Weeks after a monumental decision on homelessness, Santa Monica City Council held initial discussions on how a U.S. Supreme Court ruling could impact not just the city, but surrounding jurisdictions.
During the July 9 council meeting, Vice Mayor Lana Negrete and Councilmember Oscar de la Torre put a request on the agenda that the City Attorney and City Manager evaluate the recent Grants Pass Supreme Court decision, providing options to potentially amend the City’s Municipal Code that "are consistent with the ruling and the city’s commitment to clean and safe." This past month, the Supreme Court ruled that cities in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (including California) can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places, overturning lower court rulings that deemed punishment for sleeping outside as cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment.
De la Torre stated that while the city is "still trying to understand" how the ruling impacts the homelessness issue, he wanted to know what options were available to "provide support for people that are on our streets."
"The goal of this is not to criminalize homelessness, we want to assess our temporary shelters and see how we can move forward in providing more space so that people can sleep indoors," the councilmember said.
He added that the Grants Pass ruling will impact "many cities" within the Los Angeles metro area, concerned that cities with harder enforcement will push unhoused individuals to coastal locations like Santa Monica that have a "long track record" of supporting these individuals.
"We have to look at the fact that our surrounding cities are getting tougher on it, and what does that mean for us if we don’t move at the same pace … I think there are solutions and we definitely want to be humane and compassionate, but it gives us an opportunity to just ask our City Attorney to look at what we can do in Santa Monica," Negrete added.
City Attorney Doug Sloan, though not having taken an in-depth look at Grants Pass, did pose that the city could remove an exception in its encampment ban that allows for unhoused to sleep with a blanket outside.
Both councilmembers Caroline Torosis and Gleam Davis highlighted the current Municipal Code banning encampments in public spaces, with Torosis saying the prohibition is "sufficient" and that solving the current crisis cannot be done via criminal enforcement alone.
"I know people are frustrated here, I get that, I hear that every single day, but I don’t think we can criminalize our way out of homelessness," Torosis said. "If we really want to solve homelessness, we can’t just push someone to another sidewalk because we don’t want them in our city."
Davis added that someone recently told her that the Grants Pass ruling means the city can "collect all the homeless people and take them where I don’t have to look at them," something she strongly disagreed with, and that the city needs to "manage expectations" after the ruling despite other jurisdictions that may "test the limits" with enforcement.
"It doesn’t mean that we can collect people who are homeless off the street, it doesn’t mean we can force them into housing if they don’t want to go into housing, they are still human beings and they still have civil rights," Davis said.
The council unanimously passed the request for further evaluation of Grants Pass, with Mayor Phil Brock asking for a "clear delineation" of what the term "encampment" applies to.
"Is an encampment just when someone puts up a tent and 3-4 of them gather together, or is an encampment the person who’s laying in front of a store on the Promenade?," Brock said. "Or laying in front of a business where you can’t get out the door because a person’s there? The question when you’re getting sometimes disrespectful to the homeless people who need help is because people in Santa Monica are just frustrated. They’re frustrated, they’re angry … they’re wondering why more can’t be done. The Supreme Court decision, whether you support it, don’t support it, either way I think we need to have the obligation to come back to our residents with a clear understanding of what can be done, what should be done, or if we continue as-is."
