City Council to Consider Crackdown on Homeless

Intent on keeping its tiny population of homeless people from harassing residents, the City Council tonight is considering measures to clamp down on aggressive panhandlers, camping in public places and sitting and lying on sidewalks.

Police and city officials say the ordinances should prevent what are minor problems now from becoming larger issues in this preserve of quiet suburban tracts and bustling malls.

But homeless advocates say the laws are simply a typical reaction to a misunderstood segment of society that most people don’t want to deal with.

“This is beyond me,” said Cheryl Richmond, a board member of nonprofit housing group Many Mansions. “A year ago we had a City Council that didn’t believe, for the most part, that we had any homeless. . . . What we’re saying is, let’s make it so difficult for these people that we make them go away.”

Cmdr. Kathy Kemp of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department responded that the measures are not a reflection of insensitivity toward the homeless but an enforcement tool of last resort that will be used when other alternatives fail.

“It’s a strong statement that says we don’t want an area where people basically intimidate other people,” she said. “We’re not saying we don’t want to have alternatives.”

The ordinances before the council tonight are based on similar laws enacted in other cities. Santa Ana has passed an ordinance restricting camping; laws in Seattle and Berkeley regulating sitting and lying on sidewalks have withstood judicial scrutiny. And Ventura last year passed ordinances forbidding camping in the bed of the Ventura River, aggressive panhandling and sitting and lying on sidewalks.

City officials are recommending that the council delay passing the panhandling ordinance until a legal challenge to a similar law in Berkeley is decided.

The other two ordinances would make it illegal to camp in alleys, vacant lots and other public places and forbid sitting and lying on sidewalks. Penalties would range from a minimum $50 fine to a maximum of one year in jail.

Senior Deputy Roger DeWames said deputies are not out to harass the approximately 20 to 30 homeless people who live in Thousand Oaks at any one time. But present laws do not give police the capability to deal with transients who may be harassing people, he said.

“This is kind of a tool to give officers probable cause to make their contacts,” he said. “Officers are not looking to arrest people.”

Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said the proposed ordinances are “preventive measures.”

“A sign of good planning is where we anticipate and plan for potential problems early rather than after the fact, and that’s what these ordinances do,” she said.

But Roger Toft, a board member and co-founder of the Conejo Homeless Assistance Project, said it is not possible to regulate such symptoms of homeless as camping on public property and sitting on sidewalks out of existence.

“I’m on the fence as to whether those issues are really a problem,” he said. “But if they are, I’d like to see them coupled with a solution. . . . If the city would allow us to open a daytime drop-in area somewhere in the city, we would alleviate those problems, they would have a place to go.”

Two attempts to open a daytime center that would assist the homeless have been squelched because of neighborhood complaints.

In Thousand Oaks, about two-thirds of homeless people are women and children, most of whom are not transients, but simply residents of the city who are down on their luck, Richmond said.

“I don’t understand how they’re going to implement this, and it’s scary to me,” she said. “Instead of making laws to do things like this, why don’t we help them help themselves? . . . I don’t know how to make anybody understand that the homeless population in our community are just like all of us.”