AB 718: Sleeping In Vehicles
Lots of chatter in the news lately about Assembly Bill 718. The bill would remove local authority to regulate sleeping in vehicles. No need to point out this is intended to stop cities from citing homeless types for sleeping in their cars.
The Times- Standard reports the Arcata City Council discussing it last night. Council dude, Paul Pitino, said he couldn't support the bill because, "At a time that we have very little housing for homeless, eliminating the ability to sleep in a vehicle is not OK for me".
I have the same sort of concerns, but Pitino has it slightly wrong, although maybe he misunderstood or was misquoted?
The bill doesn't outlaw sleeping in cars. It actually does the opposite and prevents cities from regulating vehicle sleeping at all. With that in mind, we should all oppose the bill. Aren't we for local control?
As far as sleeping in cars goes, I'm not sure where I stand. KIEM TV's poll today asks if homeless people should be able to sleep in their cars in public places. I voted No, but that oversimplifies and I don't really like questions that only offer Yes or No as options. But, since they asked, I simply thought of how I'd feel if some bums parked their car next to my house and took up residence.
AB178 would prohibit the city from dealing with that sort of thing. I'm not sure just what limits should be placed on car based housing, but we should at least have the wherewithal at the local level to try and deal with it.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 8:46 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
You should absolutely be allowed to sleep in your car. there's a difference between that and setting up residence. There are already limits on how long a vehicle can stay parked in one place, so that's more likely the way to address vehicle 'squatting.'
What I'm not sure about is whether this law would nullify existing local ordinances and, if so, which ones and to what extent.
Even if a car stays parked in one place, they can move it half a block away and start over again. I'm not sure we want that to go on. We have enough problems with abandoned cars being moved to avoid towing.
I don't have a problem with people sleeping in their cars in and of itself. It's the thought of it becoming semi- institutionalized, as we see in the homeless camps with the resulting trash and such.
if someone is moving vehicle every three days is it abandoned?
Good point but, yes. Maybe not literally abandoned, but not working and they're trying to store them on the street.
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