Overnight Sleeping on Public Land Banned : Homelessness: Advocates for the needy tell the City Council that more shelters are needed for the new policy to work. The action also would discourage the public from giving to panhandlers.

LONG BEACH —  Long Beach, which recently started rousting homeless people from their downtown encampments, is taking steps to ensure that they don’t set up camps anywhere else in the city.

Despite misgivings by advocates for the homeless, the council voted 8-1 Tuesday to ban overnight sleeping on public property, making it illegal for people to pitch a tent or throw down a blanket for the night on any patch of public land.

On another matter, however, the council heeded the advice of supporters of the homeless and asked the city manager to develop a public awareness program to deal with panhandling. It would discourage people from giving money to panhandlers, instead urging them to make donations to agencies that help the homeless.

The anti-camping ordinance, modeled after one in Santa Barbara, marks a shift in city policy. Local leaders, until recently, had tolerated homeless encampments. But election year pressures combined with concern over the spread of encampments to forge support for a get-tough policy.

“I think it’s time we take a very strong tough-love stand and get these people out of camps and off the streets,” Councilman Doug Drummond said. “I also believe it’s helpful to the alleged homeless.”

The council action disturbed advocates for the homeless, who argued that facilities for Long Beach homeless people are woefully inadequate. The city should not adopt a public sleeping ban without making an effort to provide more shelter beds, they said.

“Don’t pass this until you do one helpful thing for the homeless,” the Rev. Kit Wilke insisted, urging the council to at least support zoning variances for shelters.

In a brief report presented to the council, the Homeless Services Advisory Committee, while supporting the elimination of encampments, maintained that it was unreasonable to outlaw public sleeping without providing another 250 beds for the homeless within the next 18 months.

Committee members also said they feared that the new law would “give the illusion of helping the homeless” and would distract police from more serious problems.

Saying that the local homeless population has grown far larger than the 3,000 to 5,000 estimated five years ago, the council-appointed committee noted that the city has failed to adopt any of the major recommendations for homeless programs made by a 1987 task force. The panel asked the city to establish a homeless drop-in center, permanent affordable housing and a care center for alcohol and drug abusers.

Some speakers at the council meeting doubted that the law was enforceable.

“You can’t give a ticket, because they’re not going to pay the ticket,” stressed Vanessa Romain, regional director of Catholic Charities, which runs a family shelter in Long Beach.

Under the law, which expands the existing bans on sleeping in parks or on beaches to all public property, violators could be charged with an infraction or a misdemeanor, which carry penalties of fines or jail time.

Elisa Trujillo, president of a Drake Park neighborhood group, supported the anti-camping law. “But we really feel it won’t be successful,” she said. “You better get a place for them to live or your problem won’t be over.”

And Marion Mauk of the League of Women Voters said: “It seems to me this is setting the city up for a policy of harassment of the homeless.”

City management has repeatedly said that the homeless won’t just be shooed away but will be told where to get help. And Councilman Wallace Edgerton, who has been one of the leading proponents of the camping ban, once again insisted that shelters are available for the homeless.

“Beds go empty,” Edgerton said, citing space at the 155-bed Long Beach Rescue Mission. Supporters of the homeless countered that the private mission, the city’s largest shelter, is selective in its admissions.

Councilman Evan Anderson Braude also complained about the mission’s insistence that its residents take part in religious activities. “It’s totally inappropriate to have services for the homeless depend on whether they’re going to bow down to their God at that location.”

Braude, who said he supported the camping ban, also wondered why the city had not made a greater attempt to develop programs for the homeless that didn’t involve city money. City Manager James C. Hankla’s answer was that a majority on the council did not support such programs.

Asked for a staff response to the call for more shelter beds, Hankla said, “We should press the county of Los Angeles.” Hankla, a former county administrator, has maintained that the homeless are primarily the responsibility of the county, rather than the cities.

Citing local budget shortages, Hankla said it would be “extremely expensive” to provide 250 extra beds.

Advocates for the homeless still contend that funds could be found for a shelter, if local authorities would help coordinate the efforts of social agencies and ease the way for a facility with zoning variances.

The council sent the recommendation for more beds to committee for review and approved the panhandling public awareness program on a 5 to 4 vote. Councilmen Drummond, Ray Grabinski, Jeffrey A. Kellogg and Warren Harwood dissented. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to accomplish,” Kellogg said of the motion.

Harwood also voted against the public sleeping ban, complaining that it “was a disjointed kind of program that doesn’t really accomplish anything that is very good.” And he pointed out that the law will make it illegal for tired or intoxicated drivers to pull over and take a nap in their cars.

The anti-camping ordinance will come before the council next week for final approval and would go into effect 30 days after it is approved.