Where can we be in the City of Los Angeles?
Mapping the implications of proposed update to City of Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18
Proposed Updates to LAMC 41.18
As early as July 28, 2021 the Los Angeles City Council will convene to vote on a motion to repeal the current Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18 – known as the "sit-lie" law – and replace it with broader and more stringent provisions. If adopted, the new ordinance will prohibit sitting, sleeping, or lying, or storing, using, maintaining, or placing personal property in the public right-of-way. These wide-ranging restrictions pertain to most public spaces, including:
- Streets, sidewalks, bike paths, bike lanes, or other public right-of-way;
- Designated overpasses, underpasses, freeway ramps, tunnels, bridges, pedestrian bridges, subways, washes, spreading grounds, or active railways;
- Within 5 feet of building entrances and exits, and within 10 feet of driveways and loading docks;
- Within 500 feet of “sensitive” properties, including schools, daycares, public parks, or public libraries; and,
- Within 1,000 feet of designated facilities opened after January 1, 2018 that provide shelter, safe sleeping, safe parking, or other services to people experiencing homelessness
Legend: Red indicates libraries, orange indicates childcare facilities, yellow indicates schools, green indicates parks, blue indicates homeless shelters or service providers opened after January 1st 2018, purple indicates ADA access ramps, grey indicates transit facilities.
Voting
The City Council considered this version of the ordinance on June 29, but lacked the unanimous approval required upon first consideration. In late July, the City Council will reconvene and vote again on the proposed updates, which would only need a simple majority to pass this time.
Enforcement
To enforce the new provisions, the City Council would have to pass a designating resolution and post signage to specify sections of streets, sidewalks, or other public spaces for which these restrictions apply. Persons found in violation of the new ordinance would be subject to misdemeanor charges and penalties including fines or imprisonment.
Our mapping process
We first looked for an official map from the City of Los Angeles to understand how the proposed change might affect our work in street-based COVID-19 vaccination and overdose prevention. Despite the imminently scheduled vote, we were unable to find a map depicting the implications, so we made one. Using publicly available data from City of Los Angeles , Los Angeles County , and the State of California , we created a map to visualize remaining public spaces for people experiencing homelessness. Due to missing data (ie, there are no datasets of all entrances in the City) and the ambiguity of certain provisions (e.g., sidewalks and driveways), the map does not fully depict the effect of the proposed restrictions on public spaces. Therefore it should be viewed as an underestimate of how much space would be off-limits and subject to sweeps or enforcement.
The proposed rule would require people to be offered housing, but as we detail below, there simply are not yet enough housing options in the City of Los Angeles for everyone who is currently unhoused. Therefore, the ordinance if enforced as proposed would effectively criminalize homelessness in the spaces shown on the map.
Counting people and beds
Homelessness increased by an estimated 16.1% from January 2019 to January 2020. The annual point-in-time count was not completed in 2021 due to COVID-19, and so the 2020 estimate of 41,290 unhoused people in the City of Los Angeles does not reflect possible changes during the pandemic. As of July 2021, 14,854 interim beds were available, without accounting for capacity reduction in congregate shelters to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, according to recent data provided by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority . This suggests that there are only enough temporary beds for about one in three people experiencing homelessness in the city. Of note, permanent supportive housing has increased over the past few years to a total of 24,689 units; however, many of these are occupied and thus not actually available to people currently unhoused. Given these data complexities, it is difficult to calculate exactly how many beds and units are available right now, but it is clearly substantially less than the number of people currently unhoused in the City of Los Angeles.
About Us
Mapping by Chelsea L. Shover, PhD and Kathryn M. Leifheit, PhD, MSPH . Main text by Ashley Frederes, MPH . Additional contributors include Julissa Alvarado; Jacqueline Beltran; Rafik N. Wahbi, MPH. Special thanks to Albert Kochaphum, previously UCLA Campus GIS Coordinator and currently Digital Communications Administrator for LA Metro.
We are a team of epidemiologists and public health researchers at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. We conduct research at the intersection of infectious diseases including COVID-19 , overdose and drug policy , homelessness and housing policy , and social determinants of health and mortality . In collaboration with Housing for Health , we conduct street outreach for people experiencing homelessness, including provision of harm reduction kits to prevent fatal overdoses and mobile COVID-19 vaccine clinics. The proposed ordinance, if passed, could have major, complicating impact on the street-based vaccine and harm reduction work that we and our community partners do.
Contact Your Representative:
To share your thoughts about the proposed changes, you can find your City Council representative here: L.A. City Council – Get to know your L.A. City Council members (lacitycouncil.org) . Email addresses here: https://peoplesbudgetla.com/contactlagov/
Additional Information:
Contact us: Email Dr. Shover at clshover@mednet.ucla.edu