Laguna serious when it comes to homelessness solution

Sunday night was one of those treasured times when every person who wanted a place to sleep could get one at Laguna Canyon’s overnight emergency shelter, known as the Alternative Sleeping Location.

That’s not always the case, but the weather was warm, and it is the time of the month when people receive disability payments, so they may use the money for a motel room, said Dawn Price, executive director of the Friendship Shelter, which operates the ASL, while standing outside the facility on Laguna Canyon Road.

The ASL has sleeping space for 45 people and, thus far in 2014, an average of six people a night have been turned away, Price said.

Laguna Beach, with its desirable weather and surroundings as well as bohemian vibe, has always been a draw for the homeless. But the issue of homelessness in the city has come to the fore in a new way: A proposal for permanent housing with support services in the canyon being is discussed, and Laguna Beach leaders and affordable-housing providers are seriously looking to find a way to balance compassion with public safety.

Representatives from the Friendship Shelter and developer Jamboree Housing Corp. are behind the idea to build a 40-unit housing facility in Laguna Beach for clients who have severe mental or physical disabilities and have been homeless for a year or longer or homeless at least four times in the past three years.

The concept is in the planning stages and nothing has been approved. Meanwhile, the homeless continue to seek a space to spend the night without getting caught by police.

Though a federal appeals court struck down a Los Angeles ordinance last month that prohibited living in cars, it is still against state law to sleep in a car overnight.

Laguna Beach does not have its own ordinance concerning lodging inside a vehicle, Capt. Jason Kravetz said. But the municipal code does impose certain restrictions on sleeping on a public beach, street and walkway.

For those who do get turned away from ASL, the Friendship Shelter, which also provides temporary housing for 32 men and women at a South Coast Highway facility, gives people bus passes in hopes they can find a shelter in another city.

Some choose to forgo the bus and find a spot nearby. Some, like Brian Jerry, find refuge in their cars.

Jerry, 53, worked as a San Francisco Chronicle pressman for 21 years before he was laid off five years ago. He has yet to find steady work and survives on a monthly Social Security check.

Jerry, who is clean-shaven with short hair and seems to favor a T-shirt, shorts and flip flops, eats meals at the ASL but does not sleep there.

“The people who feed us are champions,” Jerry said. “I’m proud of the volunteers.”

He has spinal stenosis and said sleeping in his car, a 2003 Toyota Camry, is less painful than trying to rest on a mat in the ASL, which moved from a different Laguna Canyon Road location in May 2010.

“It doesn’t bother me [to sleep in the car],” Jerry said. “If it means me being out here and giving someone else the spot in there, that’s how I look at it.”

Jerry has never received a ticket for sleeping in his car, nor has he been kicked out of the ASL parking lot — his preferred place to park for the night — though he has received warnings.

He wonders why police urge him to park in a metered spot along Laguna Canyon Road instead of the ASL parking lot. Meters along that section of Laguna Canyon Road are not enforced from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m., Deputy City Manager Ben Siegel wrote in an email.

“It’s not safe out there [on Laguna Canyon Road],” Jerry said. “Why is it OK to sleep out there but not here?”

From the ASL’s move in 2010 to June 10 of this year, police have cited 116 people for illegal lodging near the property, said Kravetz, who added that most of the violations concerned people found camping on private property — not sleeping in their cars.

Lighted cigarette butts and embers from illegal campfires are prime concerns.

“The big fear is people in the fire hazard zone,” Kravetz said. “If they are creating a hazard, we’re more apt to issue a citation instead of a warning.”