City Adjusts Policy on Homeless Camp Sweeps

Los Angeles, facing continuing criticism over the treatment of the homeless, has negotiated a new set of guidelines for dealing with street encampments.

The new policy statements, authored by Mayor Tom Bradley, lay down additional rules for when and how sweeps can be conducted by the Bureau of Street Maintenance.

After a series of meetings between city officials--including Deputy Mayor Mike Gage--and activists in the Skid Row community, Bradley sent two letters to Board of Public Works President Ed Avila outlining new procedures.

The mayor has ordered that a schedule of street cleaning must be permanently posted throughout Skid Row to give street people notice of when sweeps will be made.

Initially, it is planned to have sweeps every Monday, Wednesday and Friday between the hours of 7 a.m. and noon.

The new rules come in the wake of a massive sweep of 50 people camping in the shadow of City Hall who had their life’s possessions carted off to a landfill last Friday.

The letters also instruct the board to call in the city’s homeless coordinator whenever there is a question over what constitutes personal property.

“I will not condone the destruction of personal property during the cleaning of public places,” Bradley wrote in the preamble to his new guidelines.

And he reiterated existing city law that requires that people “be allowed reasonable time to leave the area” before being cited for loitering or leaving personal items on the sidewalks.

Clear Guidelines Urged

But even as city officials from the Police Department, Department of Public Works, city attorney’s office and mayor’s office met Thursday afternoon to see if further action is necessary, activists in the homeless community said that the new policy does not begin to address the problem if it does not give clear and specific guidelines to the police.

“The police have a policy all their own,” said Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union, “and that is that the homeless don’t belong on the street even though they have nowhere else to go.”

Rosenbaum said that his organization has received reports of the police seizing and destroying personal property.

“The last series of sweeps show that the police have their own agenda,” he said.

“The policy needs to be sent to all agencies,” said Alice Callaghan, an activist who heads Las Familias del Pueblo, a Skid Row service organization. “It has to be addressed to the police.”

Gage said he has no reports of police harassment of the homeless and said that the issue of sweeps is primarily one for the Bureau of Street Maintenance and the Bureau of Sanitation.

The police, he said, do not get involved in seizing material unless an arrest is made. The only mention of the police in Bradley’s new orders is that “extensive law enforcement presence will not be employed unless necessary.”

Still, Gage said the policy statement will be sent to all agencies, including the Police Department.

In the Friday sweep, which city officials have called an “aberration,” the police called in two skip loaders and two dump trucks to clear out the belongings of two homeless camps near the intersection of 1st and Spring streets. On Monday, 41 men and women filed a claim against the city seeking unspecified damages for personal effects they said were carted away and destroyed.

On Tuesday, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky introduced a motion calling for an investigation of the incident and a moratorium on sweeps until the matter is resolved.

The new policy statements by the mayor were seen by some observers in the homeless service community as an effort to blunt criticism and head off the hearing on Yaroslavsky’s motion that is scheduled for Tuesday.

And some on Skid Row questioned the value of outlining a new policy when the old policy that also required notices of sweeps was apparently ignored--as Yaroslavsky and others have charged.

“It needs to be enforceable . . . and not just the mayor’s wish list,” said Margaret Holub, an activist with the Inner City Law Center.