Garden Grove moves forward with camping ban aimed at homeless

Garden Grove has become the latest city in Orange County to try to bolster its enforcement hand on homelessness by supporting a new camping ban.

Discussed during the Garden Grove City Council meeting on Tuesday, the law seeks to prohibit camping on public property. It also aims to curb homeless encampments from setting up within certain distances next to buildings, ATMs, schools and daycare centers.

The city would also be authorized to remove unattended or abandoned personal property from public spaces subject to a 90-day retrieval period.

A staff report cited a 49% increase in calls for police service related to homeless encampments since 2017. Police statistics contend that at least half of all petty crime and theft in Garden Grove is committed by people from encampments.

Council members stressed the city’s outreach efforts in presenting the ordinance as a balanced approach.

“We’ve got all these carrots, but we needed a stick,� said Councilman George Brietigam. “The whole intent of it is for it to be used compassionately.�

Garden Grove has taken a number of steps to address homelessness in the form of outreach efforts.

Last year, Garden Grove became the first city in O.C. to partner with CalOptima for a street medicine pilot program that provides healthcare services for people living on the streets.

Since then, Anaheim and Costa Mesa have launched similar collaborative efforts.

Before that, Garden Grove worked with Be Well OC and Moving Forward for mental health and homeless outreach services.

The city also partnered with Fountain Valley and Westminster for the Central Cities Navigation Center, which opened earlier this year and offers 85 shelter beds by referral.

Brietigam claimed that Garden Grove’s comprehensive approach has led to a drastic drop in homelessness.

According to O.C.’s Point in Time homeless count this year, 239 people in Garden Grove are experiencing homelessness with 163 of them unsheltered.

That’s down nearly 40% from the biennial tally’s report of 391 homeless people in 2022 but up by more than a dozen from the pre-pandemic count in 2019.

Earlier this month, Anaheim moved forward with sweeping bans against people sleeping on sidewalks, selling bike parts at parks or even smoking near bus stops. A second vote to formally pass the laws is slated for Oct. 29.

In August, Newport Beach expanded its anti-camping law to include people sleeping in their cars.

The wave of enforcement measures follows the U.S. Supreme Court recent ruling that anti-camping laws are constitutionally protected without regard to available shelter bed space.

Brooke Weitzman, executive director of the Elder Law & Disability Rights Center, told TimesOC that O.C. cities still have to consider legal protections, including the 4th Amendment prohibition on seizure or destruction of property, when passing homeless laws after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“It is a true disappointment that at a moment when our cities know the fastest-growing unhoused population is seniors, and when our shelters struggle to meet the unique needs of seniors, and when our county needs to reckon with the mismanagement of public funds that exacerbated the housing crisis specifically for seniors failing to get them critical resources over the past four years, to see cities threatening the very lives of those seniors by targeting them for handcuffs instead of housing,� Weitzman said.

Garden Grove Police Chief Amir El-Farra insisted that officers tasked with enforcing a camping ban in the city would not be heavy handed in their approach.

“We always lead through compassion and outreach,� he said. “If it arises to the level where we need to take enforcement action, we will do so.�

Councilwoman Kim Nguyen-Peñaloza asked what could be done, if anything, about encampments along county and Caltrans property where Garden Grove has no jurisdiction.

“When it’s county, the flood channels or the Caltrans area along the freeways, that can take days, weeks, months before it’s cleaned up and acted upon,� she said. “In that time frame, we have a lot of criminal activity occurring in these specific areas.�

Garden Grove City Atty. Omar Sandoval noted that the proposed law wouldn’t be able to address those encampments directly.

Jurisdictional gaps aside, all seven City Council members voted to approve the anti-camping law.

A second, procedural vote to pass it into law is slated for a future council meeting. Once passed, the bans would take effect in 30 days.