For 40 years Santa Cruz has enforced a ban against sleeping in public places between the hours of 11pm and 8:30am. With more and more people out on the street, the sleeping ban is coming under fire. For two days, homeless activists and their supporters have been holding a sleep-out outside the county courthouse.
For 40 years Santa Cruz has enforced a ban against sleeping in public places between the hours of 11pm and 8:30am. With more and more people out on the street, the sleeping ban is coming under fire. For two days, homeless activists and their supporters have been holding a sleep-out outside the county courthouse.
This is no slumber party for the homeless. According to activists, the problem is very real, with some 2,000 people in the city of Santa Cruz having no place to sleep each night. Homeless shelters should be an option, but they have only 100-200 beds in total, and the waiting list is several weeks long for people requiring emergency shelter. Nor is low-income housing an option. The waiting list for that is measured in years.
One homeless individual, who goes by the name of KC, complained that the sleeping ban in Santa Cruz is “kind of unconstitutional.” He’s been homeless for four years now and has few alternatives.
Vice Mayor Ryan Coonerty disputes the statistics provided by homeless activists. While he agrees that there are more than 2,000 homeless people in the city, he says that there are at least 400 beds in city and church shelters, but that occupancy generally peaks at 84 percent. He added that the city attorney will dismiss any citations for sleeping outside on condition that the homeless person provides proof that the shelters are all occupied.
Activists are not convinced by this and claim that people sleeping in the street during those hours do not pose a nuisance. They intend to continue their protest on the courthouse steps until the ban is rescinded or the city provides additional facilities to house them. Read more at Fox 35 and Santa Cruz Sentinel.
