by Garth Meyer
The Redondo Beach city council voted 4-1 to sign a “Good Neighbor Pledge” not to move homeless people out of the city into others – in light of a June Supreme Court decision. The vote at the Tuesday, August 6 meeting was not conditional on neighboring cities singing the pledge.
The document was written by South Bay Council of Governments (COG), outlining a promise that “city personnel will be made aware of the resources in their city.”
“This is important, because it puts the onus on cities and staff to evaluate and educate their people about the services they are providing, and it can highlight where deficiencies are,” said Redondo Beach Councilmember Paige Kaluderovic.
The Supreme Court decision in “City of Grants Pass, Ore. v. Johnson” allows cities to enforce laws against camping on public property. A lower court ruling had determined that anti-camping laws amounted to cruel and unusual punishment when an alternative such as shelter space is not available.
Kaluderovic made a motion for the COG’s Redondo Beach delegate, City Councilman Zein Obagi, Jr., to sign the pledge on behalf of the council.
Obagi then offered a friendly amendment; to make signing conditional to the signatures of Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Lawndale and Torrance.
Kaluderovic accepted the amendment.
“Are you going to hold out for Torrance?” she said.
“They have their own pallet shelter, they’ve been doing good work on this, I’m hopeful they will come along too,” Obagi said.
Kaluderovic then said she would like a “group of (cities),” but was unsure if all of them should be required.
Councilman Scott Behrendt seconded the amended motion.
City Attorney Mike Webb was asked for his input on whether to hold out for other cities.
“I’ll only say this: it allows a veto for any of our neighbors,” Webb said. “This is getting our neighbors to do exactly what we’ve been doing, and will continue to do.”
Councilman Nils Nehrenheim spoke against the amended motion, saying he would be more inclined to go ahead and sign the pledge now.
“I don’t ever see us playing these shell games,” he said. “But I do possibly see other cities around us (doing it), who aren’t necessarily touching us. We need to take a leadership role on solving these problems. I don’t want to dictate to other communities what they should do. We’re not in their shoes.”
“By signing this, it means other people will look bad if they’re not going to sign it,” Kaluderovic said.
“It kind of puts them in a position where maybe they are deficient in some of the services they are providing. Taking that strong arm is not going to help us.”
“My goal is to help induce other cities to make the right decision by offering our pledge in exchange for them also agreeing to the pledge,” Obagi said, stating that he was okay with either the original motion or the amendment.
The amendment vote failed 3-2, with Kaluderovic, Loewenstein and Nehrenheim against. The original motion, to go ahead and sign the pledge, passed 4-1 with Behrendt against.
“I think it’s so important to have the cities that border us on board for a real commitment as we move forward with enforcement,” he said.
The pledge was on the agenda in Torrance and Hawthorne Tuesday night, Aug. 13. Hawthorne approved it and Torrance did not.
COG program leader expects small impacts for Supreme Court ruling
Ronson Chu, the senior program manager of homeless services for COG, told Easy Reader this week he believes the Good Neighbor Pledge will help mitigate any detrimental impacts of the Supreme Court ruling.
“We don’t think there will be a tremendous effect, especially if we have the majority of our cities sign this,” Chu said. “We’re trying to encourage everyone to discuss this in the next four weeks.”
“I think we can all agree that we want our parks to be clean, our storefronts clear… the way to go about it is to offer shelter and services. There’s plenty of resources. COG has a dozen programs.”
These include case management, client aid in the form of security deposits and application fees, a housing locator, shared housing and a subsidy program.
Chu noted that in Redondo Beach, the city’s efforts, with regional partners, have taken 66 people off of the streets in the past six months.
“We ultimately want all 15 of our cities to sign the Pledge,” he said. ER
