San Diego Outlaws Living In A Van Down By The River

City tries again to make living in your vehicle a crime.

(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

The city of San Diego is making another ass-backwards attempt to address the problem of homeless people living out of their own vehicles. No, it’s not trying to address the problem that people are homeless and have nowhere to live. It’s trying to deal with the fact that sometimes people who do not have a place to live make people who do have a place to live super uncomfortable.

From Courthouse News:

After hours of testimony, the City Council voted 6-3 in favor of a new vehicle habitation ordinance, which prohibits people from living in cars parked near schools or homes. The new ordinance requires they be at least 500 feet away — about a city block…

The city says the goal of the new ordinance is not to be punitive. Assistant Police Chief Paul Connelly told the council the goal is to seek compliance and help people living in vehicles connect with homeless service providers.

Connelly said officers would “use sound judgment” when documenting whether someone was living in a vehicle in violation of the ordinance, and that people would be given a written warning and connected to “safe park lot” services, where people can park legally, before being ticketed.

But the ordinance explicitly states it may be enforced as a misdemeanor or infraction and offenders “may be eligible for referral to a diversion program, when appropriate.”

Look, I live in the suburbs, I get NIMBY-ism. I don’t particularly like it when my neighbors park outside of my house. I imagine I’d be all kinds of freaked out of a homeless person slept in his van right on my street every night. “I have kids,” I’d think. “What if he murders them,” would cross my mind as I wondered if leaving my literal trash curbside was an “attractive nuisance” encouraging the problem.

Luckily, for me and my eternal soul, the law would prevent me from taking action on my most disgustingly privileged and elitist thoughts. Hopefully, the law will also prevent the residents of San Diego from acting like the callous bastards they want to be.

The Tuesday vote follows a closely watched legal battle that’s been playing out in federal court since 2017, when a group of disabled RV-dwellers won an injunction against the city’s previous vehicle habitation ordinance, forcing the city to abandon ticketing and impounding vehicles.

In February, the City Council voted unanimously to repeal that ordinance, which a federal judge blocked it from enforcing last year because it violated the Constitution and was “both vague on its face and is being arbitrarily enforced.”

When asked Tuesday by Councilman Mark Kersey if the new ordinance was legally defensible, Elliott said that it was.

City staff told Kersey that unlike the old ordinance, the new one prevents vehicle impoundment because it is not being treated like a parking violation.

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Criminalizing homelessness is among the worst instincts we have as a society. NOBODY WANTS TO LIVE IN THEIR CAR, unless they’re an estranged husband or a plot device in a disaster movie. These people are desperate and just looking for a safe place to ride out the night. Empowering police to harass these people will not lead to better services for them — it will lead to fines and jail for people who have nowhere else to go.

Shooing off the problem of homelessness to designated “safe areas” where the homeless can remain out of sight is a way to keep them out of mind. It’s a way to make sure the rest of us can go about our lives without considering the massive inequality in our system.

If there were a homeless person sleeping in a car outside my house, my instinct would be the freaking worst. But, I pray that my core decency would prevail, and I’d march right down to the next city council meeting and demand that my taxes be raised to help pay for additional sheltering. While I was thus activated, I’d hope that the Rent Is Too Damn High guy would show up so I could vote for him for something.

Homelessness is a choice, not by the homeless but on the part of the rest of us who selfishly refuse to provide the services and support needed to end homelessness. If we are troubled by a guy sleeping out of a van, we should use that to motivation to help that guy find a house, not usher him into a parking lot further away from our own house.

San Diego Revives Law Outlawing Living in Vehicles [Courthouse News Service]

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.