It has been more than a decade since Los Angeles stopped enforcing its ban on overnight street sleeping as part of a legal settlement with a group of skid row inhabitants. The city’s homelessness problem has reached crisis levels since then, with some neighborhoods becoming virtual tent cities.
Is it time to start citing campers again?
Mayor Eric Garcetti says enough homeless housing has been built to consider doing just that. His office would not say for sure whether it plans to bring back the policy, but he left the possibility open.
“We may do it; we may not do it,” Garcetti’s deputy chief of staff said.
He’ll have a major legal battle to contend with if he does. Homeless advocates remain fiercely opposed to any ban on street dwelling.
“There is a snowball’s chance in hell that a court will let them enforce that,” said Carol Sobel, who represented the skid row residents in Jones vs. City of Los Angeles. “The city will lose in court again.”
L.A. stopped enforcing the policy in 2007 after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it “cruel and unusual” to prohibit sleeping on the streets without offering an adequate number of homeless shelters as an alternative. Then L.A. Police Chief William J. Bratton wanted the city to appeal the ruling, but it opted for a settlement instead. The agreement allowed people to sleep on the streets between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., at least until the city could complete 1,250 additional units for the chronically homeless.
The city says it has built 1,500 units in the intervening time. That figure is disputed by homeless activists.
Should it end up back in court, Los Angeles will have one compelling statistic in its arsenal. According to the Homeless Services Authority, one out of seven shelter beds went unused on a typical night last year.