Council OKs Laws to Limit Loitering and Panhandling

Hoping to keep the city’s small homeless population as far from sight as possible, the City Council approved a series of ordinances Tuesday night intended to squelch overzealous panhandling, camping on public places and lying on sidewalks.

Council members voted unanimously in support of the three ordinances despite criticism by some homeless advocates that Thousand Oaks has no serious vagrancy problem to speak of and is not providing homeless people with any real alternatives to huddling in public places.

“It occurs to me that there are times that become defining moments for a community,” said Rabbi Alan Greenbaum of Temple Adat Elohim. “I believe this is such a time.

“Somebody sitting on a sidewalk, it is not a nuisance,” he added. “Is it pretty to see? No. . . . They are part of our community, and we have to consider the condition of their life just as much as we have to consider the condition of our life.”

Ventura County Sheriff’s Department officials strongly supported the ordinances, saying they are needed to ensure that Thousand Oaks’ relatively minor policing problems involving homeless people stay that way.

They stressed that they have received complaints from business owners and residents about begging and loitering in public places, and the measures are intended as a last resort, to be used only when more informal discussions with the homeless fail to resolve disputes.

The ordinances are all modeled after similar laws passed in other cities.

The city of Santa Ana in Orange County enacted an ordinance restricting camping in public places that was upheld in 1995 by the California Supreme Court after a legal challenge.

Sitting and lying in certain commercial areas and public places were prohibited in Seattle by an ordinance that was upheld last year by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Aggressive begging” was the target of an ordinance recently passed in Berkeley. It, too, has been challenged in federal court, and Thousand Oaks staff members recommended that the city wait for the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling on the Berkeley ordinance before actually enforcing its similar ordinance.

The begging ordinance, which was the least-criticized of the three measures, makes it unlawful to aggressively solicit money in a public place. Moreover, it prohibits panhandling inside a public transportation vehicle or within 25 feet of an automated teller machine. It also prohibits begging money from the driver of a vehicle in traffic.