The City of Long Beach plans to crack down on encampments, and may begin citing and arresting homeless people to do so. But it remains clear that a drastic increase in resources is needed to properly tackle the homelessness epidemic.
This change in local enforcement follows the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which decided that local municipalities could penalize people for sleeping and camping in public, even if there was no space available for them in shelters.
Following this ruling, Governor Gavin Newsom released an executive order requiring state agencies and encouraging local governments to make progress on clearing encampments.
According to the City’s Aug. 12 memo, Long Beach police will “generally” issue misdemeanor citations for those camping in public areas only after the City’s Interdepartmental Homelessness Team offers them shelter and resources multiple times.
One of the city’s encampments is located outside St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, a safe haven that offers the unhoused meals, showers and clothing. Reverend Antonio Gallardo told the Signal Tribune that while the city’s memo sounds promising, he’s skeptical about how the encampment clean-ups will happen due to his past experiences with some city workers.
“One day, I saw the city workers cleaning the encampments, the trash, and I approached them, and I asked them if they were offering resources[…], and they said, ‘No, we don’t offer resources, we came here to clean,’” Gallardo told the Signal Tribune. “And then after that, you know, two police officers that were present, they started telling me generalizations about the unhoused that most of the public make, like they said there are plenty of shelters, […] these people are on drugs, are lazy, right? So that, to me, is not what the City promised.”
For years, it has been normal to see tents and sleeping bags set up next to the outer walls of the church. When the Signal Tribune spoke to Gallardo on Wednesday, there were about a dozen people encamped around the church. Around half of them have been there long-term, and are on a first name basis with the church staff.
“Long Beach Homeless Services staff report that there is almost always greater interest in shelter than available shelter capacity on any given evening … In Long Beach’s case, further motivation through enforcement will be ineffective without rapid expansion of available shelter and permanent housing capacity.”
Memo from the city of Long Beach on Aug. 12
“The police told [a church volunteer], ‘If the church really loves [the unhoused] so much, why don’t you let them encamp in your parking lot?’” Gallardo said. “I think it was a very snarky comment, because we can work together. We could work together. But it seems in this whole thing, our job of helping the people most in need is seen by some people, even within the City, as if we’re promoting the encampments, when it’s an issue that is bigger than all of us.”
Gallardo said that some of those encamped around St. Luke’s chose that location because it feels safer to them. Having their belongings thrown away by the City can leave them devastated.
“When their belongings are taken away, that’s almost everything they have in their lives, so for their things to be taken away from them, it’s very painful,” Gallardo said. “[…] It doesn’t really help them feel stable.”
According to an Aug. 21 email from the Long Beach Police Department, no citations or arrests of homeless people sleeping or camping outdoors have occurred since the City’s Aug. 12 memo.
Currently, people experiencing homelessness in Long Beach usually have to go to the Multi-Service Center — located on 12th Street in an industrial area of the city — to receive resources and be placed in a shelter. Gallardo said the location can be hard to access.
“The first time I went there myself, I got lost in my car,” Gallardo said. “So imagine people trying to navigate to go there, especially the homeless that are in downtown Long Beach.”
In response to this issue, Gallardo said several faith-based organizations came together to work with the City in hopes of creating a more accessible satellite location for the Multi-Service Center at St. Luke’s.
Gallardo said that the church and the City were in talks to make this happen: city workers had come down to the church to tour the site, and the city manager even told Gallardo in June 2023 that he was looking forward to signing the contract by the start of 2024.
But by the following month, July 2023, Gallardo said the City stopped answering his calls and emails. In particular, Gallardo said he had reached out multiple times to Homeless Services Bureau Manager Paul Duncan about the status of the proposed satellite location.
The Signal Tribune reached out to Duncan via email on Aug. 21 to confirm this, and has not heard back from him as of print time.
As of 2023, there were approximately 1,300 shelter beds in Long Beach, provided by the City and organizations it partners with. Last year’s annual count of homeless people found 3,447 people within Long Beach, significantly outnumbering the amount of spaces in shelters.
The City’s Aug. 12 memo admits that additional resources are needed to address the homelessness crisis.
“Long Beach Homeless Services staff report that there is almost always greater interest in shelter than available shelter capacity on any given evening,” the City’s Aug. 12 memo states. “In Long Beach’s case, further motivation through enforcement will be ineffective without rapid expansion of available shelter and permanent housing capacity.”
When asked what he thinks needs to be done to address homelessness, Gallardo advocated for medium and long-term preventative measures such as increasing affordable housing, raising wages and further capping rent increases. He also emphasized that it was necessary for the City, faith-based organizations, volunteers and those experiencing homelessness to work together to come up with solutions.
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