Santa Monica Enforces a New Policy Toward Homeless People : Government: The city ends its meals program at City Hall and issues the first citations for living in a public place. The emphasis is on social services. Legal challenges are expected.

Santa Monica this week ended its City Hall-lawn meal program for the homeless and began enforcing a new ordinance outlawing living in public places. The two events mark a major turning point in the way this city manages its homeless problem.

On Monday, the meals program quietly moved to three indoor sites where homeless people can also obtain other services.

A few days earlier, three men in Lincoln and Palisades parks in North Santa Monica received the first citations issued under a city ordinance that makes it a misdemeanor to live in a public place.

City Atty. Robert M. Myers has until the end of the month to decide whether he will file criminal charges against the men. The ordinance has long been an issue for Myers, who refused to write it when the council asked him to because he said it was repressive and unconstitutional.

He said he has not decided what course to take on the charges.

The meals program, run by a private charity group called FAITH, served as many a 300 meals every weekday for three years to homeless people, who started gathering early each afternoon on the front lawn of City Hall. The program brought the city both notoriety as a mecca for the dispossessed and praise as a place of compassion.

Defying the new direction set by the City Council, a group of volunteers put on their own meals program in Palisades Park on Wednesday and Thursday.

City Manager John Jalili said the impromptu program underscored the lack of regulations on organized activities in places such as Palisades Park. Steps will be taken in Santa Monica to require permits, as other cities do, he said.

The ad hoc park meals program “does fly in the face of the homeless task force recommendations,” said Julie Rusk, manager of Santa Monica Community and Neighborhood Services. That kind of meals program attracts people who do not seek other services, she said.

Rusk said the three new programs were running smoothly at two downtown facilities, the Salvation Army and Step Up on Second, a day center for the mentally ill, and at the Ocean Park Community Center at Colorado Avenue and 6th Street. Participants must sign up for meals in advance.

The city’s homeless task force recommended against the unwieldy, anonymous meals program in favor of smaller groupings where people could be directed to social services. The City Council endorsed the plan in hopes of healing division over the city’s homeless problem.

The 18-member citizen group’s recommendations for managing the large homeless population through a balance of services and public safety measures also included a call for a law against using the parks for living accommodations.

When the task force undertook its nine-month study of the homeless situation in 1991, residents were up in arms over an increasing crime rate and the staking out of park areas by the homeless.

Writing the law turned into a wrenching process because segments of the community, following Myers’ lead, objected to the move as repressive of people who had nowhere to go for housing except public places.

After Myers refused to draft the law or let any of his staff do it, the council hired outside lawyers. The attorneys sharply disagreed with Myers’ legal analysis of the constitutionality of the proposed regulations, and the council went on to pass the law against encampments.

The law requires that a person spend more time in a park than would normally be associated with recreational use, and have belongings indicating that he or she is using the park as a home.

Because the law is almost certain to be challenged in court, Santa Monica police proceeded carefully with the first arrests, after blanketing the parks for weeks with notices that the law was going to be enforced, said police spokesman Sgt. Bill Brucker.

The first three citations went to men who had been repeatedly warned that they were in violation of the law, Brucker said.

William Henry Haynes, 48, was cited at 6:30 a.m. June 4 in Palisades Park. Winston Theodore Reid, 43, and Tyrone Earl Jones, 33, were cited in midafternoon at Lincoln Park. The citations require the men to appear in court July 1.

Brucker said the men had shopping carts overflowing with bedding, foam pads, cooking utensils, food and clothing.

The Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild is one group planning a challenge to anti-encampment laws in Santa Monica and other cities. “It is safe to say one or more of those ordinances will be challenged in court,” said Guild Executive Director James Lafferty.