Officials take action to curb food lines, sleeping in commercial doorways
With the aim of limiting the numbers of homeless people downtown, the Santa Monica City Council enacted two controversial laws Tuesday that will make life more difficult for those living on the city’s streets.
The first ordinance forces charitable organizations running free meal programs in city parks to apply for a permit if the gathering is over 150 people. Each organization must also receive a permit from the Los Angeles County Health Department, verifying their programs follow health codes and are not conducted more than three times in a 90-day period.
“This would not make distributing food illegal,” Moutrie said. “It does recognize there is a state law that requires a permit.”
Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown, who voted against the measure along with Mayor Mike Feinstein, said the new law misplaces blame for rowdy, unsociable behavior on the homeless, and it would not address the root causes of the problem.
“I haven’t heard about people who had too much to eat,” he said. “What I’ve been hearing about are people that have had too much to drink.”
“I haven’t heard about people who had too much to eat. What I’ve been hearing about are people that have had too much to drink.” — — KEVIN MCKEOWN Santa Monica Mayor Pro Tem
Joel Schwartz, the city’s homeless services director, said the ordinance would make it more difficult for some to distribute food in the city’s parks, leaving a void the city may have to address.
“We may find that without the food programs there will be more dumpster-diving and that (homeless) people will still come to Santa Monica.”
Additionally, the council unanimously enacted an ordinance allowing businesses to post signs prohibiting sleeping in doorways and vestibules downtown and in the commercial zones along Main Street from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. However, the council instructed city staff to develop how the process would be implemented.
Moutrie said the ordinance skirted infringing state trespassing laws by addressing a public health threat. Many businesses report having to clean up urine and feces after a homeless person slept in their doorway.
“Using a doorway as a personal rest-room is a very real health hazard to us all,” she said.
However, because the city was reacting to an isolated public health threat and not trespassing in general, Moutrie said the council could not legally expand the ordinance city-wide.
Originally the ordinance did not allow businesses that did not want homeless persons sleeping in their doorways to post signs prohibiting. Moutrie said allowing the posting requirement would now make the law more easily challenged in court.
“If you add a posting requirement it’s more likely it will be challenged for pre-empting state law,” she said. But the council added the provision over her warning.
Some believe the ordinance may only serve to move large numbers of homeless persons from one area to another, making the ordinance difficult for police officers to enforce.
“I was surprised by the council’s action,” said Schwartz. “It sounds like the ordinance, as it’s written, will push people into residential areas.”
But Santa Monica Police Chief James T. Butts Jr. said both ordinances were written in a way that would actually make policing public health threats more easy.
For the food lines law, officers can easily check whether or not groups have the required permits, and officers will now easily be able to spot those persons who are sleeping in doorways against a property owner’s wishes, Butts said.
“For efficiency of enforcement, they are wonderful (ordinances),” he said.
Homeless activists have vowed they will legally challenge the city’s new laws, which they say unfairly target the homeless and violate the constitutional rights of food distributors and the poor.
The pair of laws were enacted after a long and in-depth debate by council members Tuesday on Santa Monica’s policies toward its homeless population. Previously, the council heard nearly four hours of public testimony — from both homeless, activists, businesses interests and residents — at its meeting two weeks ago.
Council members said the city is continuing its compassion toward the homeless by forcing them into social service programs designed to lift them off the streets, instead of making it easier for them to remain there with easy access to free food and places to sleep.
Some council members voted for curbing meal programs in the parks to force the charitable organizations to link their programs with city-funded social service agencies.
Efforts over the past few weeks to voluntarily link the two groups have failed, and both sides report there is little room for negotiation. The charities say there isn’t enough space at the social service buildings to hold their meal programs, and social service providers say charities aren’t willing to negotiate on the time and days they run their operations.
Councilman Ken Genser said he hopes the new regulations on public meal programs, which take effect during the holiday season, will force charities back to the bargaining table.
But Schwartz, who has been closely involved in the deliberations, said that was unlikely.
“Frankly, I don’t believe we can force food distributors to do anything,” he said. “They are private groups that we have no control over.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 10, 2002. Read the original PDF.