Editorial: Homeless Parking Lot Proposal Scrimped On Public Notice, Fails To Consider Unintended Consequences, Deserves Fact-Check, Scrutiny And Vetting First In Council Committee

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Editorial

Homeless Parking Lot Proposal Scrimped On Public Notice, Fails To Consider Unintended Consequences, Deserves Fact-Check, Scrutiny And Vetting First In Council Committee

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(Oct. 10, 2016, 4:30 p.m.) -- Councilmembers Jeannine Pearce, Suzie Price, Dee Andrews and Roberto Uranga used an agendizing technique that effectively cut public notice in half (to four days, two of which fall over the weekend) instead of allowing the more thoughtful eight-day public notice period in seeking Council approval on Tues. Oct. 11 to direct city management to prepare a "feasibility report" on allowing homeless parking lots to pop up in currently unspecified parts of town.

The Councilmembers' agendizing memo doesn't indicate whether the public, or just Councilmembers and City Hall officials, will see that feasibility report. The agendizing memo doesn't disclose what issues arose in other communities when this was tried. There's NO indication of what LBPD thinks of this idea, although we believe it could bring a number of unintended consequences (see below.) And no, the agendizing Councilmembers don't request that their proposal go to a Council Committee where it really ought to be vetted first.

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Among the possible unintended consequences we foresee:

(1) If X number of homeless living in vehicles are allowed at a particular parking lot, other homeless living in vehicles (perhaps 2X or 3X) will likely show up, especially if food or services are available. If they can't be accommodated in the lot, they'll park on nearby streets, which will effectively create a neighborhood homeless magnet, which is what Councilmembers claim they want to prevent.
(2) Non-vehicular homeless will inevitably learn of the location and will show up, who'll likely do what too many homeless do including urinating and defecating, engaging in drug, alcohol and other publicly offensive behaviors and possibly committing thefts and other neighborhood impacting crimes.
(3) In many ways, urbanized Long Beach in southeast L.A. County really isn't analogous to rural Sonoma County and quiet Santa Barbara. It's not reasonable to simply assume success in Long Beach if that's what really happened elsewhere (and needs to be independently fact-checked, which the inadequate short public notice doesn't allow.)
(4) The Council and the public deserve to know what really happened in other towns where this is supposedly a success. Relying entirely on what homeless advocates say, or what incomplete press reports may or may not say, isn't performing due diligence.

Can you think of other unintended consequences? Let us know in your comments below.

We believe all of this deserves input from neighborhoods potentially impacted AND input from LBPD...especially after the City Council just voted in September NOT to restore 95% of police officers in FY17 erased since FY10 (despite voter-approval of a City Hall sought sales tax increase.) As a result of City Council budget actions, LB (L.A. County's second largest city) has a too-thin-blue-line for routine citywide deployment roughly equivalent per capita to cutting roughly 30% of LAPD's budgeted officers.

The Pearce-Price-Andrews-Uranga homeless parking lot proposal appears to echo a de facto advocacy piece that recently appeared in Public CEO (a publication targeted to government officials), reprinted from the California Health Report, a sponsored project of Tides Center, a 501(c)(3) entity whose list of sponsored grantees speaks for itself.

This concept might make some sense but in our view it requires serious scrutiny, and possibly necessary local refinements, before Long Beach Councilmembers vote to direct city staff to make it "feasible" to impose on LB neighborhoods.

L.A. City Hall isn't recklessly plunging into this; to our knowledge, it's only now "considering" a pilot program. Long Beach shouldn't make itself L.A. County's largest guinea pig for this.

LBREPORT.com urges a substitute motion to send this idea to a Council committee and direct city management to fact check, pro and con, the experiences in other communities where homeless parking lots have been tried. Then the results and the proposal should be fully vetted in a Council committee -- agendized with sufficient public notice -- before it returns for a decision by the full City Council.

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