Arguments filed ahead of lawsuit hearing
SANTA CRUZ >> Ahead of a hearing before a federal magistrate Wednesday afternoon, players in a standoff for a planned San Lorenzo Park homeless encampment closure laid out their arguments in recent legal filings.
Newest among the filings, the City of Santa Cruz fired back Tuesday in a spate of declarations describing public safety and nuisance conditions justifying officials’ plan for a month-long closure of the park to overnight camping.
“Quite frankly, the City of Santa Cruz is in an impossible position,” attorneys representing the city wrote in an opposition argument to the court’s halting of the park closure. “It has neither the funds nor the appropriate real estate available to adequately address the multiple crises it faces; and yet, it seems that more and more unsheltered, and often drug-addicted and mentally ill, individuals have come to reside in encampments within the City.”
The filings run contrary to arguments made on behalf of several homeless individuals, Food Not Bombs and the Santa Cruz Homeless Union, in addition to supportive witness declarations. Plaintiffs in the case are working to prevent the park’s clearance of people living in tents at the city park, a move echoing a similar but ultimately unsuccessful effort by the same players in spring of 2019 to prevent city closure of a large encampment behind Gateway Plaza Shopping Center.
Homeless Union attorney Anthony Prince argued in his filing that the harm faced by people sleeping in the park set to be displaced with the closure was greater than harm faced by the general public from so-called nuisance conditions. Prince cited lack of sufficient alternative shelter for people to move into and the increased exposure to and spread of the coronavirus. Prince also took issue with the city’s argument, posted in an online question and answer statement related to the planned closure of San Lorenzo Park, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention directives to avoid dispersing homeless encampments during a pandemic was “mere guidance” and not mandatory.
Shor tly af ter being granted a one-week temporary restraining order against the park’s closure, Prince filed statements with the court from those more than a dozen people, including those without shelter, advocates, neighbors and business owners, who shared their observations of peaceful operations in the encampment. Included among witness declarations was that of city resident Arista Bauer, who said she regularly visits the park. Bauer, in her declaration, pushes the blame for nuisance conditions back on the city, rather than those living at the park, citing an insufficient supply of sanitation and trash facilities and alleged recent prevention of shower service there.
“The residents, many of whom have been swept from location to location over the past 6 months, have finally set up a functional, peaceful home,” Bauer wrote. “Unfortunately, the conditions which do exist within the park are often due to lack of effort on the part of the city.”