LAGUNA BEACH : City Ban on Street Hiring Considered

After years of supporting the day laborers who flock to the city seeking work, the City Council this week will consider a new law that would ban work solicitation on city streets except at a designated hiring area.

The proposed ordinance, which has been endorsed by the city’s Human Affairs Committee, would leave both day laborers and the contractors who hire them open to citations unless their contacts occur at the city-approved hiring area on Laguna Canyon Road.

The city has received complaints from two community associations about dayworkers congregating in north Laguna, particularly at North Coast Highway and Viejo Street in front of the Circle K market.

Leaders of the Laguna North Neighborhood Assn., who shaped the proposed ordinance, say the continued presence of dayworkers intimidates residents and hampers business.

“When a car stops for anything, they surround it to try to get hired,” said Ben Blount, vice president of the association. “It’s perfectly normal for them, but it unintentionally intimidates” the person in the car.

“We don’t want to run the people out of town,” association president Ilse Lenschow said. “We just want them to be at a location established by the city.”

The City Council has been caught for years between the concerns of residents and business owners and the needs of day laborers, most of whom travel by bus to Laguna Beach each day in hopes of finding work.

The workers have traditionally gravitated to the North Coast Highway corner, in part because there is a bus stop there, Deputy City Manager Cindy King said.

Their presence, however, has annoyed residents and business owners, who say some of the laborers make unwanted comments to women, clog entryways and urinate in public areas.

In 1988, the city undertook an aggressive campaign to shift the workers from North Coast Highway to a non-residential area in Laguna Canyon, even supplying city buses to transport them to the new site.

In 1989, the city spent $9,000 to spruce up the canyon hiring area, installing portable restrooms, paving a turnaround driveway, posting a sign to identify the site and distributing information pamphlets in Spanish.

King said most of the day laborers have been willing to make the change, but it has been more difficult to persuade the 75% of the laborers who travel to the city from out of town to do so.

Some workers choose to scatter when soliciting for work rather than compete with a large group of candidates at the hiring site, King said, and the recession has worsened the problem.

“Our canyon hiring area has been relatively successful,” she said. “But if more people are out of work and there are less jobs to begin with, obviously people are going to try to seek areas where there is less competition.”

The proposed ordinance is similar to laws already in effect in Dana Point, Orange and Costa Mesa, King said.