Council Postpones Action on Feeding, Sleeping Laws

By Oliver Lukacs

Sept. 25 -- Exhausted by the public testimony of 141 speakers, the City Council decided early Wednesday morning to table an ordinance regulating homeless feeding programs and to put to bed another law prohibiting sleeping at night in the doorways of Downtown storefronts.

On October 8, the council will once again take up the two ordinances, which would amount to the first crackdown on the homeless in a decade and will likely spur a challenge by the National Lawyer's Guild.

"I don't think starting a debate right now would be productive," said Mayor Michael Feinstein, who has said that he opposed the measures.

Most of the testimony, some of it defiant and teary eyed, came from the City's homeless, who packed the council chamber after attending a rally on the City Hall lawn that included food served by some of the groups that provide free meals in the City's parks.

Electrifying the packed house, James Jackson stubbornly defied the proposed ordinances. "I am homeless and I am not going away," he told the council.

"We don't need to be pushed around, you're not going to solve anything by pushing people around," said Denise Smale, teary-eyed and angry. "We're going to start stealing. We're going to start robbing people. We'll probably end up killing someone because you pushed us around."

Moira LaMountain, who has handed out free meals for more than a decade, pleaded not to be "criminalized" and challenged the Council to spend one day behind the food table.

"Wear our shoes for one day before you take them away," LaMountain said.

The ordinance regulating food distribution would make it a misdemeanor to distribute food without County and City permits. It also would impose a $1,000 fine and/or six months in jail for unauthorized food programs on public streets and sidewalks.

City Attorney Marsha Moutrie, who authored the ordinance, said that the food distribution law would only reinforce existing health code standards, which "to date have not been enforced" by the County.

The other law would make sleeping in storefront doorways Downtown between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. a misdemeanor punishable with a $1,000 fine or six months in County jail, or both.

Human Services supervisor Julie Rusk evoked some jeers from the homeless audience when she read some of the findings of the City's Annual Report on Homeless Services. According to the report, 750 of the 2,500 homeless persons served in 2001-02 received shelter and assistance to self-sufficiency; 450 were assisted in finding and maintaining employment and nearly 250 homeless people were assisted into permanent housing.

The report's assertion that the "continuum of care" model "works" was both challenged and defended ed by City officials and social services providers at the meeting.

"Our system is maxed out," said John Maceri, the executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center, the city's hub for homeless services. "It is a system that is broken, not just in our city, in the County, and across America.

"We don't have enough emergency beds on the front end to move people off the streets," Maceri said, noting a backup of the current social service system. "And we don't have enough slots on the permanent housing side to move people into."

Jennafer Yellowhorse, editor of a homeless newspaper "Making Change," took Maceri's point and, to a wave of cheers, turned it into a legal issue

"If you ain't got shelters for us to sleep in, and we're violating your law by sleeping outside, than you're violating our civil rights," she said.

Using his success story as a testament to the system's effectiveness was Theodore Dues, executive director of Samoshel, the Salvation Army-run homeless shelter behind the bus yards.

Looking clean and dapper in his business suit, Dues, who moved up the social service ranks after being homeless on the streets, expressed his thanks to the council for continuing to fund the system, which cost the City $1,826,722 last year.

Dues didn't take a stance on either ordinance; he just offered the services of his shelter's residents. "We are offering cost-free clean up services to clean after the feeding programs or anywhere else," he said.

One of the homeless persons on their way to recovery who expressed gratitude for City services was Sherry Hill. "Please keep supporting these vital lifelines that save lives," she said.

Most of the housed residents who testified did not comment on the system's success or shortcomings, choosing instead to address the visible problems they encounter everyday.

Some residents beseeched the council to pass the ordinances to stop their neighborhoods from going down to drain, saying they find "pools of blood" or inebriated homeless people knocked out unconscious on their lawn.

Resident Greg Phillips said he has called the police 75 times in the last year and had 24 homeless arrested for urinating and defecating in public.

"The homeless have made the City and it's residents miserable," Phillips said. "I think it's time the free lunch should be over."

Susan Hoyer said the first thing she sees outside her window every day is homeless people either sleeping or drinking. "I feel like a prisoner in my own neighborhood, where I spent a lot of money to live," she said.

Other residents, however, said the problem is not going to be solved with legislation and worried that Santa Monica would be known as the home of anti-homeless laws.

"I consider homeless people to be part of the community," said Chris Pain. "I don't think this ordinance comes from the right-spirit of what this City is about."

Former Santa Monica mayor Judy Abdo closed the public comments.

"I think if there is one thing we learned tonight it is that this is a very, very complicated issue that cannot be solved by two ordinances," Abdo said. "I hope you take a different path."

Other recent stories:

"Political Food Fight," Sept. 25

"Growing Homeless Population Taxes City Services, Report Finds," Sept. 24

"Council to Consider Feeding, Sleeping Ordinances," Sept. 24