A bill to the California legislative assembly to intervene with the exception of cities and counties to infiltrate or stop a homeless for sleeping or camping on the street should be heard by a legislative committee later this month.
The bill is partly in response to a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States last year which allowed local courts to prohibit homeless camps, even if a city or a county does not have enough shelters.
Related: controversial proposal to cite and stop the homeless who refuse the refuge divide the residents of San Jose
Under the law on the right of rest, local governments would always be authorized to erase the camps; They simply would not be allowed to amend or stop a person simply for having lived in the street – penalties Senator Sasha Renée Pérez said that it would only do more difficult for someone to withdraw from homelessness.
Its proposed legislation, SB 634, would prohibit a state agency or the local jurisdiction from imposing civil or criminal sanctions on a homeless for “any act immediately linked to homelessness”, or to any person helping a homeless “with any act linked to fundamental survival”, in particular by distributing water or food or by providing other services.
Pérez, D-Pasadena, said that people should not be criminalized so as not to be able to afford a roof over their heads.
“What we are trying to get here is to prevent people from being fined or being put in prison to be homeless,” said Pérez, adding that people should not be criminalized for the biological need to sleep.
“If you can’t afford to live anywhere – if you can’t afford to stay, a hotel – you have to sleep,” she said.
Pérez said that fines or arrest of someone to be homeless do not work because if the person could not afford to pay the fine and accumulates additional costs accordingly, he could quickly become out of control, leaving the indebted person.
In addition, she said, a person’s arrest could make them miss an appointment with a service provider to request accommodation or other services.
Related: Fremont puts the ban on controversial campsite while defenders continue their repeal
Fines and arrests are “not only a solution”, but they aggravate the crisis of the homeless, she said.
More than 300,000 people have traveled homeless in California in 2024, but the State had only 76,000 shelters and 79,000 permanent support housing units, according to the bill.
The downtown law center, a SKID ROW Los Angeles legal service provider that serves homeless people, is a sponsor of the bill.
Representatives of the organization said on Monday that when a homeless is sentenced to a fine, the unpaid fine can remain in his file, which makes the request for an apartment more difficult and can deepen the cycle of poverty.
They said that, according to them, should be to build affordable housing and provide more services to those who need them – not creating additional challenges to the poor or those who help them. (Provisions in the bill protecting people who help the homeless have been added, they said, in response to the recent decision of the Fremont municipal council to make an offense to “help” and “do” someone erecting a homeless camp.)
“We are here to combat poverty, not poor people,” said designer Ishvaku Vashishtha, a downtown law.
But, “he said,” after the success of the subsidies, we saw the flooding doors open to allow municipalities to experience various ways of criminalizing poverty. “
When the Supreme Court rendered its decision on the Grants Pass case last summer and gave local jurisdictions for authorization to enforce anti-camping laws and tickets for sleeping in public, it has drawn mixed examinations from managers in southern California.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass and the Comté de la, Lindsay Horvath supervisor, who presided over the supervisors at the time, condemned the decision, saying that she criminalized the homeless. Neither the city nor the county would punish people to camp in public, they said.
On the other hand, the leaders of several cities in the County of Orange welcomed the court’s decision.
Newport Beach officials recently described the decision of the Pass Grants “the biggest game changer for the city when it comes to dealing with the homeless”.
Two years ago, mayor Joe Stapleton said Newport Beach had 94 homeless people; This number is now 11.
“There is no compassion to leave these people on the street,” said Stapleton, adding that the city spends more than $ 4 million a year for resources, tools, services, temporary housing and permanent housing solutions to get people out of the street.
There may have been resistance to Newport Beach anti-campaing law at the start, said Stapleton, but the city has heard several people, thanking it for having forced them to get the services they needed to get off the street.
At the time of the subsidy decision, the city of San Bernardino was still in dispute for having pretended to throw the affairs of the residents of the homeless during the previous Camping clearings.
But in September, the City and the Aclu Foundation of Southern California agreed with a regulation obliging the City to adopt a policy to prevent the destruction of the property of homeless residents during camping and to provide reasonable housing to disabled homeless residents.
Almost immediately, San Bernardino started cleaning up campsites from his parks, starting with Perris Hill Park, to mixed results, according to former residents of these camps.
San Bernardino also allocated an additional $ 1.4 million to homeless residents, with more expenses potentially on its way.
Pérez, who sat on the Municipal Council of Alhambra before being elected to the state legislature, said that Alhambra did not do well or does not stop people to have been homeless, but offers shelter and services.
The question is deeply personal for Pérez, whose cousin died while she lived in the rue du Nevada in 2019. Her aunt, who was also homeless and confined to a wheelchair towards the end of her life, died the following year. And Pérez has other family members who still live in the street.
“There are solutions that local municipalities can make this service center on housing without having to go to these extreme measures” fines and arrests, “said Pérez.
His bill should be heard by the Local Government Senate Committee on Wednesday, April 23. South California legislators who are on this committee include meaning. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles; Steve Choi, R-IRVINE; and Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta.
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