Comment
Rate
Downtown Girds for Street-Sleeping Battle II
 |
| A huge crowd packed City Hall Sept. 20, when Jan Perry and the City Council rejected a settlement that would have allowed people to sleep on the streets of Downtown overnight. The issue could return to the Council as soon as this week. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
Rhetoric Heats Up as Controversial City-ACLU Settlement Winds Back to Council
by Kathleen Nye Flynn
Downtown Los Angeles stakeholders last month endured one of their harshest and most important battles in recent memory, when they rose up to protest a proposed settlement that would have allowed people to sleep on the sidewalks of 50 blocks of the community every night.
After intense wrangling and closed-door negotiations led by Downtown Councilwoman Jan Perry, the full City Council surprised many by rejecting the compromise crafted by the American Civil Liberties Union and backed by players including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and Police Chief William Bratton. Many Downtowners rejoiced, believing they had dodged a bullet.
Now, however, some feel they're once again looking down the barrel of a gun. The City Council is scheduled to revisit the issue, possibly as soon as this Wednesday. What action the Council might take, and indeed, what they might even debate, remains a mystery.
"I'm unclear as to why it is coming back to council unless the City Attorney is coming back with a status report on the appeal," said Perry. "Unless there's new information or something has changed I'm not sure what the motivation is to push for a settlement at this time."
The fear of a settlement has been expressed many times in recent weeks, including at a confrontational Oct. 24 meeting, and some expected the battle to come to a head on Oct. 30. However, the Council postponed discussion of the subject until after this week's elections.
City Hall sources have said the matter could appear again on the Council agenda on Wednesday, Nov. 8, or the following week (Los Angeles Downtown News went to press before the Nov. 8 agenda was published).
When it does return, Downtown residents and businesses are not the only ones who will be fighting tooth and nail.
"We are not going to stop now," Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California ACLU, said last week in an interview. "Either we will work on a settlement or continue litigation, which might eventually reach the Supreme Court. We could eventually lose, but we could also win. Nobody knows."
Causing a Stir
The sides have been fighting since the ACLU sued the city after the LAPD arrested people for sleeping on the streets of Skid Row. This past April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the ACLU, deeming it cruel and unusual punishment to arrest somebody for sleeping on the street if the city did not offer an alternative, such as open shelter beds.
That led to months of mediation talks, with the ACLU ultimately reaching an agreement with city officials. The compromise called for allowing homeless people to sleep on the streets from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in an area bounded roughly by Main, Alameda, Fourth and Seventh streets.
But when the matter made it to City Hall on Sept. 20, the full Council voted against the measure, 10-3, in closed session. Since the vote, temporary guidelines similar to those in the settlement have been put in place, though the plan has not been adopted as law as the city continues an appeal of the court's decision. Yet all that could change when the Council next takes up the issue.
The matter has been fiercely debated in Downtown, including at an Oct. 24 town hall-style meeting organized by the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council. About 90 people showed up.
"It is unconscionable to have those people sleep on the streets and it is unconscionable no matter which way you twist it," Orlando Ward, spokesman for the Midnight Mission and a panelist at the meeting, told the crowd. "If we tell a man it's okay for you to be down there, how can we expect him to rise out of it?"
The meeting quickly deteriorated into a shouting match between people on the panel and audience members who complained that the session was one-sided or that it didn't have enough people in the room representing the actual homeless on the streets.
The ACLU said it was invited to participate in the meeting at the last minute and only after they made phone calls to DLANC. Ripston and various panelists exchanged heated words in front of the audience about the people DLANC chose to have speak.
The meeting demonstrated the heightened emotions and the awareness of the settlement within the community.
"At the beginning of the meeting, my concern was that there would be homeless, well, more homeless than there already are, encamped in front of my front door," said John Swartz, a resident of a Spring Street loft who brought five of his friends to the meeting. "It was kind of a selfish concern. But, at the end of the meeting, I am still against the ACLU's proposal, but for better reasons. I can see now how it would create a dangerous place for the homeless and they would never be able to get out of their situations."
Opposing Sides
Opponents of the settlement say that setting guidelines that sanction sleeping only on Skid Row would create an ugly situation allowed in Downtown, but not in other parts of Los Angeles. They also say it would essentially abandon the residents and developers who have invested in and struggled to clean up the area, and that it will attract even more homeless to the community. They maintain it doesn't really help the homeless.
Although Perry and many local business and community leaders have railed against the proposal, they face stiff opposition from Villaraigosa, Delgadillo, Bratton and 14th District Councilman José Huizar, who represents portions of Downtown.
Thomas Saenz, counsel to Mayor Villaraigosa, said, "The Mayor supports settlement of the case because it will remove a legal cloud over police activity designed to guide homeless to needed housing and services. This is critical to a successful, comprehensive approach to addressing homelessness."
Bratton has said that the settlement would provide police officers another tool to limit crime and sidewalk sleeping during the day in the Skid Row area.
Ripston said that the ACLU made compromises when it agreed to limit sleeping on the street to nighttime hours and designated blocks.
"We've also agreed that people couldn't sleep 10 feet on the side of a business in order not to make a destination between businesses that had early opening hours," Ripston said. "We think we have really compromised."
No one is yet speculating on how the votes will fall if the measure comes to Council this week. But plenty of people on both sides of the issue will be watching.
Contact Kathleen Nye Flynn at kathleen@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 11/6/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
After intense wrangling and closed-door negotiations led by Downtown Councilwoman Jan Perry, the full City Council surprised many by rejecting the compromise crafted by the American Civil Liberties Union and backed by players including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and Police Chief William Bratton. Many Downtowners rejoiced, believing they had dodged a bullet.
Now, however, some feel they're once again looking down the barrel of a gun. The City Council is scheduled to revisit the issue, possibly as soon as this Wednesday. What action the Council might take, and indeed, what they might even debate, remains a mystery.
"I'm unclear as to why it is coming back to council unless the City Attorney is coming back with a status report on the appeal," said Perry. "Unless there's new information or something has changed I'm not sure what the motivation is to push for a settlement at this time."
The fear of a settlement has been expressed many times in recent weeks, including at a confrontational Oct. 24 meeting, and some expected the battle to come to a head on Oct. 30. However, the Council postponed discussion of the subject until after this week's elections.
City Hall sources have said the matter could appear again on the Council agenda on Wednesday, Nov. 8, or the following week (Los Angeles Downtown News went to press before the Nov. 8 agenda was published).
When it does return, Downtown residents and businesses are not the only ones who will be fighting tooth and nail.
"We are not going to stop now," Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California ACLU, said last week in an interview. "Either we will work on a settlement or continue litigation, which might eventually reach the Supreme Court. We could eventually lose, but we could also win. Nobody knows."
The sides have been fighting since the ACLU sued the city after the LAPD arrested people for sleeping on the streets of Skid Row. This past April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the ACLU, deeming it cruel and unusual punishment to arrest somebody for sleeping on the street if the city did not offer an alternative, such as open shelter beds.
That led to months of mediation talks, with the ACLU ultimately reaching an agreement with city officials. The compromise called for allowing homeless people to sleep on the streets from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in an area bounded roughly by Main, Alameda, Fourth and Seventh streets.
But when the matter made it to City Hall on Sept. 20, the full Council voted against the measure, 10-3, in closed session. Since the vote, temporary guidelines similar to those in the settlement have been put in place, though the plan has not been adopted as law as the city continues an appeal of the court's decision. Yet all that could change when the Council next takes up the issue.
The matter has been fiercely debated in Downtown, including at an Oct. 24 town hall-style meeting organized by the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council. About 90 people showed up.
"It is unconscionable to have those people sleep on the streets and it is unconscionable no matter which way you twist it," Orlando Ward, spokesman for the Midnight Mission and a panelist at the meeting, told the crowd. "If we tell a man it's okay for you to be down there, how can we expect him to rise out of it?"
The meeting quickly deteriorated into a shouting match between people on the panel and audience members who complained that the session was one-sided or that it didn't have enough people in the room representing the actual homeless on the streets.
The ACLU said it was invited to participate in the meeting at the last minute and only after they made phone calls to DLANC. Ripston and various panelists exchanged heated words in front of the audience about the people DLANC chose to have speak.
The meeting demonstrated the heightened emotions and the awareness of the settlement within the community.
"At the beginning of the meeting, my concern was that there would be homeless, well, more homeless than there already are, encamped in front of my front door," said John Swartz, a resident of a Spring Street loft who brought five of his friends to the meeting. "It was kind of a selfish concern. But, at the end of the meeting, I am still against the ACLU's proposal, but for better reasons. I can see now how it would create a dangerous place for the homeless and they would never be able to get out of their situations."
Opponents of the settlement say that setting guidelines that sanction sleeping only on Skid Row would create an ugly situation allowed in Downtown, but not in other parts of Los Angeles. They also say it would essentially abandon the residents and developers who have invested in and struggled to clean up the area, and that it will attract even more homeless to the community. They maintain it doesn't really help the homeless.
Although Perry and many local business and community leaders have railed against the proposal, they face stiff opposition from Villaraigosa, Delgadillo, Bratton and 14th District Councilman José Huizar, who represents portions of Downtown.
Thomas Saenz, counsel to Mayor Villaraigosa, said, "The Mayor supports settlement of the case because it will remove a legal cloud over police activity designed to guide homeless to needed housing and services. This is critical to a successful, comprehensive approach to addressing homelessness."
Bratton has said that the settlement would provide police officers another tool to limit crime and sidewalk sleeping during the day in the Skid Row area.
Ripston said that the ACLU made compromises when it agreed to limit sleeping on the street to nighttime hours and designated blocks.
"We've also agreed that people couldn't sleep 10 feet on the side of a business in order not to make a destination between businesses that had early opening hours," Ripston said. "We think we have really compromised."
No one is yet speculating on how the votes will fall if the measure comes to Council this week. But plenty of people on both sides of the issue will be watching.
Contact Kathleen Nye Flynn at kathleen@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 11/6/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
 |
||
| The Next Big Scoop |
Article Rating
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of ladowntownnews.com.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
Popular Searches
