopes town will as a substitute spend its power on growing its provide of inexpensive housing and everlasting supportive housing. Not doing so, he mentioned, can be merciless and cynical, given the adjustments the council is contemplating.
Though metropolis workers have advisable that the council approve the amendments, it additionally supplied metropolis leaders with two different choices: take no motion, or wait to see what different cities do to handle homeless encampments.
The amendments had been scheduled to be addressed on the final council assembly Aug. 27, however the dialogue was postponed. That assembly drew dozens of residents who needed to voice their opinion on the anti-camping ordinance, whereas others confirmed as much as communicate in opposition to a proposed everlasting supportive housing challenge.
Homelessness will not be a brand new subject in Santa Monica. Individuals have lengthy been drawn to the favored seashore city, however a sequence of violent crimes on town’s promenade and seashores the place vacationers collect has raised considerations about public security and frustration over town’s dealing with of the homelessness disaster.
Final summer time, a person who seemed to be homeless assaulted Brock on the Third Avenue Promenade. Brock was a councilmember on the time of the assault. In Might, a homeless man assaulted three folks on the identical avenue, 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 girl and a 17-year-old lady.
Presently, there are an estimated 774 folks experiencing homelessness in Santa Monica, a 6% drop from 826 in 2023, in accordance with town’s latest homeless rely. No less than 62% of the unhoused inhabitants lives open air.
Officers say town has been capable of implement its anti-camping legal guidelines partly due to packages that assist stop folks from falling into homelessness, akin to STEP Courtroom, which permits folks to clear misdemeanor information by acquiring housing help and psychological well being and substance use remedy. The town additionally partnered with Los Angeles County to launch the Therapeutic Van Transport Staff, which works alongside first responders to supply help for folks experiencing behavioral well being crises.
The town mentioned it additionally has shelter beds to maneuver folks indoors, though town nonetheless falls about 100 beds in need of the quantity wanted to completely accommodate the unsheltered inhabitants.
The proposed adjustments to town’s anti-camping ordinance stem from a July Metropolis Council assembly during which Mayor Professional Tem Lana Negrete and Councilmember Oscar de la Torre requested metropolis workers members to “evaluate and provide options to amend the city’s municipal code” in mild of the latest U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling.
Negrete and de la Torre didn’t reply to requests for remark.
In June, the nation’s excessive courtroom overturned a ruling by the ninth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals that ordinances in Grants Move, Ore., banning tenting and sleeping in public violated the eighth Modification by constituting merciless and weird punishment for individuals who had no different place to go. The Supreme Courtroom resolution freed cities and counties to ban folks from sleeping or tenting on public property, even when there was no obtainable shelter.
Shortly thereafter, metropolis officers in Lengthy Seaside started to crack down on homeless encampments that they deemed to be problematic, issuing citations to anybody who violated town’s anti-camping ordinance.
Lengthy Seaside officers maintained that citations and arrests can be used solely after outreach groups exhausted each effort to encourage folks to go indoors.
The Santa Monica Metropolis Council assembly is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
