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Judge "Relocates" San Lorenzo Survival Campers
At a status hearing on March 30th, Federal Magistrate Susan Van Keulen bought the City Attorney's restrictive and repressive plan to relocate the San Lorenzo Park residents to the Benchlands, and move those currently in the Benchlands, first to San Lorenzo Park and then...to nowhere.
The audio of the Court hearing was made available to me and can be heard on the HUFF website at https://www1.huffsantacruz.org/lost/Court%20Hearing%203-30-21.mp3 .
My commentary on the hearing will be available likely Thursday April 1 or Sunday April 4th. Those shows will be posted at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/Lostshows.html .
A listener who heard the entire hour long hearing and apparently took notes provided me with a partial account, which I shall be posting later.
Attempts to get the Declarations and background on this case from the attorneys involved have continued to be unsuccessful.
Jennifer York's Sentinel story on the case is at https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/03/30/federal-judge-to-allow-santa-cruz-to-move-homeless-camp/ . For those without the funds or access to the Sentinel's website, I am including it and an earlier story (https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/03/26/santa-cruz-city-homeless-advocates-lay-out-encampment-relocation-plans/) as well.
My commentary on the hearing will be available likely Thursday April 1 or Sunday April 4th. Those shows will be posted at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/Lostshows.html .
A listener who heard the entire hour long hearing and apparently took notes provided me with a partial account, which I shall be posting later.
Attempts to get the Declarations and background on this case from the attorneys involved have continued to be unsuccessful.
Jennifer York's Sentinel story on the case is at https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/03/30/federal-judge-to-allow-santa-cruz-to-move-homeless-camp/ . For those without the funds or access to the Sentinel's website, I am including it and an earlier story (https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/03/26/santa-cruz-city-homeless-advocates-lay-out-encampment-relocation-plans/) as well.
For more information:
http://www.huffsantacruz.org
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Federal judge to allow Santa Cruz to move homeless camp
Magistrate Susan van Keulen seeking COVID vaccination availability for local homeless population
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the homeless encampment at San Lorenzo Park, at top left, may be moved down into the Benchlands, at bottom. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
By Jessica A. York | jyork [at] santacruzsentinel.com | Santa Cruz Sentinel
PUBLISHED: March 30, 2021 at 4:49 p.m. | UPDATED: March 30, 2021 at 4:50 p.m.
SANTA CRUZ — A federal judge confirmed Tuesday morning her intention to allow the City of Santa Cruz to relocate and manage a large unsanctioned homeless encampment that has resided in a city park for much of the past year.
During a live-broadcast status conference hearing from U.S. District Court Northern District in San Jose, Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen urged attorneys for the city and plaintiffs Santa Cruz Homeless Union, Food Not Bombs and several homeless individuals, to continue working toward a settlement outside of court. The judge said that while coronavirus pandemic indicators had improved since she issued the preliminary injunction against the city Jan. 20, she was not ready to lift the order entirely, yet.
“I still find that there are many unknowns relating to the current status of the virus and whether or not the unsheltered population is more vulnerable to the virus if it is evicted from the San Lorenzo Park or not,” van Keulen said during her opening remarks. “Very helpfully, the city has proposed an alternative approach, or perhaps I should call it an interim approach, which requests a modification of the injunction.”
Van Keulen said she planned to formalize Tuesday’s discussion with an amendment to the preliminary injunction imminently and set the case’s next hearing for 9:30 a.m., April 27. Van Keulen said she particularly will be looking for updates on vaccination availability for the local homeless population during next month’s update.
Under terms of the proposed injunction amendment, the city will be allowed to clear out a smaller subpopulation of those living in tents, estimated at 20 on Tuesday, already staying within the lower San Lorenzo Park Benchlands. Those displaced temporarily will be allowed to move up into the park’s higher grounds, where the bulk of the encampment has resided during the winter. Meanwhile, city workers will layout 122 demarcated tent campsites in the benchlands, stretching parallel to the San Lorenzo River from the Santa Cruz County Government Center — just short of the Water Street bridge — under the pedestrian bridge and as far down as the park playground. City officials said they had counted 118 tents set up in the park March 12.
Benchlands rerun
Should the new benchlands camp be established, it would be the fourth homeless encampment for that same site in recent years. Previously, an unsanctioned encampment grew to hundreds at the benchlands from October 2017 through March 2018, until about 50 occupants were relocated to a city-run camp in a utility yard at 1220 River St. for the next eight months.
After that city River Street camp’s closure for the winter, a new unsanctioned camp sprang up near Highway 1, behind the Gateway Plaza Shopping Center, until the city convinced a different federal judge of its public nuisance and health hazards and shuttered that site in May 2019. At the same time, the city very temporarily offered the benchlands as an encampment staging ground until the former River Street lot could be re-activated.
Most recently, an unsanctioned camp at the benchlands formed in April 2020, shortly after emergency coronavirus pandemic declarations. Santa Cruz County officials stepped in from July through November to operate a benchlands camp limited to between 60 and 80 people before relocating their program for the winter up to land near the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park.
Van Keulen said she agreed to the majority of the points in the city’s version of the proposed encampment relocation plan. Once the new benchlands camp is established — an estimated two-week process — individuals will either need to obtain a city permit and gain access to the new space, or face potential eviction from San Lorenzo Park as a whole, per existing city park curfew and nuisance stay-away order regulations, officials said.
Deputy City Attorney Catherine Bronson told van Keulen that San Lorenzo Park is a highly centralized, highly desirable location in the city serving as a draw for people outside the city, county and state “once the news gets out that camping is allowed in this location.” She said Santa Cruz does not have the ability to solve the entire country’s homelessness crisis by way of opening the park to all.
“From the city’s perspective, the most important thing to make this plan potentially feasible is really having the clear legal ability to remove people from areas that are not the Benchlands,” Bronson said.
New park playbook
The city may mandate that unmarked areas of San Lorenzo Park, such as the upper park and surrounding areas, footbridges such as the one over Branciforte Creek near the park, areas “unreasonably close” to the San Lorenzo River levee and areas near the Soquel Street bridge, need to be kept clear from encampments, personal property and other obstructions. To accomplish this, the city wrote, the creation or maintenance of an encampment in areas not marked as campsites would be deemed a public nuisance, according to the proposed order.
Attorney Anthony Prince, speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, accused the city of trying to “bootstrap a general ban on homeless people in the city of Santa Cruz.”
“We feel that’s highly inappropriate for the city to now seek an order which would essentially provide a vague and overbroad and unconstitutional measure that is outside the scope of the preliminary hearing,” Prince said.
Van Keulen disagreed with Prince, adding that the issues he predicted were not before the court. While largely in agreement with the city’s relocation plan, van Keulen stopped short of setting a timeline for the temporary benchlands camp to be dissolved, however. The city had proposed the camp automatically end when Santa Cruz County moves to the “yellow tier” of the state’s California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
The county progressed to the lower “orange tier” on the same day as the hearing. Instead, van Keulen said she will continue to monitor the situation in Santa Cruz and allow for the camp’s removal when the injunction is dissolved or both sides reach a settlement agreement, whichever comes first.
The city may opt to enlist help from a third party, such as a nonprofit or Santa Cruz County officials, to help to manage the new encampment. No details were provided Tuesday on that effort. Where allowed, those living in encampments likely will be held to a city “code of conduct” and be prohibited from creating bike “chop shops,” having unreasonably untidy camps spaces, creating an unreasonable fire risk or spreading their belongings beyond a 12-foot-by-12-foot-per-person footprint.
Attorneys disagreed over the city’s plans to outright prohibit all smoking in the city park. Prince said that, while he did not condone smoking, some limited allowance should be made for those living in the space. Van Keulen did not indicate her final ruling on that matter Tuesday.
Norse's note: This story (and the court hearing almost entirely) omitted any discussion of the City's "out of sight, out of town" TOLO law, its police practice of using other laws to avoid the Martin v. Boise restrictions, and the long-standing and undenied lack of shelter for the majority of unhoused people.
Magistrate Susan van Keulen seeking COVID vaccination availability for local homeless population
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the homeless encampment at San Lorenzo Park, at top left, may be moved down into the Benchlands, at bottom. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
By Jessica A. York | jyork [at] santacruzsentinel.com | Santa Cruz Sentinel
PUBLISHED: March 30, 2021 at 4:49 p.m. | UPDATED: March 30, 2021 at 4:50 p.m.
SANTA CRUZ — A federal judge confirmed Tuesday morning her intention to allow the City of Santa Cruz to relocate and manage a large unsanctioned homeless encampment that has resided in a city park for much of the past year.
During a live-broadcast status conference hearing from U.S. District Court Northern District in San Jose, Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen urged attorneys for the city and plaintiffs Santa Cruz Homeless Union, Food Not Bombs and several homeless individuals, to continue working toward a settlement outside of court. The judge said that while coronavirus pandemic indicators had improved since she issued the preliminary injunction against the city Jan. 20, she was not ready to lift the order entirely, yet.
“I still find that there are many unknowns relating to the current status of the virus and whether or not the unsheltered population is more vulnerable to the virus if it is evicted from the San Lorenzo Park or not,” van Keulen said during her opening remarks. “Very helpfully, the city has proposed an alternative approach, or perhaps I should call it an interim approach, which requests a modification of the injunction.”
Van Keulen said she planned to formalize Tuesday’s discussion with an amendment to the preliminary injunction imminently and set the case’s next hearing for 9:30 a.m., April 27. Van Keulen said she particularly will be looking for updates on vaccination availability for the local homeless population during next month’s update.
Under terms of the proposed injunction amendment, the city will be allowed to clear out a smaller subpopulation of those living in tents, estimated at 20 on Tuesday, already staying within the lower San Lorenzo Park Benchlands. Those displaced temporarily will be allowed to move up into the park’s higher grounds, where the bulk of the encampment has resided during the winter. Meanwhile, city workers will layout 122 demarcated tent campsites in the benchlands, stretching parallel to the San Lorenzo River from the Santa Cruz County Government Center — just short of the Water Street bridge — under the pedestrian bridge and as far down as the park playground. City officials said they had counted 118 tents set up in the park March 12.
Benchlands rerun
Should the new benchlands camp be established, it would be the fourth homeless encampment for that same site in recent years. Previously, an unsanctioned encampment grew to hundreds at the benchlands from October 2017 through March 2018, until about 50 occupants were relocated to a city-run camp in a utility yard at 1220 River St. for the next eight months.
After that city River Street camp’s closure for the winter, a new unsanctioned camp sprang up near Highway 1, behind the Gateway Plaza Shopping Center, until the city convinced a different federal judge of its public nuisance and health hazards and shuttered that site in May 2019. At the same time, the city very temporarily offered the benchlands as an encampment staging ground until the former River Street lot could be re-activated.
Most recently, an unsanctioned camp at the benchlands formed in April 2020, shortly after emergency coronavirus pandemic declarations. Santa Cruz County officials stepped in from July through November to operate a benchlands camp limited to between 60 and 80 people before relocating their program for the winter up to land near the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park.
Van Keulen said she agreed to the majority of the points in the city’s version of the proposed encampment relocation plan. Once the new benchlands camp is established — an estimated two-week process — individuals will either need to obtain a city permit and gain access to the new space, or face potential eviction from San Lorenzo Park as a whole, per existing city park curfew and nuisance stay-away order regulations, officials said.
Deputy City Attorney Catherine Bronson told van Keulen that San Lorenzo Park is a highly centralized, highly desirable location in the city serving as a draw for people outside the city, county and state “once the news gets out that camping is allowed in this location.” She said Santa Cruz does not have the ability to solve the entire country’s homelessness crisis by way of opening the park to all.
“From the city’s perspective, the most important thing to make this plan potentially feasible is really having the clear legal ability to remove people from areas that are not the Benchlands,” Bronson said.
New park playbook
The city may mandate that unmarked areas of San Lorenzo Park, such as the upper park and surrounding areas, footbridges such as the one over Branciforte Creek near the park, areas “unreasonably close” to the San Lorenzo River levee and areas near the Soquel Street bridge, need to be kept clear from encampments, personal property and other obstructions. To accomplish this, the city wrote, the creation or maintenance of an encampment in areas not marked as campsites would be deemed a public nuisance, according to the proposed order.
Attorney Anthony Prince, speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, accused the city of trying to “bootstrap a general ban on homeless people in the city of Santa Cruz.”
“We feel that’s highly inappropriate for the city to now seek an order which would essentially provide a vague and overbroad and unconstitutional measure that is outside the scope of the preliminary hearing,” Prince said.
Van Keulen disagreed with Prince, adding that the issues he predicted were not before the court. While largely in agreement with the city’s relocation plan, van Keulen stopped short of setting a timeline for the temporary benchlands camp to be dissolved, however. The city had proposed the camp automatically end when Santa Cruz County moves to the “yellow tier” of the state’s California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
The county progressed to the lower “orange tier” on the same day as the hearing. Instead, van Keulen said she will continue to monitor the situation in Santa Cruz and allow for the camp’s removal when the injunction is dissolved or both sides reach a settlement agreement, whichever comes first.
The city may opt to enlist help from a third party, such as a nonprofit or Santa Cruz County officials, to help to manage the new encampment. No details were provided Tuesday on that effort. Where allowed, those living in encampments likely will be held to a city “code of conduct” and be prohibited from creating bike “chop shops,” having unreasonably untidy camps spaces, creating an unreasonable fire risk or spreading their belongings beyond a 12-foot-by-12-foot-per-person footprint.
Attorneys disagreed over the city’s plans to outright prohibit all smoking in the city park. Prince said that, while he did not condone smoking, some limited allowance should be made for those living in the space. Van Keulen did not indicate her final ruling on that matter Tuesday.
Norse's note: This story (and the court hearing almost entirely) omitted any discussion of the City's "out of sight, out of town" TOLO law, its police practice of using other laws to avoid the Martin v. Boise restrictions, and the long-standing and undenied lack of shelter for the majority of unhoused people.
For more information:
http://www.huffsantacruz.org
Santa Cruz city, homeless advocates, lay out encampment relocation plans
Work crews lay out wood pallets for individual tent campsites in the benchlands of San Lorenzo Park in 2019. The site may once again host a large homeless encampment. (Dan Coyro — Santa Cruz Sentinel file)
By Jessica A. York | jyork [at] santacruzsentinel.com | Santa Cruz Sentinel
PUBLISHED: March 26, 2021 at 4:40 p.m. | UPDATED: March 26, 2021 at 5:21 p.m.
SANTA CRUZ — In concept, the City of Santa Cruz and a coalition of homeless rights’ advocates generally have agreed to move a large unmanaged encampment out of the San Lorenzo Park’s main byways and down into its river benchlands.
As a sort of temporary cease-fire, the proposal — spelled out at the urging of and in filings to U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen on Friday — could stretch as little as a handful of weeks, however.
On Tuesday morning, attorneys for both groups return to court for ratification of the plan, coming amidst an ongoing stay against the city’s immediate closure of encampment. In a proposed draft of the order, penned by city attorneys, the judge could “allow those individuals who have a permit to reside in the Benchlands to reside at their designated campsite until at least such date as the County enters into the ‘yellow tier of California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy tiering system.”
County officials predicted earlier this month that Santa Cruz County, recently upgraded to the orange tier in the state’s blueprint, could move to the yellow tier as early as late April, after a minimum of three weeks spent in the orange tier.
In separate filings from the proposed order, the city included a declaration from Fire Chief Jason Hajduk that flooding in the benchlands was unlikely in coming months, due to a lack of saturated soils and the current drought conditions. Deputy City Attorney Catherine Bronson also shared information from Santa Cruz County’s Homeless Persons Health Project that COVID-19 vaccines were available by appointment at its Santa Cruz clinic twice a week and was providing a limited number of on-site vaccinations out in San Lorenzo Park. City attorneys, in their filing, urged the court to clear the way for the city to close the camp down immediately.
“To much of the Santa Cruz community, it appears that the Court is only considering the largely theoretical COVID-19 related potential harm to unsheltered individuals that could be caused by closing the encampment, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the real, tangible harms caused by leaving the encampment open,” city attorneys wrote. “Plaintiffs have not presented evidence that unsheltered individuals in the City of Santa Cruz have died or faced serious health consequences from COVID-19. But, the City has presented evidence of drug overdose deaths, attempted murder, sexual assault, other major crimes, vandalism, a serious degradation of the quality of life of nearby neighbors, and the list goes on and on.”
Bronson, in her filing for the city, shared information from Homeless Persons Health Project Health Center Manager Joey Crottogini that COVID-19 vaccines are available with almost no wait to all homeless individuals older than the age of 16 and has vaccinated more than 1,000 individuals to date, including people experiencing homelessness, providers of services to people experiencing homelessness and health care workers. In a statement shared in Bronson’s filing, however, Crottogini expressed some reservations about potentially linking the camp’s closure to vaccinations.
“Plans to break up encampments continue to interfere with vaccine efforts, as some people sleeping in encampments are beginning to leave,” Crottogini is quoted. “Formally and publicly linking COVID-19 vaccination efforts for people experiencing homelessness with planned encampment enforcement and shelter closures will likely contribute to greater vaccination reluctance among this high-risk population.”
Santa Cruz Homeless Union attorney Anthony Prince, in his filing on behalf of the plaintiffs, urged the judge to consider allowing the relocated camp to remain in place until the county or City of Santa Cruz ends their coronavirus pandemic emergency declarations. He also provided a declaration from Public Health Advocates’ Senior Director of Policy Dr. Flojaune Cofer backing concerns that relocating the camp for only a short period of time.
Cofer, who focuses primarily on both the medical and psychiatric aspects and concludes that should the camp be moved to the Benchlands only to be disbanded a few weeks later, that the risk of physiological and psychiatric harm to the campers is significant.
“… we offer the Declaration of Dr. Cofer, who focuses primarily on both the medical and psychiatric aspects and concludes that should the camp be moved to the Benchlands only to be disbanded a few weeks later, that the risk of physiological and psychiatric harm to the campers is significant,” Prince’s filing states.
Van Keulen on Tuesday will consider the proposed encampment relocation plan and differing tweaks to how the managed camp would be run.
If you go
What: Santa Cruz Homeless Union lawsuit status conference.
When: 9:30 a.m., Tuesday.
Where: Remote online access at cand.uscourts.gov/svk.
At issue: Proposed San Lorenzo Park camp relocation plan.
Work crews lay out wood pallets for individual tent campsites in the benchlands of San Lorenzo Park in 2019. The site may once again host a large homeless encampment. (Dan Coyro — Santa Cruz Sentinel file)
By Jessica A. York | jyork [at] santacruzsentinel.com | Santa Cruz Sentinel
PUBLISHED: March 26, 2021 at 4:40 p.m. | UPDATED: March 26, 2021 at 5:21 p.m.
SANTA CRUZ — In concept, the City of Santa Cruz and a coalition of homeless rights’ advocates generally have agreed to move a large unmanaged encampment out of the San Lorenzo Park’s main byways and down into its river benchlands.
As a sort of temporary cease-fire, the proposal — spelled out at the urging of and in filings to U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen on Friday — could stretch as little as a handful of weeks, however.
On Tuesday morning, attorneys for both groups return to court for ratification of the plan, coming amidst an ongoing stay against the city’s immediate closure of encampment. In a proposed draft of the order, penned by city attorneys, the judge could “allow those individuals who have a permit to reside in the Benchlands to reside at their designated campsite until at least such date as the County enters into the ‘yellow tier of California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy tiering system.”
County officials predicted earlier this month that Santa Cruz County, recently upgraded to the orange tier in the state’s blueprint, could move to the yellow tier as early as late April, after a minimum of three weeks spent in the orange tier.
In separate filings from the proposed order, the city included a declaration from Fire Chief Jason Hajduk that flooding in the benchlands was unlikely in coming months, due to a lack of saturated soils and the current drought conditions. Deputy City Attorney Catherine Bronson also shared information from Santa Cruz County’s Homeless Persons Health Project that COVID-19 vaccines were available by appointment at its Santa Cruz clinic twice a week and was providing a limited number of on-site vaccinations out in San Lorenzo Park. City attorneys, in their filing, urged the court to clear the way for the city to close the camp down immediately.
“To much of the Santa Cruz community, it appears that the Court is only considering the largely theoretical COVID-19 related potential harm to unsheltered individuals that could be caused by closing the encampment, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the real, tangible harms caused by leaving the encampment open,” city attorneys wrote. “Plaintiffs have not presented evidence that unsheltered individuals in the City of Santa Cruz have died or faced serious health consequences from COVID-19. But, the City has presented evidence of drug overdose deaths, attempted murder, sexual assault, other major crimes, vandalism, a serious degradation of the quality of life of nearby neighbors, and the list goes on and on.”
Bronson, in her filing for the city, shared information from Homeless Persons Health Project Health Center Manager Joey Crottogini that COVID-19 vaccines are available with almost no wait to all homeless individuals older than the age of 16 and has vaccinated more than 1,000 individuals to date, including people experiencing homelessness, providers of services to people experiencing homelessness and health care workers. In a statement shared in Bronson’s filing, however, Crottogini expressed some reservations about potentially linking the camp’s closure to vaccinations.
“Plans to break up encampments continue to interfere with vaccine efforts, as some people sleeping in encampments are beginning to leave,” Crottogini is quoted. “Formally and publicly linking COVID-19 vaccination efforts for people experiencing homelessness with planned encampment enforcement and shelter closures will likely contribute to greater vaccination reluctance among this high-risk population.”
Santa Cruz Homeless Union attorney Anthony Prince, in his filing on behalf of the plaintiffs, urged the judge to consider allowing the relocated camp to remain in place until the county or City of Santa Cruz ends their coronavirus pandemic emergency declarations. He also provided a declaration from Public Health Advocates’ Senior Director of Policy Dr. Flojaune Cofer backing concerns that relocating the camp for only a short period of time.
Cofer, who focuses primarily on both the medical and psychiatric aspects and concludes that should the camp be moved to the Benchlands only to be disbanded a few weeks later, that the risk of physiological and psychiatric harm to the campers is significant.
“… we offer the Declaration of Dr. Cofer, who focuses primarily on both the medical and psychiatric aspects and concludes that should the camp be moved to the Benchlands only to be disbanded a few weeks later, that the risk of physiological and psychiatric harm to the campers is significant,” Prince’s filing states.
Van Keulen on Tuesday will consider the proposed encampment relocation plan and differing tweaks to how the managed camp would be run.
If you go
What: Santa Cruz Homeless Union lawsuit status conference.
When: 9:30 a.m., Tuesday.
Where: Remote online access at cand.uscourts.gov/svk.
At issue: Proposed San Lorenzo Park camp relocation plan.
For more information:
http://www.huffsantacruz.org
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