Rooms Close, Displacing Homeless Back to the Street

By Rita Robinson on March 02nd, 2014

Sam Palmer beside a cargo bin converted to an apartment, which city officials said violated regulations.

One of Laguna Beachs rare private refuges for local homeless people to find a permanent place to live was recently ordered closed by city officials, displacing five people back to the street and confounding homeless advocates.

The five residents living at the row of rooms in a mobile trailer in Laguna Canyon once used as a construction-site office had to leave, according to city code inspectors, because the area was not zoned for residential use. Among them was Cliff Mabra, a longtime local street musician who had to vacate the room he was living in for three years at Palmer Masonry and died last December.

Business operator Sam Palmer had been renting rooms near a cluster of commercial businesses to disadvantaged people for about six years. He believes a former tenant filed a complaint with the citys code enforcement department, which informed Palmer he was in violation of commercial zoning regulations that prohibit residential use.

Palmer rented out five 100-square-foot rooms, subdividing the former construction office trailer. It included a communal kitchen, bathroom and laundry room. Code inspector Fred Fix said the rooms were closed last October.

Land owner Franz Visoul of Idaho agreed with Palmer not to fight City Hall and to close the rooms. The most obvious code violation, Fix said, was a portable metal cargo bin, a sixth room that had been converted to a housing unit with a window, French doors, insulation to protect against the suns heat and electricity.

When the fire department came through, said Palmer, they said, Absolutely nobody living in the bins.

The loss disappointed Jim Keegan, a local homeless advocate, who offered Palmer legal assistance if he wanted to keep the rooms open. Palmer declined.

The city makes things more difficult for themselves, said Keegan, who initiated a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union against the city in 2009 that alleged the citys ban on overnight sleeping on public land was unconstitutional. The resulting settlement led the city to provide an alternative; hence the establishment of the Alternative Sleeping Location on Laguna Canyon Road. Some people have been able to get a van or something to sleep in at night instead of being on the beach but the police harass them anyway, said Keegan. Its kind of self-defeating.

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Rooms Close, Displacing Homeless Back to the Street