by Zav Hershfield
Wednesday Sep 2nd, 2015 4:04 PM

Police arrest two, write 15 tickets at 8th community sleepout event, install floodlights. Community members discuss themselves, their history.

 

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“Where are we supposed to go? After we’re run off somewhere, where do we go?” was the question asked by Lisa, a houseless person present in the city hall plaza at this week’s recurring Santa Cruz camping ban protest. Santa Cruz’s camping ban, present in the law since 1978, makes it illegal for someone to sleep outdoors in the city using any kind of sleeping gear. Blankets, tarps, sleeping bags, and tents are all included in this ban. The protestors here, now in their eighth week of the ongoing demonstration, say that the ban unfairly targets unhoused people and is used to make them unwelcome in Santa Cruz.And they do feel unwelcome. “It’s overwhelming,” said Lisa, “there are no basic services for us. I stopped going to work because can’t get a shower, don’t have anywhere to store my things.” It’s the loss of basic services like showers and simple meals that started these protests. Earlier this year, budget cuts to the Homeless Services Center on River Street led the to the organization’s choice to close down such services to people not living on site. The local chapter of Food Not Bombs – an international activist group that supplies free vegan food to protests and progressive causes – in partnership with the group Homeless United in Freedom and Friendship organized several breakfast servings at the corner of River and Highway 1 to draw public attention, but were unsuccessful in seeing the cuts reversed. Now folks like Lisa are crippled in their ability to work, store their belongings safely, and even keep themselves clean.

The city is certainly not making things easy for this current protest camp. There has been a regular police presence that arrives each night near midnight to ticket people sleeping in the plaza, generally for being in a park after hours or for blocking a sidewalk. This most recent campout saw a visit from fourteen officers of the Santa Cruz Police Department, who wrote out fifteen tickets and made two arrests of protestors who refused to sign their citations. The officers were more aggressive than they have so far been in these protests, yanking blankets and tarps off of sleepers and ticketing without warning. In addition, the city covered parking meters by the city hall plaza and set up three police-rented sets of floodlights that they trained on the protest site. The lights ran on smoky, roaring generators for the entire night. Local activist Steve Pleich recalled these same tactics used by the city during Peace Camp 2010, an earlier protest camp directed against the camping ban.

The protest draws a variety of people from the city. One sleeper, Fred, ticketed earlier in the night for playing amplified music from his own car “without a permit,” shared his story wholeheartedly. Fred is a 3 year veteran of the US Army who served in Panama City as an intelligence officer during the Vietnam era and currently lives out of his car with his three dogs. Corwyn is a Saint Bernard, Moustache a terrier mix, and Lukie a Chihuahua mix. Fred credited the dogs with being his best friends and said they save his life every day. He’s got an ingrained sense of humor and sarcasm that he said comes from his upbringing in New York, just outside of the Bronx. Fred made a little light of his ticket when told the name of the officer that wrote him up. “Winston,” he laughed,”tastes good like a cigarette should!” recalling the advertising slogan. He’s got a serious attitude towards the situation of houseless folks like himself though. Recounting his experiences being ticketed or shoved along from a sleep spot, he growled “I want to tell the judge, put on a homeless person’s clothes and go to downtown Santa Cruz and you will be absolutely appalled. The police treat you with absolute disrespect.”

Another sleeper present was Frank Lopez, who is registered with the housing facilities at the Homeless Services Center, but still came out in support of the protests. Frank has had a long history of involvement in social causes. He was a Brown Beret with the United Farmworkers through the 1960s and participated in protests against Safeway grocery stores, as well as a caravan drive through California to provide food, clothing, and medical supplies to undocumented farmworkers. Also present were a young couple, Adam and Rein, who were actually attracted to the site when they saw the enormous lights. They had no idea the protests had been going on, but stopped on a detour taken to avoid a one-way street. They expressed some concerns that the site was so out of the way, and would have liked to see more people present.

Perhaps all these people will be at the next sleepout, on Tuesday, September 8. The organizers are welcoming food, clothing, sleeping gear, and monetary donations, and encouraging folks to come out and learn more about the challenges facing unhoused people in Santa Cruz.

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Continue reading →

NOTES BY NORSE:  Some HUFF activists have successfully pressed former Santa Cruz City Attorney John Barisone for exemption from some provisions of the Downtown Ordinance for disabled people.

Specifically “Push Back” Pat Colby has secured verbal (but not written) assurance that she will not be hassled under the hourly “Move Along” law.  This unique burdensome ordinance (MC 5.43.020(2) has the effect if not the intention of discouraging and burdening vendors, performers, panhandlers,and political tablers by requiring them to move 100′ every hour (to one of the increasingly few “legal” spots) and not to return for 24 hours.  Fines for violation are more than $300 and the ordinance has never been challenged beyond the trial court level.

In Santa Cruz, there’s been no acknowledgment of the needs of disabled folks around MC 6.36 (the Camping Ordinance which includes broad Sleeping, Blanket, and Camping bans).  Fines of $157 and Stay-Away orders are regularly levied against homeless people with no consideration of their possible disabled status.   To make matters worse, even the sketchy protection given by the “dismiss if on waiting lists of shelters” provisions of MC 6.36.055 have become inapplicable.

Giving private agencies like the Paul Lee Loft and River St. Shelter broad power to pick and choose who they’ll spare from the punishment of the Sleeping Ban has itself been a discriminatory problem. I have been unsuccessful in getting clear data from the City Attorney’s office as to how many homeless people are still ending up punished and prosecuted in spite of the obvious shelter deficiency.

However recently, in search of federal and state money, the Homeless (Lack of)Services Center has completely closed down all broader services to the general homeless population including meals, laundry, showers, and bathrooms.  Those without a “pathway to housing” may not be able to get on the River St. Shelter waiting list, and the Paul Lee list no longer exists.  Hence the whole homeless population of 1500-2000 in the City face the ticketing whim of cops and rangers urged on by right-wing bigots in the Santa Cruz Neighbors, Marlin Granlund’s Public Works Parking Dept., the Downtown Association, Take Back Santa Cruz, and other homeless-aphobic groups public and private.

The federal government has recently weighed legally–noting sleeping bans in cities with inadequate shelter are cruel and unusual punishments in the Bell v. Boise case.  This has tongues wagging, but no lawyers writing briefs here yet.

Meanwhile Freedom Sleepers, the group now planning its 8th challenge to the Sleeping Ban with a mass sleep-out on the City Hall grounds on September 1st, continues to face considerable police harassment.

Police removedtwo key Freedom Sleeper activists  in handcuffs charging them with felony “conspiracy” and “vandalism” charges, punishable by years in prison.   Their “crime”=-unrelated to the Freedom Sleeper protests is satirizing and exposing the City’s illegal constriction of public free expression space downtown through its demeaning and unconstitutional “blue boxes”.   After city officials illegally reduced the number of boxes, someone added additional blue marks creating more boxes on the sidewalk designated “free speech zones” where artists, activists, and street folks generally are allowed to socialize, rest, and table.  This apparently was done without concealment under the video surveillance of numerous cameras on Pacific Avenue.

City officials had earlier violated MC 5.43.005 (c) and (d) by proceeding to create new smaller “allowed” areas without City Council Resolution.  Police harassed, then arrested artists who used the older areas sandblasted away by the city officials.  See “Unpermitted Blue Boxes Appear Overnight on Pacific Avenue” at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/08/24/18776595.php .                       The officials however were not taken into custody and required to pay $5000 bail to get out.  Keith McHenry goes to his initial hearing August 31 at 8:15 AM where Food Not Bombs will be serving a meal.  Freedom Sleepers  will return to City Hall grounds for their 8th sleepout on the evening of September 1st .

                          Meanwhile we’re still awaiting some movement from the local ACLU to take legal action on behalf of homeless people here–or at least those who are disabled–regarding the right to sleep–not anywhere and everywhere, but somewhere.  And to defend McHenry and others being punished for exposing the City’s crackdown on street performers.

ACLU Sues Laguna Beach Over Treatment of Homeless People

By jgallego August 20, 2015 at 12:43 PM

http://voiceofoc.org/2015/08/aclu-sues-laguna-beach-for-discriminating-against-the-homeless/

Nearly a decade after ACLU Foundation of Southern California sued Laguna Beach over the city’s and police department’s handling of homeless residents, the organization has again sued the city for failing to provide adequate facilities for  homeless people with mental and physical disabilities.

In a Thursday press release, ACLU SoCal said it seeks to require city officials to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by providing supported housing appropriate for the chronically homeless with disabilities. Following is the press release and a link to the suit:

Laguna Beach, CA – The ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) and the law firm of Paul Hastings LLP today sued the City of Laguna Beach for discriminating against homeless individuals with disabilities.
 
Currently, the city’s homelessness program provides only limited emergency shelter – often inaccessible to persons with disabilities – yet mandates strict enforcement of laws prohibiting sleeping in public, even against those who cannot access this shelter. 
 
The lawsuit, brought on behalf of five chronically homeless individuals with mental and physical disabilities, including a homeless veteran, seeks to require Laguna Beach officials to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by providing needed supportive housing – that is housing with wrap-around services such as mental health care and case management – appropriate for chronically homeless persons with disabilities.   
 
“Laguna Beach is best known as an affluent, idyllic seaside art colony, but a small, yet significant portion of the population suffers from mental and physical disabilities that leave them unable to access housing,” said Kristopher Wood, an attorney with Paul Hastings. “The City refuses to provide permanent supportive housing that would alleviate the problem; yet continues to cite physically and mentally disabled homeless individuals who have no other option for sleeping outdoors.  That conduct is simply illegal under the ADA and the Constitution.”

The lawsuit also challenges the city’s practice of ticketing disabled, homeless persons who cannot access this shelter for sleeping or lodging in public as cruel and unusual punishment. 
 
“The city has adopted a strategy that punishes homeless individuals with disabilities,” said Heather Maria Johnson, a staff attorney with the ACLU SoCal’s Dignity for All Project. “Unfortunately, the tactics are not new and what is happening in Laguna Beach is all too commonplace. But the difference in this case is the city has chosen to ignore the issue despite being put on notice years ago.”

In 2008, the ACLU SoCal challenged a Laguna Beach ordinance that allowed police to ticket homeless individuals who had no other place to sleep. That case was quickly settled, with the city agreeing to repeal sections of the ordinance that prohibited sleeping or camping in public places. Following that lawsuit, a shelter was established.
 
However, after the end of the settlement period, Laguna Beach officials reinstated the old prohibitions and police resumed ticketing homeless individuals, the vast majority of whom have mental or physical disabilities and often have difficulty accessing the shelter. The current lawsuit challenges the city’s new strategy. 
 
“With a population of just over 23,000, Laguna Beach is a very welcoming place for some.” said Belinda Escobosa Helzer, director of ACLU SoCal’s Orange County office.  “But if you happen to be a homeless resident with disabilities, the city makes sure to let you know you are not welcome. This is a city with the resources to address the issue as required by law.” Continue reading →