New Strategy on Homeless Implemented : Government: A City Hall meals program has been moved elsewhere. And the first citations have been given out for violating a law against living in public places.

Santa Monica last week ended its trademark City Hall lawn feeding program for the homeless and began enforcing a new ordinance outlawing living in public places. The two events mark a major turning point in the way this city manages its homeless problem.

On Monday, the meals program quietly disbursed to three indoor sites where homeless people can avail themselves of other services that may lead to more long-term sustenance.

A few days earlier, three men in Lincoln and Palisades parks in North Santa Monica received the first citations issued under the city ordinance, which makes it a misdemeanor to live in a public place.

City Atty. Robert M. Myers has until the end of the month to decide whether he will file criminal charges against the men. The ordinance has long been an issue for Myers, who refused to write it when the council asked him to because he said it was repressive and unconstitutional.

He said he has not decided what course to take on the charges.

The meals program, run by a private charity group called FAITH, served up to 300 meals every weekday for three years to homeless people, who started gathering early each afternoon on the front lawn of City Hall. The program brought the city both notoriety as a mecca for the dispossessed and praise as a place of compassion.

Defying the new direction set by the City Council, a group of volunteers unaffiliated with any group put on their own feeding program in Palisades Park on Wednesday and Thursday.

City Manager John Jalili said the impromptu meals program underscored the lack of regulations on organized activities in a place like Palisades Park. Steps will be initiated in Santa Monica to require permits, as other cities do, Jalili said.

“(The ad hoc park meals program) does fly in the face of the homeless task force recommendations,” said Julie Rusk, manager of Santa Monica Community and Neighborhood Services. That kind of meals program attracts people who don’t want to avail themselves of other services, she said.

(Myers sponsors his own ongoing Saturday morning meals program on the City Hall steps.)

Rusk said the three new programs were running smoothly last week at two downtown facilities, the Salvation Army and Step Up on Second, a day center for the mentally ill. The third location is at the Ocean Park Community Center at Colorado Avenue and 6th Street. Participants must sign up for meals in advance.

The city’s homeless task force recommended against the unwieldy, anonymous meals program in favor of smaller groupings where people could be linked to social services. The City Council endorsed the plan in hopes of healing a community divided over what to do about the city’s homeless problem.

The 18-member citizen group’s recommendations for how to manage the city’s large homeless population through a balance of services and public safety measures also included a call for a law against using the parks for living accommodations.

When the task force undertook its nine-month study of the homeless situation in 1991, residents were at near mutiny over an increasing crime rate and the staking out of park areas by the homeless, making the spaces unusable for recreational purposes.

And writing the law turned into a wrenching process because segments of the community, following Myers’ lead, objected to the move as repressive in that people without housing have nowhere else to go except public places.

After Myers refused to draft the law--or let any of his staff do it--the council hired outside counsel. The attorneys who were hired sharply disagreed with Myers’ legal analysis of the constitutionality of the proposed regulations, and the council went on to pass the law against encampments.

For prosecution, the law requires that a person spend more time in a park than would normally be associated with recreational use,and have belongings that would indicate he or she is using the park as a home.

Because the law is almost certain to be challenged in court, Santa Monica Police proceeded carefully with the first arrests, after blanketing the parks for weeks with notices that the law was going to be enforced, said Santa Monica Police spokesman Sgt. Bill Brucker.

The first three citations went to men who had been repeatedly warned that they were in violation of the law, with the warnings documented for use when the law is challenged, Brucker said.

William Henry Haynes, 48, was cited at about 6:30 a.m. on June 4 in Palisades Park. Winston Theodore Reid, 43, and Tyrone Earl Jones, 33, were cited in mid-afternoon at Lincoln Park. The citations require the men to go to court on July 1.

Brucker said the men had overflowing shopping carts filled with bedding, foam pads, cooking utensils, food and clothing.

The Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild is one group that is planning a challenge of anti-encampment laws in Santa Monica and other cities. “It is safe to say one or more of those ordinances will be challenged in court,” said Guild Executive Director James Lafferty.