SUBJECT: Vote NO on CF 20-1376-S5: Housing, Not Mass Criminalization
Dear Councilmembers,
Vote NO on Council File 20-1376-S5, scheduled for the Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, October 6. Traci Park’s motion would vastly expand the criminalization of poverty across Los Angeles, and its own language exposes the appalling rationale.
Park complains that the City’s rules date to a “pre-Grants Pass era” and declares that “[i]t is time for Los Angeles to update its own rules,” citing the Supreme Court’s decision and Gavin Newsom’s model ordinance, a template for local camping bans that would force unhoused people to move after three nights in the same location. The logic is clear: Trump’s Supreme Court says we can punish people more aggressively, Newsom encourages it, and Park, a former Republican advancing the same punitive agenda under a Democratic label, seizes the opportunity. Permission to inflict more suffering is not an obligation to do so. Los Angeles should stand against this cruelty, not embrace it just because politicians from both parties provide cover.
Newsom’s model ordinance does not justify this crackdown. The governor’s efforts to court conservative voters ahead of a potential presidential run have included agreeing with Charlie Kirk that transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports is “deeply unfair.” Appeasing the right at vulnerable people’s expense is shameful, and no example to follow. Your responsibility is to judge policies by the harm they cause, not the party affiliation of whoever promotes them.
Park’s motion seeks to eliminate individual Council approvals for enforcement zones around parks, libraries, infrastructure and certain homeless-service facilities. It would add post offices, fire stations and police stations as “sensitive uses” and establish 500-foot exclusion areas around fire-hazard severity zones, environmentally sensitive areas and vaguely defined “critical infrastructure.” It also asks the City Attorney to explore the three-day camping restriction in Newsom’s model ordinance.
Park’s fever dream of mass criminalization would become a standing enforcement system across Los Angeles. People with nowhere to live would face punishment for sitting, sleeping or keeping their belongings in vast areas of public space, without the Council having to approve each individual zone or make the findings currently required for infrastructure designations.
The Council already rubber-stamps 41.18 zones despite serious failures to meet the law’s requirements. In August, you approved seven Park-sponsored designations after residents identified missing documentation and challenged unsupported claims about conditions at particular locations. Subsection 41.18(c)(4) requires specific evidence of a particular and ongoing threat. You should be investigating these violations and rescinding unsupported zones. Instead, this motion would remove individual approval requirements from other categories altogether.
The cruelty of advancing this proposal while Angelenos face potentially deadly heat on the streets is unfathomable. Los Angeles is under an extended extreme heat warning, with temperatures around 100°F and little relief overnight. With El Niño contributing to an already dangerous heat wave, you should be mobilizing every available resource to provide cooling, water, shelter and housing, not expanding the power to displace and punish people struggling to survive outside. What does “public safety” mean if it excludes the people most exposed to these conditions?
Los Angeles faces a devastating housing affordability crisis. People are losing their homes because they cannot afford to remain housed. Punishing them afterward compounds the government’s failure to protect them. Park has opposed tenant protections at every turn and made obstructing affordable housing the centerpiece of her administration. When her cruel policies force people to the streets, she then demands greater powers to punish them.
This motion creates no housing, prevents no evictions and does not require that shelter be available. Criminalization means subjecting people to citations, arrest and jail for acts of survival because they are too poor to afford housing. Constant displacement also separates people from outreach workers and puts their medications, identification and remaining possessions at risk, making it even harder to survive and obtain housing.
I fear that whatever backbone this Council has left to defend human rights is buckling as the Olympics draw near–that you would rather inflict suffering on countless people to make Los Angeles look “clean” than confront the housing crisis that has become an embarrassment on the world stage. Sweeping our neighbors out of view will only deepen that shame. Unhoused Angelenos are not disposable obstacles to an Olympic marketing campaign. Moving them from block to block, citing them or arresting them makes their lives more precarious while leaving the housing crisis intact.
Los Angeles should be a progressive bastion willing to defend human dignity when the federal government abandons it. That requires more than anti-Trump statements. It requires refusing to reproduce his cruelty through our own laws.
Reject CF 20-1376-S5. Stop expanding 41.18. Investigate and rescind unsupported enforcement zones. Invest in affordable housing, tenant protections, rental assistance and voluntary services. Our neighbors deserve homes and safety, not punishment for being poor.
