LA is rewriting law banning living in cars, after 9th Circuit rejected original ordinance
Ten months after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance forbidding living in vehicles, the city is trying to rewrite it.
City attorney Mike Feuer proposed a new version of the law in a report last week, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The 9th Circuit struck down the original law as unconstitutionally vague, saying it appeared to be enforced selectively against the homeless. In relevant part, the law said “no person shall use a vehicle … as living quarters either overnight, day-by-day, or otherwise.”
“Section 85.02 is broad enough to cover any driver in Los Angeles who eats food or transports personal belongings in his or her vehicle,” Appellate Judge Harry Pregerson wrote in Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles. “Yet it appears to be applied only to the homeless. The vagueness doctrine is designed specifically to prevent this type of selective enforcement.”
In his March report, the Times said, Feuer proposed a less expansive definition of living in a vehicle. He also proposed a separate law providing permits for “car camping” on nonresidential streets.
Though the old law had been on the books a while, enforcement picked up prior to the decision, particularly in LA’s gentrifying Venice Beach neighborhood. Some residents there have complained that vehicle-dwellers are bad neighbors who throw garbage into the streets, relieve themselves in alleys and make noise late at night.
Civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, who represented the plaintiffs in Desertrain, told the Times that Feuer’s proposal was “a vast improvement,” but that homelessness remains a serious problem. Los Angeles is currently involved in several anti-homelessness initiatives, including the Mayors’ Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness, but Sobel says there isn’t even enough housing for the top-priority recipients in those programs.
“There is a problem with putting people in jail for performing life-sustaining functions when there is no other place to do it,” Sobel told the newspaper.
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ABA Journal: “Cities get mired in civil rights disputes in trying to deal with growing homeless populations”
