California’s approach to homelessness is a failure. Tent cities are everywhere; no community is immune. The problem is huge, but there are things we can do that will make a difference in the short-term while we work to solve the long-term.
On December 5th, the first day of the new legislative session, I will introduce a proposal to help communities clean up encampments from sensitive areas in a compassionate manner. We must protect public safety and public health, particularly where our children are concerned.
My measure has a multi-pronged approach that is more than just sweeping the problem away. First, it prohibits encampments within 1,000 feet of areas deemed sensitive: schools, parks, libraries, day care centers. This will help protect children’s safe passage to the places they congregate.
Second, it mandates enforcement officials give a 72-hour warning before any encampment sweep could occur. This will give impacted homeless individuals three days to find alternative locations.
Third, when conducting a sweep, enforcement officers are required to provide information about sleeping alternatives, homeless and mental health services, and shelters in the area. This will help connect homeless individuals to desperately needed services and more suitable places to stay.
This bill alone will not solve homelessness, but will provide local officials a tool to tackle a highly visible and often dangerous aspect of the homelessness crisis. It strikes an appropriate balance between accountability and compassion while prioritizing public health and safety.
Living on the streets is inhumane, unhealthy and often dangerous – for both the people living in the homeless encampments and those living around them. Local officials are struggling with clearing encampments and need more tools to deal with the problem. Even the city of Los Angeles believes it is a good idea to set firm boundaries and recently passed a measure aimed at preventing homeless encampments near sensitive areas where children are often present or gather. Similarly, the city of Sacramento recently proposed a ban on homeless encampments within 500 feet of sensitive areas.
My bill would bring these protections for children’s safe passage to a statewide level. My bill will give municipalities statewide additional resources to tackle this humanitarian crisis on the local level.
I welcome the strong support from a diverse group of community leaders, local law enforcement officials, local government elected officials, and local non-profits. Even former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer has given my measure the green light. His support is significant, especially because he proactively sought to tackle the homelessness crisis when he once led San Diego.
The goal isn’t to criminalize homelessness but to protect the public while lifting homeless individuals off the street through a compassionate approach. Every Californian deserves a path off the streets, and this bill is the first step.
A few facts underscoring the enormity of the problem. While California’s 39 million people make up 10% of the nation’s population, our 161,000 homeless people make up 28% of the nation’s homeless population and almost 50% of its unsheltered homeless population.
The Public Policy Institute of California’s latest annual statewide survey found that 68% of Californians said homelessness is “a big problem in their part of the state,” and 61% said the “presence of the homeless has increased in their local community in the past year.”
As a long-time San Diego County resident, I assure you this is true. In the County’s latest Point-in-Time-Count, the Regional Task Force on Homelessness found the number of homeless in San Diego County shot up 10% in the last year alone, with over half of the estimated 8,427 homeless people living on the streets.
Homelessness is truly the tragedy of our time. Similar to how the root causes of homelessness can vary for each homeless individual, the solutions to lift them out of their situation will also vary.
My bill strives to reach homeless people where they are, guide them into accepting shelter and services, while setting firm boundaries that until encampments are no longer an issue, at minimum, they must not endanger our children. I urge you to learn more about my bill and sign my petition to support it.
View Comments (28)
Many cities already have such laws. But if the city does not enforce the law, the status quo remains. This is why L.A. is such a failure.
If you don't have enforcement measures, your plan will not work either.
Sounds like a good step forward that could help in a very good, well thought out and thoughtful way,
My city already does this!
The problem is the lack of wrap around services once they are moved. They eventually come back to the same areas! They have taken over our industrial areas, open spaces that are neither claimed by the city or county, along the railway easements behind people’s homes. I would be very happy to give you a tour of my suburban city that is having a growing homeless population. The cities are so overwhelmed that your policy will not address the real issue, drug treatment and mental health issues. There is a disabled man that left the big encampment near my house set up behind a 7-11. He clearly has issues but is left there in his wheel chair day after day, right next to a church parking lot. How does your policy help that person? The police have become social workers and are trained to offer them services. We have task forces, a navigation center, home room key facilities, yet the problem has ballooned.
I was the founder and president of a non-profit veterans homeless organization. It seems that nobody wants to fix the cause. Moving the homeless to other locations is a waste of time and money. We need to force people into receiving mental health care. Including drug and alcohol rehabilitation. It is ridiculous to expect people with mental health issues or addiction to make good logical decisions. We as a society need to be more proactive. We also need more affordable housing for those who can't afford it. Otherwise nothing is going to change!!!!!!
You can’t do this without investing in the systems you claim to be referring them to. Those support networks either don’t exist or don’t have the resources to adequately serve the population they’re intended to serve. THAT is how you make a change. You don’t do it by hiding the problem out of sight of popular areas.
100% agree. The proposed bill is a waste of energy and resources akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Don’t bother. Focus on housing them so they can get back on their feet and contribute positively to the community. Not like the homeless want to stay homeless.
My solution is to determine the homeless person's next of kin and location. Provide funding to send them to their next of kin along with their personal belongings. The agreement is a homeless person will either accept the offer or be transported out of the state. Penalty for refusal with be jail.
Roosevelt started the CCC many years ago, although not the most effective program, it would serve better than any program in effect at this time. People have a desire to be productive and although handouts or "services" as you would call them, are a short-term solution. These actually achieve nothing, as the past two individuals have stated. "They come back to the same areas. with this being said we need to rethink our goals and the unintended consequences of such actions. Once society has enabled an individual or group of individuals to be unproductive, the masses tend to lean in the same direction as you can see with our current workforce demanding shorter hours and higher pay for unskilled labor. If our tax dollars are to be utilized to "Help" the homeless we need to do just that and stop lying to ourselves that these programs are effective. The drug use, prostitution and violence in these encampments needs to be talked about and dealt with
If anyone has a better idea bring it forward
if there is a new way, I'll be the first in line, but it better work this time!
Rent for even the smallest apartment in the most "inexpensive" areas of our county is well beyond what many of our seniors receive in their social security checks. When are caps going to be placed on rent increases? How do you tell your great aunt who is 75 that she needs to get a job? There is a several year waiting list for low income housing. Many of these people don't have family with extra money to supplement their income.
Rent is a struggle for people of all ages and it keeps increasing at alarming rates. The elephant in the room is screaming but none of our politicians want to anger the corporations that fund their campaigns.
Why do people with no resources get to command where they want to live?There is plenty of abandoned housingall over this country. Please do a Zillow search on Detroit for one classic example of perfectly good housing, now going to waste.
Relocation to abandoned housing for those who can function on their own in housing; state care lock-down institutions for those who cannot.
NY is the only city in the country that has a program through the Dept of Aging called SCRIE that permanently FREEZES the rent of those who are 62 and older whose income does not exceed $50,000. Landlord will still get their yearly increases but NOT from the renter. They get a reduction of property taxes and more.. It's very successful and has been around for decades. So seniors CAN remain in their apartments without the fear being evicted for not being able to pay increases..
Unfortunately, NO such program exists here in Los Angeles although I've tried to engage the Dept of Aging here and our City Council to no avail.. And getting on waiting list to get low income/affordable apts can take YEARS. NOT enough avail units for the thousands who need it. And NOT enough building for this population.
Until the public's rights override the individual's rights nothing will improve. No one is willing to change the laws, no one is willing to draw the line. The laws on involuntary drug and mental illness intervention must change. The laws on public drug use, public intoxication, and general public safety must change. Let's treat the public at large with dignity and respect, instead of worrying about hurting someone's feelings by saying "You have no right to live on the street, you have no right to use drugs and alcohol on the streets, you have mental health issues and you cannot be safely left on the streets. You have no right to other people's property!"
i also think your bill will not solve the problem. i have lived in the San Diego area for 60 years and i can't stand it any longer. I went to a Padre Playoff game and saw men and women sharing needles and shooting up on the street near the ballpark. I will watch games on TV and skip having my grand kids witness this.
I think the homeless, especially the drug addicted, need to be moved to a certain area that is away from society in a fenced area that does not let them out. There should be drug treatment centers on the property along with mental health doctors that are wanting to help what can be helped.
The location should have some kind of enclosed facility for the people so they can shower and sleep.. but away from the city or towns in the SD area. Build homeless centers for the addicts, mentally disturbed and one for those that are down on there luck and can get out of the homeless state with some training and job opportunities.
it would have to be a mini city that could supply food and shelter for the cost of the persons Social Security money they receive from the Feds. No drugs or alcohol allowed into the city and all homeless MUST be transported there.
Those that want to join the rest of the world can get out but those that don't live there instead of on the streets.
I agree with your observations and would like to add on. These rehab centers you propose are probably the only true solution. Let's face it, this problem is not going to be fixed without some kind of punitive approach. When did public drug use become legal anyway? Let's step up drug law enforcement. Harsh prison sentence for drug use isn't the answer but a secure rehab center with a required curriculum for release would go a long way to rehabilitating, at least the drug addicts, and of course mental illness treatment would be a part of it.
In the city of Los Angles needs a Republican Mayor to take care of the homeless problem the Democrats are too lenient. That’s why everyone leaving California!