Policy on Homeless Treads Middle Ground : Government: Leaders of task force dance around volatile issue of sleeping in parks. Statement calls on police to enforce laws to protect public safety, while emphasizing the civil rights and dignity of all.
Like tightrope walkers teetering on a high wire, the leaders of Santa Monica’s homeless task force have crafted a delicately worded, purposely ambiguous policy on the touchy issue of sleeping overnight in city parks.
The one-page statement, entitled Lodging in Public Places, is certain to please neither faction in the rancorous debate over how harsh or tolerant the city should be to people who sleep in the parks, but task force steering committee members opted to seek a middle course they hope will be acceptable to the City Council and the community.
The statement, approved by the task force steering committee last week, will be considered by the full 19-member committee at a meeting Wednesday.
It calls on the Police Department to aggressively enforce laws necessary to protect public health and safety, while emphasizing the “civil rights and personal dignity” of all.
Essentially, that is what is been happening in the past month, as a result of a City Council request to the police chief and city manager that an existing law prohibiting sleeping in parks between midnight and 5 a.m. be enforced.
The law enforcement stance in the statement urges that police focus primarily on “violent crimes, the illegal sale or use of drugs, aggressive panhandling, public drinking and drunkenness,” and “public health violations” such as defecating in the park. Cracking down on people for simply sleeping in the park, the statement seemed to imply, should have a lower priority.
The full task force has already agreed to seek an ordinance prohibiting “encampments” in public places, which they believe will discourage people from settling into parks for extended periods.
The most telling part of the policy statement is what’s not there. There is neither a statement that homeless people have the right to sleep overnight in the park, as some people advocated, nor a statement of zero tolerance of the practice, as others had urged. By avoiding any such statement of principle, the task force leaders are trying to cool down the community debate that has raged in recent weeks.
“Each side has given up the opportunity to make a strong moral statement of our values,” said task force steering committee member Vivian Rothstein, the director of the Ocean Park Community Center.
Even the two members who crafted the artful language in the compromise statement do not agree on what it means. Conway Collis, a former member of the state Board of Equalization who heads the commission’s Public Safety Committee, said the policy gives direction to the Police Department, addresses the sleeping-in-the park issue and “speaks for itself.”
Co-author Rothstein said she saw the statement as more ambiguous. “I don’t think that this is a statement for them to go out and enforce all laws indiscriminately,” Rothstein said.
Opinion was divided on whether it is important to send a clear signal to the City Council. Summing up one side, commission member Michele Wittig said, “We need it to be somewhat of a Rorschach test for the City Council because they have to vote for it.”
Task force co-chair Dan Kingsley, however, said that years of ambiguity had brought the homeless situation to its current sore point. “We have a responsibility to be unambiguous.”
Crowds of homeless people who sleep in the parks--particularly Palisades and Lincoln parks--are a focal point of community distress about the homeless problem. And task force members said it is the one area on which the task force cannot agree. The full commission may insist on issuing majority and minority reports on the controversial matter. Also left to be taken up is how to cope with the homeless population in the parks during the day.
The parks dispute also has the potential to prevent the group from reaching consensus on the rest of the report, which focuses largely on what services the city should provide for the homeless. Some members have previously stated they would support the group’s recommendations for more publicly funded programs for the homeless only if it also made a strong public policy statement about law enforcement.
Though it is up to the City Council to make public policy on the issue, task force members are aware of having to contend with the man many see as the city’s No. 1 homeless advocate, City Atty. Robert M. Myers. Myers stirred up the pot early this month with a public rebuke of the council, saying its request for stepped-up enforcement violated the human rights of people who had been arrested for repeatedly sleeping in the park.
Police Chief James T. Butts insists homeless people in the parks overnight present a public safety threat because the criminal element can blend in with benign street people and prey on the truly needy and other residents.
The debate spilled over to a meeting of the task force steering committee, which members said was so heated that they hired a facilitator to keep Thursday’s meeting on course.
Still smarting from Myers’ tactics, Wittig said the city attorney further polarizes the community and undermines what he believes in.
“I sure wish Bob Myers would have worked with us,” Wittig said. “In many ways he is our nemesis.”
“Santa Monica is not a religion,” Wittig continued after the meeting. “We do not have a uniform moral philosophy.”
Myers said he had cooperated with the task force and had appeared at an early meeting.
