Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 272
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 273
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 274
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Tamara
California
275
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:36 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Anna Christensen <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:51 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
276
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
277
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 278
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 279
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 280
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 281
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Anna
California
282
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:36 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Jennifer Marquez <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:14 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
283
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
284
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 285
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 286
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 287
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 288
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Jennifer
California
289
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:36 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Isabella Dennis <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 6:10 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
290
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
291
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 292
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 293
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 294
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 295
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Isabella
California
296
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:36 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Derald Tucker <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:59 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
297
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
298
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 299
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 300
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 301
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 302
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Derald
California
303
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:35 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Gregory Fong <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:22 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
304
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
305
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 306
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 307
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 308
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 309
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Gregory
California
310
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:35 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Don't criminalize the homeless!
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Jeffrey Dublin <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:21 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Don't criminalize the homeless!
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
I am not a bot, but I do have the template included under what I'm writing by hand. There is not, nor have there ever been, a class of people, either economically, racial, gender or heritage-wise that we can simply exclude from empathy and decency. Any potential threat a homeless person may face- as safety is the stated reason for these agenda items- is because 311
they are desperate and have already have so little. Why is the most appealing option to grind them down even further? We don't need cops and force, we need rent control and low-income housing. Build it in my backyard if you have to!
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and 312
sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely 313
vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that 314
criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
315
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf. 316
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
317
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Jeffrey
California
318
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:35 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Jose Ventura <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:49 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
319
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
320
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 321
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 322
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 323
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 324
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Jose
California
325
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:35 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: James Silva <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:46 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
326
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
327
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 328
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 329
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 330
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 331
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
James
California
332
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:34 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Edwin Vielman <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:42 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
333
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
334
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 335
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 336
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 337
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 338
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Edwin
California
339
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:34 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Phillip Kessler <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:38 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
340
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
341
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 342
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 343
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 344
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 345
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Phillip
California
346
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 6:24 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Katelyn Bernardo <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:34 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
347
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
348
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 349
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 350
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 351
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 352
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Katelyn
California
353
Alma Valenzuela
From: robin jones <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:30 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 354
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 355
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 356
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
357
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 358
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
359
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
robin
California
360
Alma Valenzuela
From: Kate Jones <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:28 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 361
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 362
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 363
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
364
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 365
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
366
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Kate
California
367
Alma Valenzuela
From: Tamara Romero <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 9:28 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 368
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 369
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 370
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
371
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 372
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
373
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Tamara
California
374
Alma Valenzuela
From: Anna Christensen <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:51 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 375
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 376
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 377
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
378
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 379
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
380
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Anna
California
381
Alma Valenzuela
From: Jennifer Marquez <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:14 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 382
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 383
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 384
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
385
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 386
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
387
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Jennifer
California
388
Alma Valenzuela
From: Isabella Dennis <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 6:10 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 389
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 390
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 391
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
392
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 393
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
394
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Isabella
California
395
Alma Valenzuela
From: Derald Tucker <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:59 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 396
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 397
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 398
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
399
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 400
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
401
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Derald
California
402
Alma Valenzuela
From: Gregory Fong <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:22 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 403
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 404
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 405
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
406
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 407
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
408
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Gregory
California
409
Alma Valenzuela
From: Jeffrey Dublin <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:21 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Don't criminalize the homeless!
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
I am not a bot, but I do have the template included under what I'm writing by hand. There is not, nor have there ever been, a class of people, either economically, racial, gender or heritage-wise that we can simply exclude from empathy and decency. Any potential threat a homeless person may face- as safety is the stated reason for these agenda items- is because they are desperate and have already have so little. Why is the most appealing option to grind them down even further? We don't need cops and force, we need rent control and low- income housing. Build it in my backyard if you have to! Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral 410
responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models 411
already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), 412
according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost 413
savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social 414
Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving 415
outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Jeffrey
California
416
Alma Valenzuela
From: Jose Ventura <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:49 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 417
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 418
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 419
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
420
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 421
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
422
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Jose
California
423
Alma Valenzuela
From: James Silva <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:46 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 424
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 425
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 426
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
427
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 428
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
429
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
James
California
430
Alma Valenzuela
From: Edwin Vielman <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:42 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 431
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 432
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 433
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
434
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 435
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
436
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Edwin
California
437
Alma Valenzuela
From: Phillip Kessler <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:38 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 438
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 439
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 440
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
441
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 442
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
443
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Phillip
California
444
Alma Valenzuela
From: Katelyn Bernardo <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:34 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 445
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 446
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 447
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
448
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 449
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
450
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Katelyn
California
451
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:24 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Kathy Apacible
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Executive Office
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2216 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only
for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Tracy Luu <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:23 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement 452
mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States. 453
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently 454
made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 455
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 456
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 457
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Tracy
California
458
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:24 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Kathy Apacible
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Executive Office
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2216 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only
for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Brittany Hart scholten <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:20 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement 459
mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States. 460
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently 461
made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 462
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 463
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 464
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Brittany
California
465
Alma Valenzuela
From: Tracy Luu <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:23 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 466
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 467
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 468
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
469
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 470
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
471
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Tracy
California
472
Alma Valenzuela
From: Brittany Hart scholten <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:20 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 473
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 474
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 475
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
476
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 477
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
478
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Brittany
California
479
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:56 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Phyllis Schmidt <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:53 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
480
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
481
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 482
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 483
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 484
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 485
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Phyllis
California
486
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:56 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela; Allison Bunma
Subject: FW: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
Barbara Gallagher
Executive Assistant
Office of the City Attorney | Departmental Counsel Division
411 W. Ocean Blvd., 9th Floor | Long Beach, CA 90802
Office: 562.570.2269 | Fax: 562.436.1579
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This email message and its attachments contain work product or other information which is privileged, confidential and/or protected from disclosure. THIS EMAIL AND ATTACHMENT, IF ANY, ARE NOT PUBLIC RECORDS (GOVERNMENT CODE SECTIONS 7927.705 and 7922.000). The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you think that you have received this message in error, please e-mail or phone the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited.
From: Deborah Mozer <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:42 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
487
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
488
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3].
In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made 489
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.
A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness 490
places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost-effective, long- term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/. 491
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment-sweeps-issue- brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness— but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/. 492
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press- releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless-point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Deborah
California
493
Alma Valenzuela
From: Phyllis Schmidt <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:53 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 494
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 495
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 496
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
497
Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 498
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
499
18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Phyllis
California
500
Alma Valenzuela
From: Deborah Mozer <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:42 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐
City Clerk Monique De La Garza,
Dear Mayor Richardson, Supervisor Hahn, City Manager Modica, City Attorney McIntosh, Homeless Services Officer Duncan, Health and Human Services Director Colopy, Deputy City Manager Chandler, and Long Beach City Council,
We, the undersigned, urge you to reject any and all homelessness criminalization policies that may result from the passing of a revised agenda item (NB-25) exploring enforcement mechanisms ostensibly related to public safety. It is clear from existing research that removing people experiencing homelessness (PEH) from public space by ticketing, arrest, coercion, and other punitive measures exacerbates and prolongs homelessness rather than solving it.
NB-25 passed in City Hall by a 7-2 vote on June 20, 2023, greenlighting research into policy options “related to [unsafe] uses of public spaces, including camping, that contribute to public health issues, nuisance, and public safety concerns” [1]. The item’s author, Councilmember Kristina Duggan, justifies enforcement by appealing to the May 30 attack on people in Belmont Shore by an unhoused man, arguing that “firm,” police-based approaches are needed to manage people who refuse services. We counter, however, that carceral responses not only fail to address the root cause of homelessness (unaffordable housing), they also forsake the very models that could have prevented the attack in the first place.
NB-25 stands in clear contradiction to the City Council’s repeated acknowledgements in recent weeks that homelessness is a housing problem that requires housing solutions. In Los Angeles County, renters must earn an annual income of about $70,000 to afford a modest one-bedroom market-rate apartment; that equals working more than 80 hours a week on a minimum wage salary [2]. The state-wide shortage of available affordable housing units, the failure to cap rents, and the rollback of COVID-19 eviction protections mean that more and 501
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.
NB-25 has alarmed housing advocates in Long Beach as an anti-homeless measure that will criminalize and police our unhoused neighbors for activities that are unavoidable when unsheltered. The criminalization of homelessness is defined as laws and policies aimed at PEH that prohibit basic, life-sustaining activities from taking place in public. The most common forms of criminalization include bans on publicly sleeping or resting, pitching tents and sheltering, storing personal property in public, and asking for help. These bans may be applied as anti-camping, anti-loitering, anti-panhandling, or nuisance ordinances, and may be justified in the name of public health or safety. Notably, Councilmembers Megan Kerr, Suely Saro, and Joni Ricks-Oddie voiced concern—prio r to voting yes—toward NB-25’s shameful implications and precedents, which include Vagrancy Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Ugly Laws, Sundown Laws, and other instances in the long history of outlawing and punishing the poor and oppressed people in the United States.
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and certain of her colleagues insist, unconvincingly, that NB-25 does not entail criminalization, the decision to examine other cities’ enforcement practices is worrying, to say the least. The ACLU reports that homelessness criminalization by local governments is spreading in California partly because such policies legitimize and influence the use of similar mechanisms elsewhere. Local governments have exploited loopholes in Martin v. Boise to administer discriminatory measures designed to remove PEH from public space, which may result in displacement, incarceration, hardship, and/or death [3]. In this way, the decision to “look to” other municipalities risks reproducing a vicious feedback loop in which punitive measures in one area justify the enactment of harmful policies in another, and vice versa. Whereas Long Beach has the opportunity, in part due to the powers granted to it through the emergency proclamation, to lead the way in progressive, housing-first options, this leadership will be abdicated if the City simply imports failed models already in place in Los Angeles, Chico, Santa Cruz, Orange County, and other California regions and municipalities.
Furthermore, it is highly questionable whether anti-homeless enforcement actually betters public safety. Encampment sweeps, one of the go-to mechanisms to remove PEH from sight, which the City and LA County practice regularly [4], have been well documented to negatively impact the health and well-being of swept residents, to make homelessness worse, and to fail to improve public safety in general [5]. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reports, for example, that encampment residents may refrain from calling 911 in life- 502
threatening emergencies due to fear of a resulting sweep, which leaves residents vulnerable to violence and other emergencies [6]. More broadly, criminological studies examining encampment communities in New York and Los Angeles found little to no reduction in crime rates and reports near encampment areas following police interventions and/or encampment clearances, suggesting that most crime near encampments is not attributable to PEH [7].
Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely vulnerable group, which reinforce more criminalization and may lead to greater violence and aggression against PEH [8]. The LAPD reports that nearly a quarter of all LA murder victims were unhoused despite only comprising one percent of the population and the LA County Department of Health reports that PEH are 15 times more likely to be victims of homicide than the general public [9]. Relatedly, unhoused people are significantly less likely to factor as suspects in homicide cases, meaning that many of the murders of PEH in LA City and LA County are perpetrated by people with housing [10]. Nevertheless, PEH are consistently made into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].
Third, criminalization degrades public safety because it creates a revolving door between homelessness and the carceral system. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that “people who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public” and “people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public” [12]. By the same token, homelessness increases the chance of arrest and incarceration, increasingly for reasons of status rather than behavior, which makes it even harder to access housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment [13].
Fourth, this revolving door primarily impacts people of color. As the City Council very well knows, the majority of PEH in Long Beach are Latinx (35.2 percent) and Black (32.4 percent), according to the 2023 homeless count [14]. Alarmingly, the disproportionate percentages put unhoused members of racial groups that already experience higher rates of police violence at further risk of harm. As studies show, interactions between police and PEH—which criminalization generates—are more likely to resu lt in the use of force by police [15]. In 2019, for example, 34 percent of LAPD “non-categorical” use of force incidents (translation: the use of any forcible or coercive action except deadly force or weapon strikes to the head, such as using riot control weapons, batons, tasers, and/or bodily force) were against alleged PEH— approximately 23 times the rate experienced by the general public [16]. Given these 503
numbers, if the City Council chooses to embolden enforcement, it will actively stoke the conditions for police violence to occur on our streets.
Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-
25. A 2015, San Francisco-based report states: “criminalization did not significantly reduce homeless people’s presence in public space or deter camping, loitering, begging, sitting, or sleeping in public.” In fact, the study found “no evidence to support the claim that criminalization led more homeless people to seek or receive services—police almost never offered services or referrals to our respondents and when they did, these services were primarily in [the] form of a pamphlet, one-night shelter bed, or sandwich” [17].
Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being ineffective, is highly expensive. The cost of policing and penalizing chronic homelessness places significant stress on emergency, legal, shelter, and health systems and resources without the payoff of actually reducing the problem [18]. The price tag of police contact, legal processing, jail time, emergency services, and other expenses associated with criminalization reaches thousands and thousands of dollars per person, far outpacing the amount of money required to implement non-punitive, housing-first alternatives.
Housing-first programs, which provide stable, permanent housing with wrap-around supportive services and no strings attached, have been shown to be cost-reductive, effective solutions. In fact, researchers report that housing-first programs constitute “the most cost- effective, long-term solution to chronic homelessness. When people experiencing chronic homelessness receive PSH [Permanent Supportive Housing], they are less likely to use emergency departments, hospitals, detoxification facilities, and shelters. PSH residents are also less likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested, and be incarcerated. The decreased use of these expensive services is dramatic and results in savings. Often, cost savings equal or exceed the cost of PSH” [19].
For these reasons, we strongly object to any decision by city officials to adopt and enact punitive policies based on NB-25, no matter what humanitarian spin is placed on them. Our unhoused neighbors need rehabilitative, care-based, housing-first solutions, not more fines, arrests, and jail time. If adopted, the turn to criminalization will mark nothing less than a failure by the City of Long Beach to lead and a failure to improve the lives of all residents who call Long Beach home.
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Sincerely,
The People of Long Beach
1. We appreciate that Councilmembers Cindy Allen and Roberto Uranga had the courage to vote no on NB-25
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Out of reach 2020: California,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://nlihc.org /oor/state/ca.
3. American Civil Liberties Union, Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People (California: ACLU, 2021).
4. DSA Long Beach Housing Justice Committee, “Long Beach Swept Encampments Before Grand Prix,” Knock LA, April 30, 2023, https://knock-la.com/long-beach-grand-prix/.
5. Diane Qi, Kamran Abri, M. Rani Mukherjee, Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, Lina Khoeur, Lily Barnard, and Kelly Ray Knight, “Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 3,707-3,714.
6. National Health Care for the Homeless Council, “Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness,” National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc., December 2022, https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NHCHC-encampment- sweeps-issue-brief-12-22.pdf.
7. Bennett Allen, “Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy,” Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 19, no. 3 (2022): 356-366. Amanda Aykanian and Sondra J. Fogel, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” in Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work: Policies, Programs, and Practices, eds. Heather Larkin, Amanda Aykanian, Calvin L.
Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.
8. Robert J. B. Lehmann, Joscha Hausam, and Friedrich Lösel, “Stigmatization and Victimization of People Experiencing Homelessness: Psychological Functioning, Social Functioning, and Social Distance as Predictors of Reporting Violence to the Police,” Policing:
A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.
9. Eric Leonard, “LA’s Homeless Were 24% of City's Murder Victims,” NBC Los Angeles, January 4, 2023, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/las-homeless-were-24-of- 505
citys-murder-victims/3066979/. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, “Mortality Rates and Causes of Death Among People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County: 2014-2021,” May 2023,
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2023.pdf.
10. Thacher Schmid, “Homeless People in the US Are Being Murdered at a Horrific Rate,” Jacobin, May 17, 2022, https://jacobin.com/2022/05/homeless-homicides-data-surge-victims- suspects
11. Jeremiah Dobruck and Jason Ruiz, “City officials tied a stabbing spree to homelessness—but the suspect wasn’t homeless,” Long Beach Post, October 22, 2022, https://lbpost.com/news/stabbing-spree-suspect-not-homeless-long- beach-yohance-sharp/.
12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.
13. Marina Fisher, Nathaniel Miller, Lindsay Walter, Jeffrey Selbin, “California’s New Vagrancy Laws The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” Social Science Research Network, February 12, 2015, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558944.
14. City of Long Beach, “Press Release: Long Beach Releases Results of the 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count,” City of Long Beach, April 27, 2023, https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/long-beach-releases-results-of-the-2023- homeless- point-in-time-count/.
15. Homelessness Policy Research Institute, “Policing Homelessness: A review of the literature on policing policies that target homelessness and best practices for improving outcomes,” University of Southern California, October 21, 2021, https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Policing-Homelessness-Final-
1.pdf.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, “Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco,” accessed July 11, 2023, https://www.cohsf.org/Punishing.pdf, 67.
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18. Angela Ly and Eric Latimer, “Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets:
A Review of the Literature,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11 (November 2015):
475-487.
19. Lavena Staten and Sara K. Rankin, Penny Wise But Pound Foolish: How Permanent Supportive Housing Can Prevent a World of Hurt (Seattle: Seattle University School of Law, 2019), i.
Deborah
California