Council Doesn’t Bluff with New Law

By Erica Williams
Staff Writer

May 21 -- The homeless in Santa Monica who call the Palisades Park bluffs home received their eviction notices Tuesday night after the City Council, citing safety concerns, voted to prohibit “humans” on the steep cliffs towering above Pacific Coast Highway.

The council adopted the ordinance on first reading by a 5 to 2 vote based on staff analysis that deemed the bluffs “an inherently unsafe place for humans” because natural hazards, such as steepness and geology, make it prone to slides and slippage, and the dense brush can create a fire risk, especially during gusting winds.

Although mention of the homeless was conspicuously absent from the staff report and nearly escaped mention during deliberations, Councilmen Michael Feinstein and Kevin McKeown went on record opposing the measure because it targeted the homeless and because no appropriate measures were being considered to accommodate those displaced.

The new law “tends to criminalize the homeless, and is not in harmony with the community’s values of the last decade,” Feinstein said. “To move ahead on enforcement actions is the wrong priority” when those pushed out have nowhere to go.

“I won’t support a base of law that says let’s protect people from themselves,” Feinstein said, addressing the ordinance’s safety concerns.

McKeown agreed that safety was a real concern but asked, “Have we considered where these people will move to? My concern is dealing with the day-to-day lives of people.”

In an effort to keep people off the bluff -- which is about one-and-a-half miles long and varies in height from 50 to 180 feet -- the City has installed fencing and warning signs along the western edge of Palisades Park, according to staff.

But people still climb down the bluffs despite the City’s efforts to deter them. They risk falling and creating slides, as well as endangering those below on PCH and the emergency personnel who can’t easily reach them because of the steep incline.

Additionally, people leave trash behind that can’t easily be cleaned up, staff said, and that “degrades the aesthetics significantly because the Bluff face is highly visible to large numbers of people who visit the beach or travel or reside on Pacific Coast Highway.”