JUDGE OKS MOVE OF HOMELESS CAMP
Magistrate Susan van Keulen seeking COVID vaccination availability for the local homeless population in city
SANTA CRUZ >> A federal judge confirmed Tuesday morning her intention to allow the City of Santa Cruz to relocate and manage a large unsanctioned homeless encampment that has resided in a city park for much of the past year.
During a live-broadcast status conference hearing from U.S. District Court Northern District in San Jose, Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen urged attorneys for the city and plaintiffs Santa Cruz Homeless Union, Food Not Bombs and several homeless individuals, to continue working toward a settlement outside of court. The judge said that while coronavirus pandemic indicators had improved since she issued the preliminary injunction against the city Jan. 20, she was not ready to lift the order entirely, yet.
“I still find that there are many unknowns relating to the current status of the virus and whether or not the unsheltered population is more vulnerable to the virus if it is evicted from the San Lorenzo Park or not,” van Keulen said during her opening remarks. “Very helpfully, the city has proposed an alternative approach, or perhaps I should call it an interim approach, which requests a modification of the injunction.”
Van Keulen said she planned to formalize Tuesday’s discussion with an amendment to the preliminary injunction imminently and set the case’s next hearing for 9:30 a.m., April 27. Van Keulen said she particularly will be looking for updates on vaccination availability for the local homeless population during next month’s update.
Under terms of the proposed injunction amendment, the city will be allowed to clear out a smaller subpopulation of those living in tents, estimated at 20 on Tuesday, already staying within the lower San Lorenzo Park Benchlands. Those displaced temporarily will be allowed to move up into the park’s higher grounds, where the bulk of the encampment has resided during the winter. Meanwhile, city workers will layout 122 demarcated tent campsites in the benchlands, stretching parallel to the San Lorenzo River from the Santa Cruz County Government Center — just short of the Water Street bridge — under the pedestrian bridge and as far down as the park playground. City officials said they had counted 118 tents set up in the park March 12.
Benchlands rerun
Should the new benchlands camp be established, it would be the fourth homeless encampment for that same site in recent years. Previously, an unsanctioned encampment grew to hundreds at the benchlands from October 2017 through March 2018, until about 50 occupants were relocated to
a city-run camp in a utility yard at 1220 River St. for the next eight months. After that city River Street camp’s closure for the winter, a new unsanctioned camp sprang up near Highway 1, behind the Gateway Plaza Shopping Center, until the city convinced a different federal judge of its public nuisance and health hazards and shuttered that site in May 2019. At the same time, the city very temporarily offered the benchlands as an encampment staging ground until the former River Street lot could be re-activated. Most recently, an unsanctioned camp at the benchlands formed in April 2020, shortly after emergency coronavirus pandemic declarations. Santa Cruz County officials stepped in from July through November to operate a benchlands camp limited to between 60 and 80 people before relocating their program for the winter up to land near the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park.
Van Keulen said she agreed to the majority of the points in the city’s version of the proposed encampment relocation plan. Once the new benchlands camp is established — an estimated two-week process — individuals will either need to obtain a city permit and gain access to the new space, or face potential eviction from San Lorenzo Park as a whole, per existing city park curfew and nuisance stay-away order regulations, officials said.
Deputy City Attorney Catherine Bronson told van Keulen that San Lorenzo Park is a highly centralized, highly desirable location in the city serving as a draw for people outside the city, county and state “once the news gets out that camping is allowed in this location.” She said Santa Cruz does not have the ability to solve the entire country’s homelessness crisis by way of opening the park to all.
“From the city’s perspective, the most important thing to make this plan potentially feasible is really having the clear legal ability to remove people from areas that are not the Benchlands,” Bronson said.
New park playbook
The city may mandate that unmarked areas of San Lorenzo Park, such as the upper park and surrounding areas, footbridges such as the one over Branciforte Creek near the park, areas “unreasonably close” to the San Lorenzo River levee and areas near the Soquel Street bridge, need to be kept clear from encampments, personal property and other obstructions. To accomplish this, the city wrote, the creation or maintenance of an encampment in areas not marked as campsites would be deemed a public nuisance, according to the proposed order.
Attorney Anthony Prince, speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, accused the city of trying to “bootstrap a general ban on homeless people in the city of Santa Cruz.”
“We feel that’s highly inappropriate for the city to now seek an order which would essentially provide a vague and overbroad and unconstitutional measure that is outside the scope of the preliminary hearing,” Prince said.
Van Keulen disagreed with Prince, adding that the issues he predicted were not before the court. While largely in agreement with the city’s relocation plan, van Keulen stopped short of setting a timeline for the temporary benchlands camp to be dissolved, however. The city had proposed the camp automatically end when Santa Cruz County moves to the “yellow tier” of the state’s California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. The county progressed to the lower “orange tier” on the same day as the hearing. Instead, van Keulen said she will continue to monitor the situation in Santa Cruz and allow for the camp’s removal when the injunction is dissolved or both sides reach a settlement agreement, whichever comes first.
The city may opt to enlist help from a third party, such as a nonprofit or Santa Cruz County officials, to help to manage the new encampment. No details were provided Tuesday on that effort. Where allowed, those living in encampments likely will be held to a city “code of conduct” and be prohibited from creating bike “chop shops,” having unreasonably untidy camps spaces, creating an unreasonable fire risk or spreading their belongings beyond a 12-foot-by-12-foot-per-person footprint.
Attorneys disagreed over the city’s plans to outright prohibit all smoking in the city park. Prince said that, while he did not condone smoking, some limited allowance should be made for those living in the space. Van Keulen did not indicate her final ruling on that matter Tuesday.