Fed up with homelessness, an OC city cracks down

Fullerton is the latest Southern California city to beef up its anti-camping and loitering laws in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision giving local governments a green light to crack down on homeless encampments.

The Fullerton City Council voted 3-2 at its Tuesday night meeting to make it illegal to lie down on a bus bench, sit on a sidewalk, or put your bag down on a median — just a few among a detailed list of other prohibited activities in public spaces.

What’s the big picture?

Fullerton follows more than two dozen California cities that have embraced anti-camping laws since a major Supreme Court decision last summer. That decision, in the case Grants Pass v. Johnson, reversed a lower court that had determined people could not be criminalized for sleeping on the street if there was no available shelter.

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The local context

Homelessness has been a particularly fraught issue in Fullerton for decades, largely as a result of a high-profile beating of an unhoused man by local police in 2011. The man, Kelly Thomas, died and his parents were awarded multi-million dollar settlements. But the officers involved were ultimately not found criminally responsible.

Fullerton was also among more than a dozen cities to settle a lawsuit back in 2019 that required them to increase shelter space and offer services to unhoused people before arresting them. Many advocates for the unhoused see the current trend of tightening anti-camping enforcement, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, as a reversal of that progress.

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What did Fullerton council members say?

Supporters said the new law was necessary to ensure public safety and access to public spaces. Opponents of the new law said it was overly broad and unlikely to decrease the number of unhoused people sleeping outside.

“I think it leaves a lot open to interpretation and profiling,” Councilmember Ahmad Zahra told LAist.

What’s next?

Fullerton’s police chief said officers would continue to offer services to unhoused people before citing or arresting them. Zahra and several other City Council members said they hoped to expand the city’s motel voucher program — the city’s alternative to a cold weather shelter — beyond its current targeted population of families and seniors.