Homeless won’t have to pack up
L.A. will stop requiring tents to be taken down in daytime amid coronavirus spread.
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to temporarily stop enforcing a law requiring tents to come down during daytime hours, saying the change is needed to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Councilmen Mike Bonin, Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Gil Cedillo said the city must “urgently reevaluate” its policies for dealing with homeless encampments, given the virus threat.
By ensuring homeless Angelenos can remain in their tents, the city will reduce their chances of being around others and contracting the virus, said Bonin, who represents coastal neighborhoods.
“The only thing that is worse than having lots of people living in encampments is throwing them out of encampments and making them more vulnerable,” he said.
Council members also voted to instruct city agencies to begin providing hand-washing stations, portable toilets, dumpsters, vermin-proof trash cans and weekly shower service at “major” homeless encampments. But they rejected a plan to stop confiscating the belongings of homeless Angelenos that exceed 60 gallons.
Bonin, Cedillo, HarrisDawson and Councilman Herb Wesson favored such a move. The council’s other 11 members, led by Councilman Joe Buscaino, voted to continue confiscating such items.
“There are tons of trash in and around different parts of the city of Los Angeles that I am very concerned about,” said Buscaino, who represents a Watts-to-San Pedro district. “That is adding to filth and disease.”
One business leader expressed relief that the council rejected the plan to stop confiscating belongings, saying such a move would have increased the spread of rats and disease in homeless encampments.
“We cannot make this health emergency any worse by allowing this accumulation to grow even larger,” said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn., a downtown business group.
Los Angeles has about 36,000 homeless people, more than 27,000 of them unsheltered, according to the the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Under the city’s current laws, tents on sidewalks and in other public areas must come down between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. In many parts of the city, the rule is not vigorously enforced.
Homeless advocates described the council’s decision to keep tents and encampments in place throughout the day as a much-needed health and safety measure.
“The worst thing we can do is push people outside” of their tents, said Mel Tillekeratne, main organizer for the #SheDoes movement, which advocates for shelter for homeless women. “This is giving them a space to stay, rather than moving around in the community.”
Tuesday’s action still preserves the city’s authority to require homeless residents to move their tents so that sanitation crews can clean sidewalks and remove hazardous materials, said Bonin spokesman David Graham-Caso.
The tent proposal was one of several emergency measures discussed at Tuesday’s council meeting, the first since City Hall was closed to the public in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Council members also voted to impose new measures to shield tenants from evictions and seek new protections for workers at Los Angeles International Airport and elsewhere.
County officials have not identified any cases of COVID-19 among the homeless so far, said Heidi Marston, interim head of the homeless services authority.