{"id":19722,"date":"2013-11-27T12:38:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T17:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=19722"},"modified":"2013-11-27T12:38:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T17:38:58","slug":"los-angeles-to-join-new-york-and-50-other-u-s-cities-with-ban-on-feeding-homeless-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/11\/los-angeles-to-join-new-york-and-50-other-u-s-cities-with-ban-on-feeding-homeless-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles to join New York and 50 other U.S. cities with ban on feeding homeless people"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"U.S.<\/a>
U.S. military veterans listen to speeches during a Veterans Day observance for homeless veterans at The Midnight Mission shelter on skid row in Los Angeles, Calif. on Nov. 11, 2013. LUCY NICHOLSON\/REUTERS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By<\/span>\u00a0Clare Kim<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

As the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County<\/span>\u00a0continues to rise<\/span><\/a><\/span>, the City Council is weighing a\u00a0ban on feeding homeless people in public areas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

City Council members Tom LaBonge and Mitch O\u2019Farrell, both Democrats, introduced the resolution after complaints from Los Angeles residents. Arguing that meal lines should be moved indoors, the legislators said the proposal would benefit both the homeless and residential neighborhoods.<\/span><\/p>\n

Actor Alexander Polinsky is one Los Angeles resident who complained about the number of homeless people crowding his neighborhood.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you give out free food on the street with no other services to deal with the collateral damage, you get hundreds of people beginning to squat,\u201d Polinsky told<\/span>\u00a0The New York Times<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span>. \u201cThey are living in my bushes and they are living in my next door neighbor\u2019s crawl spaces. We have a neighborhood which now seems like a mental ward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis has overwhelmed what is a residential neighborhood,\u201d Council member LaBonge<\/span>\u00a0said.<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u201dWhen dinner is served, everybody comes and it\u2019s kind of a free-for-all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But advocates for the homeless say public officials are attempting to legislate the poor into invisibility instead of helping those in need.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a common but misguided tactic to drive homeless people out of downtown areas,\u201d Jerry Jones,\u00a0the executive director of the National Coalition of the Homeless, said to<\/span>\u00a0The New York Times<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an attempt to make difficult problems disappear,\u201d said Jones. \u201cIt\u2019s both callous and ineffective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While\u00a0homelessness in the U.S. has<\/span>\u00a0dropped for the fourth straight year<\/span><\/a><\/span>, falling 4% in the past year, some cities, including Los Angeles, have seen a spike in homelessness.\u00a0The homeless population in Los Angeles is the second highest in the country, following New York City. Los Angeles County\u2019s homeless population rose 15% from 2011 to 2013, to nearly 53,800 individuals,\u00a0according to a report from the\u00a0<\/span>Department of Housing and Urban Development<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0released last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

Los Angeles would join\u00a0\u201cdozens of cities in recent years\u201d\u00a0including Philadelphia, Raleigh, N.C., and Orlando, Fla. that have either enacted or at least debated legislation aimed at regulating the public feeding of the homeless. Over\u00a050 cities have previously adopted some kind of anti-camping or anti-food-sharing laws, according to the<\/span>\u00a0National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.<\/a><\/p>\n

In March of 2011, Philadelphia Mayor\u00a0Michael Nutter<\/span>\u00a0announced the ban<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0on serving food in public parks, he said moving such services indoors was part of an effort to raise standards for the homeless.\u00a0The ban was temporarily blocked by a federal court in July 2012 after homeless advocacy groups sued the city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt hardly needs to be said that plaintiffs\u2019 food-sharing programs benefit the public interest,\u201d Federal Judge William Yohn Jr.<\/span>\u00a0wrote in his opinion<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u201cDespite [the city\u2019s] considerable efforts, many Philadelphians remain homeless and hungry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Orlando, Fla. a<\/span>\u00a0federal appeals court<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0unanimously\u00a0ruled in 2011 that the city can restrict the feeding of the homeless in order to protect the parks.\u00a0A spokesperson for the city said that residents and business owners originally complained about trash left after the food distribution, public urination and concerns about crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

The<\/span>\u00a0court decision<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0states, \u201cThe City of Orlando enacted the ordinance to spread the burden that feedings of large groups have on parks and their surrounding neighborhoods.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

City officials were then allowed to enforce an ordinance restricting weekly feeding of the homeless in downtown parks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Clare Kim As the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County\u00a0continues to rise, the City Council is weighing a\u00a0ban on feeding homeless people in..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[149,152,166,181,97],"tags":[347],"class_list":["post-19722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discrimination","category-economy","category-government","category-labor","category-us-news","tag-workers-struggle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rtx159q5.jpg?fit=830%2C340&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}