The City of Los Angeles launched a new strategy on Sept. 24, aimed at cleaning up the squalid patch of downtown known as "Skid Row." The city has an estimated 90,000 people sleeping outside, some of which sleep in the squalid patch.
"The new initiative calls for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to deploy 50 new, specially trained officers to the 50-block area to target drug dealers while cracking down on public drinking, vandalism, and other petty crimes," according to the Copley News Service. City crews will pick up trash, while prosecutors say they will "funnel mentally ill and addicted arrestees into social service programs.
In April, The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, decided in favor of six homeless persons, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The suit challenged the city's practice of arresting persons for violating a municipal ordinance, which states that "no person shall sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or public way."
The city has since repealed, saying "the legal issues will be resolved in time, but that the new initiative is a way to confront the problems in the meantime."
The ACLU and the LAPD had reached an agreement, which would have allowed people sleep from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., but the city rejected the agreement in favor of a repeal. If the Supreme Court takes the case, it will affect cities throughout the U.S. who have created similar sidewalk laws to curb the sight of homelessness in urban cores.
In Portland, a committee created by the mayor’s office is looking at a current sidewalk law that was created after the former law was declared unconstitutional in 2003. The current sidewalk law has been criticized by the business community and the police for its lack of enforcement guidelines.