State must help with homeless encampments
The Santa Cruz City Council today is scheduled to begin considering a proposed ordinance that will attempt to set up new standards and regulations about where public “camping” – i.e., sleeping outside – is permitted.
The new law would delineate public locations where sleeping would be permitted, and where it would not. Non compliance would lead, after a warning, to a citation, but not jail time, according to Santa Cruz Police Chief Andy Mills, who has called the draft ordinance “a long time coming” necessary to help police keep homeless camps from getting entrenched.
The city’s so-called “camping ban” was in effect for decades. In 2018, police essentially stopped strictly enforcing it and by late 2019, the ordinance was suspended. This new one began to take shape a year ago just before COVID-19.
Santa Cruz has been the epicenter of trying to find solutions on homeless encampments – a situation that has grown more visible over the past year, and continues to drive considerable public debate and legal wrangling, most recently with the court order protecting a large homeless encampment in San Lorenzo Park. The city now is seeking state emergency funding to help with the growing encampment at the intersections of highways 1 and 9.
The latest effort to seek a solution is being spearheaded by Santa Cruz Mayor Donna Meyers who wants the state to take on a greater role – a position she laid out in a Feb. 18 letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Meyers recently wrote in a Sentinel column, “There is no Department of Homeless Solutions in California. In fact, if you type State of California Homeless Plan 2020 into your favorite browser, you will not locate a statewide plan, rather plans to spend ‘one-time’ money, create databases, and lots of editorials on who should be in charge, who should be accountable and who is at fault.
“The finger-pointing is wide and literally goes in circles. Cities point at counties, counties point at cities, mayors point at state leaders, the state points at local government, homeless advocates point at city councils, the blame goes on.”
A year ago, before the pandemic set it, Newsom used most of his State of the State to address homelessness and said the persistent problem of encampments had been caused by “massive failures” in the state’ s mental health system, a “disinvestment in our social safety net” exacerbated by the state’s chronic housing shortage and widening income inequality.
His solution was to attack the issue with money and “replace California’s scattershot approach with a coordinated crisis-level response” that would get “the mentally ill out of tents and into treatment,” and get more affordable housing built.
Although the pandemic put most of these promised plans on hold, Newsom’s 2021-22 budget looks like it will have money to expand services and facilities for the homeless.
But state Auditor Elaine Howle recently issued a scathing report that said the state’s bureaucracy is ineffective in helping communities deal with homeless encampments. Howle’s report said, “With more than 151,000 Californians who experienced homelessness in 2019, the state has the largest homeless population in the nation, but its approach to addressing homelessness is disjointed. At least nine state agencies administer and oversee 41 different programs that provide funding to mitigate homelessness, yet no single entity oversees the state’s efforts or is responsible for developing a statewide strategic plan.”
In other words, too many programs, and a continuing “scattershot approach” that appears to deal with homelessness while the underlying problem still festers.
Meyers’ realistic take on the problem is a step forward, along with the proposed new ordinance.
We continue, however, to believe, as we wrote in an Editorial last month, that city and county officials should explore opening up large tracts or vacant spaces within a reasonable distance of services, for a sanctioned tent camp, for a minimum of two years.
Some of these sites are currently being used for vaccine clinics, but could be set up, with state help, for such a sanctioned camp.