Public Space? Or Tent City? : Santa Ana and Santa Monica want to insist on policies for all the people

Cities around the state are snowed under with the depressing day-to-day problems of homelessness, which stem from issues well beyond their own borders. Many cities have made clumsy attempts to, in effect, legislate homelessness out of town, without much success. Now Santa Monica and Santa Ana are drafting laws similar to one already on the books in Santa Barbara aimed at curbing homeless encampments in public parks and civic areas.

These cities hardly can be blamed for trying to attack this unpopular symptom of homelessness--and, by the way, for trying to make parks and other public spaces safer and more accessible to all their residents. But it’s a cosmetic solution at best.

If the rising tide is to be stemmed, the underlying problems of homelessness--affordable housing, substance abuse counseling, mental and other health services and employment training--must be put on the front burner not just in cities but in counties and within state and federal governments.

Encampments have arisen in many Santa Monica and Santa Ana parks and other public areas as homeless people improvised shelter. There are few alternative shelter spaces available to them. In Orange County, for example, there are about 800 beds and an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 homeless people. Many of Santa Ana’s homeless congregate in the Civic Center area, where various efforts to be rid of them have backfired on the city.

The details of the Santa Monica and Santa Ana camping laws have not been worked out. But both probably will permit overnight sleeping while outlawing construction of tents made of blankets, plastic, cardboard and shopping carts. Both cities plan to model theirs after Santa Barbara’s, which has withstood a constitutional test.

Communities understandably are trying to prevent their public parks from becoming tent cities. But banning outdoor camping alone won’t do it. Without more comprehensive strategies, cities may only make the lives of these homeless a lot more miserable.