Legislation that would prohibit local cities and jurisdictions from issuing fines against people who assist unhoused individuals moved through a state senate committee last week.
Senate Bill 634, the Homeless Rights Protection Act, comes at a time when several big cities in California, including San Jose and San Francisco, are moving toward more aggressive measures for reducing homelessness. The bill was authored by Democratic State Senator Sasha Renée Perez (Senate District 25, inland from L.A.); it “would prohibit a local jurisdiction from adopting a local ordinance, or enforcing an existing ordinance, that prohibits a person or organization from providing support services, as specified, to a person who is homeless or assisting a person who is homeless with any act related to basic survival.” The prohibited services include “legal services or medical care [or] assisting a person who is homeless with any act related to basic survival.” The bill, introduced into the State Senate in April, is working its way through the usual Senate processes. SB 634 passed on a 4-2 vote in the State Senate Local Government Committee. In late April, it moved on to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it currently is being debated.
“I’ve introduced SB 634 because it is critical for California to draw the line – issuing fines and jail time to people who have nowhere to live is inhumane,” Sen. Perez argues. “Threatening to charge charity workers for offering water to someone living in poverty is immoral.” Homeless rights groups and disability rights advocates rushed to Perez’s defense, but opposition to SB 634 is growing in small cities, who argue that its passage would impede their ability to manage the homelessness crisis. Among those small cities is La Verne, a valley town east of Los Angeles. With a population of 30,000, La Verne’s mayor, Tim Hepburn, wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee, “SB 634 strips the leverage that some individuals require to agree to service after repeated attempts are made through extensive outreach and engagement by non-law enforcement personnel and clinicians which are summarily denied. Without enforcing local ordinances that impose civil or criminal penalties, known programs such as Homeless Court are rendered ineffective.” He added that SB 634 also “flies in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Johnson v. Grants Pass, which clarified that local governments may impose reasonable regulations on encampments in public spaces.”
SB634 may seem draconian on its face. Can someone who gives a bottle of water to a homeless person really be guilty of a misdemeanor? I don’t think anyone would argue that point, nor can I imagine that any police officer, even in a conservative place like La Verne, would cite a person for giving water or a snack to a homeless person.
However, the legal points involved are serious. Clearly, too much accommodation has been given by cities to their homeless populations. In Oakland, for instance, the city government basically invited homeless people to move here, and gave them de facto permission to erect their tents and shanties in our public spaces. This went too far, and citizens understandably became upset.
But what is the correct, balanced solution? We need to enforce the law that prohibits encampments on public property, and if that means forcibly evicting campers and charging them with crimes, so be it. But SB 634 does seem to go too far. Surely we can get a lot tougher on illegal, unsanitary homeless encampments, while at the same time protecting the right of a sympathizer to give water and food to homeless people.
Steve Heimoff