The only thing worse than a legal decision saying that yes, you can live in your parked car if you have to, would be a legal decision saying that if you try to do it you can be arrested. So be happy about this, relatively.
It’s sad that this is “progress,” but it is. Click that link to find an LA Times story with a link to a PDF with the federal court opinion on whether people can live in their cars. Sadly, there’s a decent chance that it will be overturned on further appeal. And yes, it means that people who want beautiful lives free of contact with the realities of financial collapse will have a harder time doing so — and, as with most such issues, the question is what alternative exists other than people simply agreeing to die quietly somewhere. (This seems to be the issue of the next decade or so.)
A federal appeals court says a Los Angeles law that bars people from living in parked vehicles is unconstitutional.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the 1983 law was vaguely written and discriminates against homeless and poor people. The three-judge panel ruled the law “opens the door to discriminatory enforcement against the homeless and the poor.”
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The complaint stemmed from the 2010 arrests of Steve Jacob-Elstein, Chris Taylor, Patricia Warivonchik, William Cagle, who were all detained in separate encounters. The action was part of a Los Angeles Police Department effort to reduce the number of homeless people sleeping in cars in the gentrifying beachside neighborhood.
“The court struck down the law,” said attorney Carol Sobel who brought the case on behalf of the four detainees. “I think the message from the court to the city is ‘You need to take a different approach. We’re not going to let you put people in jail because they don’t have a place to sleep.'”
This happened in Venice, but just as easily could have happened in OC. It was written by Judge Harry Pregerson, one of the amazing liberal lions of the Ninth Circuit, joined by Judges Marsha Berson (a younger liberal lion) and Morgan Christen, who came to the court after my time as a clerk. Pregerson, like Stephen Reinhardt and my late lamented former Judge Betty Fletcher, is one of the judges that the conservative Supreme Court of the past 23 years has most loved to overturn, so don’t be surprised to see both a possible en banc hearing and a possible successful appeal to the Supremes.
This is one of those cases where the “radical left” position — one that I imagine might actually be shared by some on the radical right, as well as populists and libertarians — seems like a commonsense and moderate position, much like the idea that you can’t toss people in jail for relieving themselves in public if they have no access to restroom facilities. It’s a sad day when radicals have to do the work of commonsense moderates.
This is your Weekend Open Thread; talk about that, or anything else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of decorum and discretion.
I think you would need to keep the registration and smog current and carry insurance.
The city needs to provide some place for people to park their cars overnight that’s safe. Then the neighborhood people don’t have a complaint. It could be done.
The real shame is that the ruling both took so long and was needed in the first place.
I understand the desire to have a “clean and safe” neighborhood. I understand that having homeless living in vehicles isn’t always the most pleasant thing in the world. We’ve had some problems over the years in the area where I normally work. BUT and that’s a big but, folks need places to live!
The very real need to get help for people who need it and will accept it, needs to be addressed. I know that Santa Ana has been trying to develop a more centralized, streamlined method for helping people get the help they need if they will accept it. I don’t know how well it’s been working at this point or where the city is headed with it.
Some of the people out there don’t want help, don’t want anyone chasing them for simply living and shouldn’t have to worry about being tossed in jail just because they don’t have a physical address. It’s not a crime to simply live.
This really is an issue of freedom of choice for the individual and the right to be free.
Good to reach some common ground here, Carl. I hope that others on the right will agree with you.
Carl in many ways is not a typical “right winger.”
I hope that he’ll prove typical in this respect.
*Carlo, little doubt you are correct on all counts. The OC Board of Supervisors needs to take the first step….the baby step…..and move those that inhabit the grounds of the County….into appropriate County Homeless Facilities. It is vitally important to remember, than when a mom is kicked out of the house by an abusive husband or unmarried partner, that they are not arrested with three kids in the car and no place to go.
Um, I hate to screw this up….but we, all of us, have to get out of this left, right, thing. It’s way too simplistic a model and isn’t really reflective of anything but stereotypes.
nobody argues the right of every individual to be free but what about my right to the quiet enjoyment of my neighborhood
Mike,
If they aren’t breaking anything, stealing anything or disturbing the peace, then why should they be a problem?
In the past we’ve had some living in their cars, vans and motorhomes while parked on the street, some in back of our industrial units. Some have been fine, some not so much. When the guy started yelling at his companion so loudly that you could hear them on the phones inside the shop, it was time to say something. Otherwise there haven’t been too many problems.
There are some folks who know how to act and some who don’t, the ones that don’t, perhaps need some help from the local constabulary, but if they aren’t hurting anyone, live and let live.
Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., visited Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi at the El Hongo II prison in Tecate, Mexico. Tahmooressi has been held there since March on gun charges after he accidentally crossed over the Mexican border with three legally purchased guns in his pickup truck. Tahmooressi, .. served two tours in Afghanistan.
“I found him to be in good spirits, but this visit confirmed my belief that Sgt. Tahmooressi … needs to come home,” Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “While I remain respectful of Mexico’s laws, today after I thanked him for his dedicated service, I assured Sgt. Tahmooressi that I will continue working to secure his release ..” – Fox News
We should be doing more to get him home!
*We should be doing more to understand who he was meeting to sell those guns to on the other side of the border. Hey, no one more pro soldier than we are….but three guns within eyeshot of the border is already a big problem. The border patrol takes a very dim view of that unless he was pig hunting with a pack of wild dogs. So far, he has changed attorney’s three times and his story four times. No doubt that the Mexican police are on the take……always have been ….always will be. However, where there is smoke there may be smoked sausage!
Seventy-six percent of Americans believe that the “lost” Lois Lerner emails were deliberately destroyed, according to a Fox News poll. Only 12 percent believe the destruction resulted as an accident.
This skepticism crossed party lines. A whopping 90 percent of Republicans doubt the IRS’s most recent claims, as do 74 percent of independents and 63 percent of Democrats. – Fox News Poll
Yeah right. Do that many Americans even know who Lois Lerner is? I’ve only ever heard of her from you. Bet you anything this is a poll of FOX News viewers. Crazed, miserable, wrinkled, toothless, ancient FOX News viewers.