LOCAL: Follow-Up on Sleeping in Your Car in SLO

UPDATE July 20, 2012: Yes, the Tribune's fine articles on the homeless keep on coming. This one is by Carol Nelson-Selby. She points out the folly of ticketing the homeless for sleeping in their cars. Ticketing only serves to continue the downward spiral of the homeless family unit. The $400 ticket they cannot pay causes them to get hauled into court, and they lose their car/RV and all the possessions inside. Instead of prosecuting our poor, how about doing the hard police work of ticketing those who are committing the real crimes (I don't believe that sleeping in a vehicle on public property is a real crime). Those crimes include: public urination and defecation, littering, assault, rape, plugging their RV into a power outlet from a business, etc. Our well-paid SLO Police need to get down in the dirt and do the hard police work. Ticketing an RV is an easy way out, but does not further our humanity or civilization.

The San Luis Obispo Tribune newspaper had a fine article on the front page of the July 4, 2012 Tribune newspaper. Here's another, more detailed article on Judge Crandall's ruling in Cal Coast News. I'll discuss a few of the highlights.

Judge Crandall had grave concerns regarding the city law against sleeping in your privately owned vehicle on a public street, and great misgivings about the method of enforcement as well.

Because of the recession, more people are losing their jobs, and turning to sleeping in their vehicles. Rather than enforcing the act of sleeping in your own vehicle (which harms nobody), I encouraged Chief Gesell (earlier this year 2012) to enforce the violations that some of the homeless have committed, such as trash, assaults, trespassing, and not using restrooms, but instead going outdoors. He basically said that enforcing those laws was too much work for his officers, and essentially (not his words), it was much easier to scare them and fine them in the middle of the night. With this ruling, our overpaid SLO police officers might have to actually enforce the laws that actually damage the community, since sleeping will no longer be a violation (for the time being).

NOTE TO THE HOMELESS WHO SLEEP IN THEIR VEHICLES:  The homeless RV sleepers should be more vigilant about NOT breaking the aforementioned laws if they want to have the sympathy and support of the community. I recommend that they listen to this advice.

BACKGROUND 1: Earlier in 2012, during the initial escalation by the SLO Police Department and Police Chief Gessell, I received numerous reports from my homeless acquaintenances that they were being rousted out of their beds (in their RVs) in the middle of the night. In addition, other homeless I knew reported a similar escalation along the creekbeds, which the homeless without vehicles favor. In February - April 2012, I spent numerous evenings helping the homeless creekbed inhabitors move their camps, because they were receiving citations and orders to move. This is what initially got me involved in this process. 

BACKGROUND 2: This resulted in several long (multi-hour) discussions with the likes of CAPSLO officials, as well as Police Chief Gesell. Needless to say, we did not see eye to eye on this issue. This recent ruling that finds their enforcement unconstitutional will at least temporarily end this unnecessary action.