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# Exiles need to be rousted on downtown streets ASAP
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/exiles-need-to-be-rousted-on-downtown-streets-asap/
- Published: 2003-03-06T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T01:44:54.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Downtown, #archive-import, Homeless

*By Michael J. Tittinger*

The night sky begins to lift from Santa Monica, California.

The smell of coffee perks from just about every street corner, motorists begin converging on the lattice work of streets and highways, the bread trucks hurry about town to complete their stops before the veil or darkness disappears completely.

And the homeless begin shaking off the cobwebs from their nights spent in store-front entryways.

Some facets of Santa Monica life just operate like clockwork.

With all due apologies to the family of Kristi Johnson, whose case justifiably garnered the bulk of the police force’s attention in recent weeks, city officials have been hemming and hawing about enforcing a new ordinance against transients for the better part of four months now. The deliberations are over; it is not City Hall’s place to decide when and if the provision should be enforced.

The City Council ruled last fall that “Thou Homeless Shall Not Sleep in Business Storefronts and Walkways Downtown.” Where’s the wiggle room here?

Officers began to enforce the law just this past Friday, and I use the word “enforce” very loosely.

Some four months after the council adopted the measure, which bans people from sleeping in front of businesses in the downtown district between Ocean Park and Wilshire boulevards, and Lincoln Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, and commercial zones along Main Street, a curious thing has happened. Business owners are still shooing transients from their storefronts and still washing urine from their respective sidewalks.

It had become increasingly apparent that the transients in the shopping districts had more teeth than the law passed to combat their sleeping there.

It seems City Hall is reluctant to engage in the political debate that is sure to follow the sight of their whisking away seemingly harmless homeless people in the cover of the night. No doubt, activists and protesters will take up the transients’ plight anew when such images emerge. For city officials, a public relations battle looms, yet it is their duty to take that on as they work to uphold the laws of Santa Monica.

And not just the laws they agree with. Last week, Santa Monica Police Sgt. Ira Rutan said his department would begin educating the unwanted campers about the new stipulation before making any arrests.

A second law, banning public feedings unless a group receives hard-to-acquire permits from both the city and the Los Angeles County Health Department, is currently being challenged in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. But officials noted enforcement of that law might be postponed as well, even barring the lawsuit, as health officials act to educate the 30 or so private groups that routinely host public feedings on the new regulations.

Educating those affected and giving people ample time to adjust to change is all well and good, but this could have been accomplished months ago. The excuse of taking time to educate future exiles on Main Street doesn’t hold water four months after the education process could have begun. Shopkeepers could be worrying about their storefront displays tomorrow instead of their storefront delousings.

Congratulations to the area’s business leaders who kept city officials’ feet to the fire until they felt compelled to start acting.

No one relishes the idea of pulling someone cold and hungry and weary off the pavement in the middle of the night, but there are plenty more suitable places for him or her to rest their head each night than on the concrete in the city’s center. Because when tourism and retail suffer, the economy suffers and then we all suffer. When the civil liberties of the individual begin to impede on the freedoms of all, then those liberties are in need of curbing.

City Hall needs to bite the bullet on this one and ensure that the laws it is obliged to enforce are enforced, not weigh the possible consequences and public sentiment. City officials’ obvious foot-dragging on the issue has left affected business owners incredulous, which they have a right to be. (Mike Tittinger is a freelance writer living in Santa Monica.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 6, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/030603.pdf?ref=smdp.com)