The Los Angeles City Council has rescinded camping bans on a dozen locations in Hollywood, Echo Park and Silver Lake at the urging of the area’s council member, who called the bans ineffective in addressing homelessness.
“Displacing our neighbors from block to block, or in many cases from district to district, doesn’t help them find housing,” said Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez in asking his colleagues to remove the camping ban. “In most cases, it makes it much harder for us to help them because they lose their belongings, they get fined, and many times they are arrested. To me, that is a policy that does not work.”
The motion was approved on a 10-3 vote at Tuesday’s council meeting, with Imelda Padilla, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez dissenting. Soto-Martínez said he believed it was the first instance of an encampment ban being rescinded.
Padilla accused Soto-Martínez of engaging in a double standard, asking the council to defer to his wishes in his district while opposing efforts by his colleagues to establish no-encampment zones in their communities.
“Is this a matter of supporting you because this is what you want, or should I just treat you the way you’ve been treating us?” Padilla asked.
Councilmember Traci Park, who represents part of the Westside, said she’s used anti-camping zones to keep former encampments from coming back.
“We do outreach. We offer beds and services, and we get people off the streets. But after we do that work, we expect that after all that time and money and resources went into an operation, that the area remains safe and clean and accessible,” Park said.
The city’s anti-encampment law, under Municipal Code Section 41.18, prohibits encampments near schools and day-care centers. The council can also establish discretionary no-camping zones near libraries, senior centers, freeway overpasses and other “sensitive use” areas.
The council vote this week rescinded the bans in discretionary zones, which had been established at the urging of former District 13 Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, who was defeated for reelection by Soto-Martínez in 2022.
Soto-Martínez, a member of the L.A. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, has voted consistently in opposition to new encampment zones. During his campaign against O’Farrell, Soto-Martínez said he would advocate and vote to repeal the law citywide.
Councilmembers Ysabel Jurado, Eunisses Hernandez and Nithya Raman, who is challenging Mayor Karen Bass in the Nov. 3 election, have also voted repeatedly against new no-encampment zones sought by their colleagues.
Kris Rehl, an organizer with LA Street Care and the Abolish 41.18 Campaign, contends that no-encampment zones serve only to shuffle homeless people from one area to another.
“The only way to change the housing status of an unhoused person is to house them. Putting them in jail for a short amount of time, fining them with tickets up to $2,500 is not going to change the fact that people are unhoused,” Rehl said.
Last year, Rehl’s group and others demanded that Soto-Martínez follow through on his promise and repeal the zones within his district. When there was no action during his reelection campaign this year, they demonstrated outside his home, sent postcards to his campaign donors and pushed for the cancellation of one of his fundraisers.
“I think it’s unfortunate that this amount of pressure is needed to get a candidate to do something they support,” Rehl said.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield voted in support of the measure, saying that he believed 41.18 to be an effective tool against homelessness, but that he trusted Soto-Martínez’s discretion to remove them within his own district.
“If I was representing your area, I don’t think I would make some of the same decisions in terms of where these 41.18s go. But I haven’t done that work, and it’s not my district,” he said.
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