08082023-NB-42 Corresp. EMAILS — Long Beach City Council, August 8, 2023 (part 1 of 3)

1 Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:29 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: Lee Charley <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:26 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,
2 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.
3 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 4 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.

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 5 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/. 6 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/. 7 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.

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.

Lee
California

8 Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:29 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

From: Alexandria Emanuel <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:24 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,
9 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 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.
10 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].

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 11 into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 12 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.

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/. 13 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.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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/. 14 12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

I should also say regardless of what they have done as homeless Long Beach has not provided their fair share of taking care of the issues while we are still getting our increase of tax revenue for the city as well as our high amount of a parking ticket is unjustifiable You're Expecting these people to have multiple jobs and not being able to afford their own rent and the food that comes with it yet our city can have lavish million dollar events without taking care of its own people shame on you for sitting there and thinking that you guys could get a cute little check while you're not really taking care of the city that you call home 15 Alexandria
California

16 Alma Valenzuela
From: Lee Charley <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:26 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 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 17 more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 18 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].

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 19 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].

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.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 21 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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

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.
22 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.

Lee
California

23 Alma Valenzuela
From: Alexandria Emanuel <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:24 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 24 more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 25 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].

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 26 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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 28 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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

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.
29 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.

30 Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 3:15 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

From: Max Norris <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:51 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,
31 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 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.
32 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].

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 33 into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 34 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.

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/. 35 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.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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/. 36 12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Max
California

37 Alma Valenzuela
From: Max Norris <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:51 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 38 more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 39 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].

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 40 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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 42 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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

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.
43 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.

Max
California

44 Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:13 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Cc: 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

From: Mary Simmons <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:10 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.

‐EXTERNAL‐

City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
45 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.

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 47 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].

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]. 48 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.

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).
49 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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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
50 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.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Mary
California

51 52
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:12 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Cc: 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

From: Casey Tonnelly <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:08 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.

‐EXTERNAL‐

City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
53 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.

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 55 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].

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]. 56 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.

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).
57 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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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
58 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.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Casey
California

59 60
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:12 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Cc: 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

From: Byron Adams <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:07 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.

‐EXTERNAL‐

City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
61 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.

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 63 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].

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]. 64 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.

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).
65 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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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
66 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.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Byron
California

67 68
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:11 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

From: Alex Arellano <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 1:39 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,
69 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 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.
70 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].

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 71 into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 72 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.

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/. 73 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.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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/. 74 12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Alex
California

75 Alma Valenzuela
From: Mary Simmons <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:10 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 76 more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 77 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].

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 78 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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 80 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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

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.
81 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.

Mary
California

82 Alma Valenzuela
From: Casey Tonnelly <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:08 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 83 more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 84 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].

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 85 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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 87 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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

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.
88 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.

Casey
California

89 Alma Valenzuela
From: Byron Adams <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 2:07 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 90 more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 91 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].

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 92 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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 94 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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

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.
95 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.

Byron
California

96 Alma Valenzuela
From: Alex Arellano <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 1:39 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 97 more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 98 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].

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 99 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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 101
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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Alex
California

103
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 1:34 PM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Cc: 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

From: Kailee Caruso <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 1:28 PM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.

‐EXTERNAL‐

City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
104
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.

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 106
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].

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]. 107
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.

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).
108

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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
109

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Kailee
California

110

111
Alma Valenzuela
From: Kailee Caruso <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 1:28 PM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 112
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 113
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].

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 114
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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 116
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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Kailee
California

118
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:27 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

From: Alan Illan <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:23 AM
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,
119
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 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.
120
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].

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 121
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 122
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.

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/. 123

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Alan
California

125
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:27 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

From: Anthony Gimenez <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:18 AM
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,
126
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 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.
127
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].

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 128
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 129
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.

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/. 130

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Anthony
California

132
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:27 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

From: Conor Harris <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:13 AM
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,
133
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 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.
134
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].

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 135
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 136
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.

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/. 137

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Conor
California

139
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:26 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Cc: 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

From: Katelyn Bernardo <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:50 AM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.

‐EXTERNAL‐

City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
140
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.

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 142
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].

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]. 143
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.

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).
144

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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
145

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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

146

147
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:26 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
Cc: 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

From: Michelle Lewis <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:45 AM
To: CityAttorney <[email protected]>
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.

‐EXTERNAL‐

City Attorney Dawn McIntosh,
148
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.

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 150
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].

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]. 151
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.

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).
152

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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
153

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Michelle
California

154

155
Alma Valenzuela
From: Alan Illan <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:23 AM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 156
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 157
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].

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 158
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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 160
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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Alan
California

162
Alma Valenzuela
From: Anthony Gimenez <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:18 AM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 163
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 164
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].

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 165
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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 167
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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Anthony
California

169
Alma Valenzuela
From: Conor Harris <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:13 AM
To: CityClerk
Subject: Say NO to criminalizing homelessness.
‐EXTERNAL‐

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 170
more people will inevitably end up on the streets as the cost of rental housing continues to rise.

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- 171
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].

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 172
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-

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].

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

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- 174
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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

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/.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Conor
California

176
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:57 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Erin Foley <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:46 AM
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,
177
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 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.
178
While Councilmember Mary Zendejas and some 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].

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 179
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].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

Finally, criminalization wastes money and resources. Recent studies add to an already significant body of literature demonstrating that punitive enforcement, besides being 180
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.

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).
181

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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
182

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Erin
California

183

184
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:57 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:16 AM
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,
185
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 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.
186
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].

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 187
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 188
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.

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/. 189

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

California

191
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:57 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Andrew Mandujano <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:11 AM
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,
192
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 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.
193
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].

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 194
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 195
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.

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/. 196

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Andrew
California

198
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:57 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Kenny Allen <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:09 AM
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,
199
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 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.
200
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].

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 201
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 202
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.

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/. 203

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Kenny
California

205
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:57 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Liliana Monroy <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 9:46 AM
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,
206
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 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.
207
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].

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 208
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 209
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.

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/. 210

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Liliana
California

212
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:57 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Karenina Alfaro <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 9:23 AM
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,
213
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 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.
214
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].

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 215
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 216
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.

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/. 217

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Karenina
California

219
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:57 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Anna Carella <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:21 AM
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,
220
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 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.
221
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].

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 222
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 223
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.

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/. 224

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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

226
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:56 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Brendan Whalen <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:19 AM
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,
227
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 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.
228
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].

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 229
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 230
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.

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/. 231

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Brendan
California

233
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:56 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Allena Braithwaite <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 7:43 AM
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,
234
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 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.
235
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].

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 236
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 237
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.

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/. 238

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Allena
California

240
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:56 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Carrissa Cochrane <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 7:43 AM
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,
241
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 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.
242
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].

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 243
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 244
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.

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/. 245

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Carrissa
California

247
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:56 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Joshua Newman <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:31 AM
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,
248
I assume that you are going to get a bunch of these, so I am going to write something at the top. I am a teacher in Long Beach and every year I have students who have or who are experiencing homelessness. Almost always this is due to rent increases. Children are experiencing homelessness and it is not because of their use or parental use of drugs or their own personal choices. It is due to the cost of housing. The increase in homelessness is affecting children and families, and the real estate industry is profiting off of these people’s misery.

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.

Second, criminalization reinforces stigmatization and the social exclusion of an extremely 250
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].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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.

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
252

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/.

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.
254

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.

Joshua
California

255
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:56 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Ayanna Blount <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 12:09 AM
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,
256
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 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.
257
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].

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 258
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 259
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.

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/. 260

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Ayanna
California

262
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:56 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Manuel Aguado <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, August 7, 2023 11:50 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,
263
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 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.
264
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].

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 265
into scapegoats for violent crime, often without evidence or truthfulness to the accusations [11].

Fifth, other research shows that criminalization neither decreases the visibility of chronic homelessness nor successfully encourages accepting services, a primary rationale for NB-25.

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 266
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.

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/. 267

Streeter (New York: Springer, 2019), 185-205.

A Journal of Policy and Practice 17 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac033.

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

12. Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html.

1.pdf.

16. Ibid., 5.

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.

Manuel
California

269
Alma Valenzuela
From: CityAttorney
Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:56 AM
To: Alma Valenzuela
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

From: Gabe Sosnowski <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, August 7, 2023 11:02 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,
270
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.

Long Beach City CouncilAugust 8, 2023

Long Beach City Council
August 8, 2023