Judge Hears Challenge to Citing of Homeless for Illegal Lodging

A San Diego Municipal Court judge took under study Friday a legal challenge to the Police Department’s policy of writing misdemeanor citations for thousands of homeless people that police contend are illegally lodging on the city’s streets.

After hearing oral arguments from the attorneys, Judge Melinda J. Lasater said she will issue her ruling Oct. 24 on separate cases in which homeless people have been given tickets for sleeping on city streets, in the parks and in the doorways of downtown businesses.

Attorneys Kenneth S. Klein and Tom Homann told the judge that police are unfairly applying an 1872 law that makes it illegal to take up temporary lodging in the streets. They argued that homeless people are being harassed at all hours by the citations, the penalties for which can range from $25 to as high as $250 if warrants are issued. They said that, with the city’s homeless population growing rapidly, there is no other place for them to go at night or day.

“My office is near 5th and F, and there’s a man who sits out there all day in front of the office,” said Homann. “He sits on a trash can all day long. He’s just there. Now, is this person lodging there? If so, then I’m lodging here right now because I am occupying this space.”

City officials, however, have come under tremendous pressure from business operators, especially downtown, who complain that the homeless are curling up in front of their stores and driving away customers. The merchants have pleaded with police to clean up the problem, and police have responded with the tickets.

“The statute is directed toward individuals who lodge in a place where they’re not given permission,” Ward Clay, a deputy city attorney, told the judge. “In this case, there is no ambiguity. It’s clear and unmistakable.”

Norma Rossi, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for the Homeless, said she came to watch the afternoon hearing because she is seriously concerned about the increasing number of tickets being issued, and the inability of the homeless to pay the fines. Records show that police issued 1,993 tickets in a recent six-month period.

She said one homeless man, Billy Walton, served 72 days in jail for nine tickets, none of which he could afford to pay. “We had just gotten him a job, and one of the officers took him,” she said. “This was last Thanksgiving, and he’s still unemployed today.”

Working as Volunteer

Klein, a private attorney who is volunteering on the case for the local American Civil Liberties Union, told the judge that there are 9,000 homeless people in San Diego County, but available beds for only 900.

He said that means most of them have nowhere to turn but the streets to sleep. He said that, if police continue to enforce the law, they are de facto declaring it illegal just to be homeless.

“We’re not saying you have a constitutional right to sleep outside,” he said. “We’re saying it’s unconstitutional to criminalize that activity.”

But Clay said police are targetting the tickets only for people who are a persistent nuisance, such as those who erect cardboard structures in doorways and attempt to lodge there indefinitely.

Klein and Homann originally brought their legal challenge in the case of Juan Griffin, a 20-year-old homeless man who has lived in Spain and Chicago, and who moved to San Diego in June.

Lasater on Friday dismissed two citations against Griffin, but the attorneys continued their legal challenge under cases involving three other homeless people, identified as Linda Mae Robinson, Drake Pappas and Keith Pendergraff.

Griffin found a job in July as a street vendor with a local company and now sleeps on the company’s property. He missed the hearing Friday because he was on duty at his hot dog stand at 1st Avenue and Broadway.

“I couldn’t afford to pay for those tickets,” he said. “No way I could afford that. And, unlike me, not everybody has a place to stay now. There’s a lot of homeless on the streets, and nobody seems to want to help them.”