In this wealthy California state,there are,just the same,about two dozen
homeless.

But they are being blamed for the accumulated misdeeds,of those from the last
16 years,and a re-criminalized "no-camping" ordinance suddenly came out of
nowhere (with signs) as of May 12.

Though one can sleep overnight some places on a public building (re: Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals,ends 6 a.m.) eight hours of opportunity don't equal
8 hours of sleep. But,taking a nap in a public place beyond that is now
forbidden...it's a dilemma.

Am refreshing this thread and putting it on Twitter, as this is an important human need and right.

it only printed part of the post. Please visit URL of blog, which has been posted. Thanks.

Santa Cruz Human Rights Organization (HRO), www.humanrightsorg.org

(831) 425-4467 or 345-9685

Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom (HUFF), www.huffsantacruz.org

Friday, June 6, 2008 THE SLEEPING BAN LAWSUIT / SANT CRUZ

Many people don’t know that Santa Cruz homeless rights advocates and well known civil rights attorneys are preparing a lawsuit against the city of Santa Cruz for anti-homeless laws that violate constitutional rights. For those who have been following the issue you will find this important information.

For year’s efforts by many community members who lobbied local law makers to do the right thing for the homeless, not just the easy thing fell on deaf ears.

In early 2006 we began an outreach program to national legal organizations that support legal actions on homeless issues. This was slow and it became obvious results would not soon be forthcoming. A key turning point in our effort accrued when the U.S. 9^th. Circuit Court ruled against Las Angles Camping ordinances. With this hopeful decision in L.A. in early 2007 we began to contact local legal council in a grass roots effort to bring relief from these same types of laws, and the harsh enforcement in Santa Cruz.

We now have attorneys David Beauvais, Kate Wells and Brett Bennett interviewing people that have received citations under the Santa Cruz “Camping Prohibited” laws in preparations for the law suit. These restrictive laws include 6.36.010(a) the Sleeping Ban, 6.36.010(b) the Blanket Ban and 6.36.010(c) the Camping Ban.

The largest problems with these laws are that they criminalize the homeless for using public spaces, and sleeping and camping at night. It is well documented that there is a lack of adequate emergency shelter in Santa Cruz. People are being criminalized when they make their own shelter or try to form protective groups. Other outward problems are lack of adequate medical care, community prejudice, political cowardice and rigorous Police enforcement. It’s not quit clear how homeless people are expected to live.

Our focus is on defending, restoring, and establishing civil rights for homeless people rather than lobbying for more services. We believe people should be free from police, state, and community harassment. Free to organize and to form self-help communities. It is to these ends we are willing to spend time and effort. We are looking forward to hearing from anyone about whatever legal help you can bring to the issues or questions you have.

We are looking for volunteers to work with attorneys and plaintiffs, help with community education on the issue, write letters and make phone calls.

We are in need of funds, any donations (tax deductible) can be sent to the address below.

Community Defense Inc.

For: Santa Cruz Anti-Sleeping Lawsuit

P.O. Box 7649

Santa Cruz, CA 95061

Endorsed by:

Santa Cruz Human Rights Organization (HRO), www.humanrightsorg.org

Looks like an excellent website- and thanks, also, for that quote.  I like the way Howard Zinn thinks   (he's always been one of my favorites) 

A new website to be used for putting out information regarding the Sleeping Ban Lawsuite against the City of Santa Cruz is now up. Updates will be added as the suit progresses. A new update will be posted tomorrow. There is lots of current information there now. www.sleepisaright.blogspot.com
Poverty is not a crime.
Howard Zinn Speaks out on the Sleeping Ban "I think we should interrupt
the sleep of people who pass
such laws."
*Howard Zinn 10/25/97*

Speaking in response to the
Santa Cruz Sleeping Ban
at an event sponsored by the
Resource Center for Nonviolence.

I’m looking for 18 ticketed homeless to fight their camping ticketshttp://tinyurl.com/585alf

Get to the point A task force aimed at finding permanent housing for the homeless is wasting valuable time http://tinyurl.com/2xapl5 The San Diego City Council operates under a system in which members tend to defer to a colleague when the issue at hand is geographic in nature. For instance, Scott Peters would take the lead on issues in La Jolla while Tony Young would be the go-to guy on matters in Encanto. Donna Frye in Clairemont, Brian Maienschein in Rancho Bernardo—you get the picture. But such a system isn’t always a good idea, for the issue might have qualities that trump geography. Take homelessness, for example. When a City Council committee created a task force to address the need for permanent shelter for homeless citizens, it appointed Kevin Faulconer to chair it, because he represents Downtown, where the largest chunk of the homeless population lives. However, representing Downtown means maintaining close contact with downtown business groups, and seeking solutions that help homeless people doesn’t always mesh with seeking solutions that help people who wish homeless people would just go away. Early indications suggest that Faulconer has given the business group priority, which convinces us that a better chairperson would have been Jim Madaffer, who has demonstrated throughout the years an interest in homelessness, or Toni Atkins, whose top priority has been affordable housing. (Atkins is at least a member of the task force and, ideally, will help keep the panel’s eyes on the prize.) It’s become painfully obvious that Faulconer’s primary goal is to reinstate the police department’s enforcement of the city’s illegal-lodging law, which ostensibly bans homeless people from sleeping in public. In response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a handful of homeless people, claiming that it’s unconstitutional to deny folks the right to sleep outdoors when there’s no viable alternative, the city agreed to stop ticketing people for merely sleeping on public property between 9 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. Faulconer came right out of the chute talking during the first two meetings about getting those citations back in action. Attorneys representing the homeless people have been asked how many new beds it’ll take for them to agree to drop their case. In interviews with CityBeat, Faulconer has acknowledged that he’s heard from downtown business representatives unhappy with the illegal-lodging settlement and has sung the praises of Rachel Ortiz, a Barrio Logan activist who, at last week’s task force meeting, made no secret of her preference for a more punitive approach to solving homelessness. To sum up her thoughts on the matter: Toss ’em all in jail. Appalling. Faulconer is a friendly guy and seems decent enough, but under his leadership, the task force so far has been a colossal waste of time. In addition to squandering precious hours discussing the illegal-lodging law (at the third meeting, his first appearance, task force member and developer Dene Oliver thankfully noted that law enforcement is not the purview of this group) the task force is now in the midst of discussing possible locations for next winter’s temporary shelter. This thing is called the Permanent Homeless Facility Task Force—it’s right there in the name. It shouldn’t be using its limited time in existence talking about the temporary shelter. The winter facility should be handled by the City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee, allowing the task force to get down to the business at hand: coming up with plans to site and finance a permanent intake center, where homeless folks can find temporary shelter and get routed to the services they need (such as substance-dependency treatment, mental-health treatment and domestic-violence help), and to site and finance permanent supportive housing units. Much of the groundwork has already been done. The City Council in 2006 approved its Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, which, as part of a nationwide campaign, states, correctly, that the only effective way to attack chronic homelessness is with a “housing first” approach. Once people are housed, it’s much easier to begin fixing the problems that caused their homelessness. Once those problems are dealt with, the “hidden” costs of homelessness—emergency medical care, police work, jail stays and court time—will be reduced. Other cities have done it, and their experiences are documented. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. The task force must get right to determining exactly how many supportive-housing units are needed and then issue requests for proposals to developers, who can work with the city on locations and financing. This, in addition to developing an intake center, will be a gargantuan task burdened with the usual NIMBYism problems, but it’s terribly important, and the City Council, through this task force, has to think big and show real leadership. And the first step is for Faulconer and his task force to stop tip-toeing, stop talking about side issues, stay on point and get it done. Got something to say? Email us at editor@sdcitybeat.com. *fair use*

http://tinyurl.com/2l8md5 Among the homeless in Gresham, there is fear. The official statement in Gresham is that homelessness does not exist in their town. This is the statement of the mayor and the police. However, there is at least a hundred chronically homeless folks in the city of Gresham, a suburb of Portland, OR. Yet the homeless that are there, for the most part, have been raised in Gresham, and the town in their permanent residence, so to speak. The police have done what they can to force the homeless to move out of town, to make the official statement to be true. They regularly force people out of their camps, even throwing away their tents and blankets and sleeping bags. They regularly check on people who look homeless, whether they are or not. In the past, they have waited for the homeless outside of churches where the street folks worshipped in order to pick up anyone who happened to have a warrant. This practice was stopped because of the concern of middle class citizens who express their dismay at that practice. The police also attempted to deny some homeless folks access to the library because they were camping on public property. This attempt was thwarted by a Multnomah County judge. But more than this, some people have been targeted with brutality. Mitch, a gentle, quiet homeless man, was attacked by a police dog and so was walking with a limp for the rest of his life. Another couple was recently beaten senseless by the police. The homeless are regularly threatened. I, myself, was last year threatened with arrest because I was a witness to the verbal abuse they poured upon innocent people. The problem, as I see it, is not one that can be rectified by judges or by taking each situation as it comes. The city that denies the existence of homelessness is only one issue. In Portland, public bathrooms are closed so that the homeless have no place to use the toilet. This is a basic human necessity, yet it is denied to one segment of the population. We all need to have sleep in order to live and to function appropriately, but the homeless are denied the right to sleep because they cannot establish a place themselves. If they get a place to sleep then they know that they will be rousted out of their sleep one of these nights and told to move on. It is a basic necessity of life to eat, and yet some cities are denying even churches an opportunity to feed street people. It is a basic necessity of life to have shelter from the cold, yet every neighborhood wants to deny any place for the homeless to congregate indoors. Ultimately, all this is based on one issue: the denial of street people’s humanity. Everyone in all segments of society would agree that street people ARE people. Yet societal forces are denying their humanity, taking away their ability to function as physical beings. They are being denied the very survival necessities that would be considered abuse to any animal—denying sleep, a place to go to the bathroom, a place out of dangerous weather, and food. It is not that there are not resources available for the homeless to have these human necessities met, it is that society is denying their humanity to grant them access to these resources. My main question is, what can be done? How can we communicate to a society that denies our humanity, our very existence? Is there a peaceful means to establish the re-humanization of the homeless? Does anyone have any ideas? What would you do if you were here in Gresham, living among the oppressed? Steve K *fair use*

Thanks, Yes it is so beautiful here, but unfortunately its also becoming a place only for the elite as more and more and more laws that are aimed at the criminalization of homelessness come to pass.  Its even illegal to sleep in said driveway, with permission! At least it is in the City of Santa Cruz.  Scott's Valley, in the County of Santa Cruz, passed their own nighttime sleeping ban, one day before Christmas in 2006 with 20 degree temperatures. Rights for those with homes and those without be damned. Safe Sleeping zones are an option that take less enforcement, money, resources and provide a dignified answer to the problem. The City Council is full of merchants and developers or political ladder climbers.  They care little for the homeless but like to pretend they do. The walk in Shelter is a mess, black mold, rules made up as they go along. But today, if it was like last week, hundreds of homeless will stand up to the police as they have the last to weeks, and it wont even make the local paper. Yet 12 people walking the railroad tracks in defiance of a new tresspass law did. But its all ok now, as the new law will only be used... drum roll... for the homeless. That was in the paper. $2,000 fines for walking the railroad tracks.

Thanks Harmony!

Peace

Tim

For three decades Santa Cruz authorities have used The Nighttime Sleeping Ban to selectively harass and drive away homeless people. The ordinance MC 6.36.010a is a law against sleeping on any public property, or in a vehicle and most private property between the hours of 11PM to 8:30 AM. In a town with emergency walk-in shelter for less than 60-160 people and an estimated homeless population of 1500-2000, this law is unconscionable, unconstitutional and immoral.

The Blanket Ban makes it illegal to cover up with blankets or bedding outside during the same nighttime hours.

Visit sleepisaright.blogspot.com to read about the current lawsuit we are starting in federal court. After the Jones decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the subsequent Jones Settlement, nighttime camping bans in Los Angeles, Fresno, Richmond and San Diego were eliminated. Activists in Santa Cruz took heart and began preparing for a legal challenge here.

We hope to challenge not only the Santa Cruz's infamous Sleeping Ban , criminalizing the very act of sleeping at night, but also any and all police practices that abusively and selectively target houseless humans for necessary survival behavior such as sleeping. Given the city-acknowledged shelter emergency, the city has done little to resolve in spite of its "progressive" pretensions.

Attorneys from Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Washington, D.C. are putting together the pleadings. Attor­neys from San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento are helping.

The City Attorney and Mayor Ryan Coonerty has resisted any and all efforts to reform the Sleeping Ban so that it conforms with the 9th Circuit decision. We are fund-raising and gathering plaintiffs to take the course directly to federal court and expect to have an action filed in February.

Visit http://sleepisaright.blogspot.com/

www.humanityforhomeless.blogspot.com

www.huffsantacruz.blogspot.com

 perhaps a good gift for homeless all over would be Hamocks ...easy to install betwen two trees.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=&no=321234&rel_no=1

if you want to read the article please click the link.

I wonder how high the salary was that was paid to the architects of such wonderful "no sleep park benches"...? enough to help at least a couple ofneedy  people into a real  bed .

Tokyo's Ueno Onshi is the oldest park in Japan, designated by the Japanese Cabinet in 1873. A favorite spot for cherry-blossom viewing, it is also home to museums, art galleries, a library and a zoo -- one of only a few combined cultural precincts of its type.

While simply walking around this large park is enough to give anyone a good workout, there are relatively few benches, and visitors should assume that they won't be able to find a seat. Even if you are lucky enough to find one, however, you probably won't feel like sitting there for more than a few minutes on account of the unusual shape of the benches.

The bench in the photo below, for example, has a sturdy steel partition in the middle of it, meaning the user has to sit up straight. The seat also slopes down so one has to brace one's feet against the ground to stop falling forward.

Other benches in the park are too short to lie down on (see below, left). In some cases, there are protrusions placed on what might otherwise become a makeshift bench at one-meter intervals to prevent people from stretching out and getting too comfortable

For the answer to this, we must understand that Ueno Park is also famous for something else. If one ventures into the middle of the park, one will find a cluster of blue tarpaulin tents, belonging to the homeless people who reside permanently in the park. Here they sleep, cook on gas stoves, wash their clothes with the park taps and even keep cats and dogs. According to the Tokyo Bureau of Construction, there were over 150 tents in December 2005. It is said that if one counts those homeless people who don't pitch tents but rather bring pieces of cardboard into the park at night to sleep, there can be over 300 people sleeping in the park on any given night.

A 2005 government survey found that there are 25,000 homeless people in Japan. It is said that 5,000 of these live in the greater Tokyo area. While people become homeless for different reasons, unlike in Western Europe, the main reasons for homelessness in Japan are not unemployment, divorce, drugs.This was not restricted only to Tokyo: Osaka, now the city with the biggest homeless population, was converged upon by laborers from around Japan to lay the infrastructure for the 1970 Osaka Expo, and Yokohama began serving as a labor market immediately after the end of WWII for dockworkers who loaded cargo for the U.S. Army. These workers were all behind-the-scenes players in Japan's rapid economic growth. As casual laborers from this period -- discarded when industries were restructured -- make up many of Japan's current homeless population, the average age of the Japanese homeless people is 55.9 -- higher than elsewhere .

In all the large parks in central Tokyo that once functioned as markets for casual laborers and now serve as beds for the homeless we can find the same kind of benches as in Ueno Park. These benches are actually designed to drive homeless people away, and were introduced by metropolitan and civic authorities in response to complaints from citizens. While fitting benches with partitions is the most popular way to stop people from sleeping on them, there are many variations on this theme, such as using arm rests, placing protrusions along the edge of grass verges, or even using one-person seats instead of benches. The bench in the photo below may appear to be of modern design, but because of its tubular construction one risks sliding off if not careful.

One should be especially careful if drunk at the time! Made of stainless steel, the benches are hot in summer and cold in winter. The Toshima-ward parks office, which oversees Ikebukuro West Park, home to this bench, describes the bench as "designed to keep with the modern image of the area while at the same time not allowing homeless people to loiter.

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