(The Center Square) – The afternoon before Election Day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit against the Southern California town of Norwalk, California, for banning new homeless shelters. The only problem is the city, a lower income and heavily Democratic and Latino town where homelessness spiked 85% in two years due to an influx of outsiders, says it hasn’t been served with the lawsuit.
Three of the five members of Norwalk’s city council are currently up for re-election right, suggesting the announcement timing may have had political motivations.
Norwalk has taken significant measures to reduce homelessness since 2018, cutting its homeless population from 316 in 2017 to 168 in early 2020, before the pandemic. Norwalk hosted a COVID-era homeless-in-hotels program at the local 210-room Saddleback Hotel that hosted homeless individuals from across the state. But after the program ended and the site went back to being a hotel, those individuals ended up staying in Norwalk, leading to the 85% increase in homelessness between 2020 and 2022.
While Norwalk has taken the lead in hosting Los Angeles County’s first conservatorship Care Court site and is offering to host a Care Campus mental health center that would largely serve homeless individuals at the local Metropolitan State Hospital, the city and its residents have decided to draw the line at turning the Saddleback back into a regional homeless shelter.
On August 6, Norwalk’s city council unanimously adopted a ban on new liquor-selling convenience stores, discount stores, personal laundromats, car washes, payday loan establishments, emergency shelter, single-room occupancy and supportive and transitional housing for “immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety.”
Newsom responded first by sending a notice to the city that its moratorium violates state housing laws, then by decertifying the city’s housing element. This means the city must administratively approve proposed housing projects that have meet area median income-based affordability requirements, with the city required to quickly approve projects ranging from 7% of units affordable to households making less than 30% of AMI, to to 100% of units affordable to households making up to 120% of AMI.
The lawsuit, which heavily relies upon procedural violation of state housing laws that centralize housing allocation requirements, also claims the moratorium is discriminatory against low-income residents and government-funded housing. It seeks an injunction against the moratorium, a suspension of the city’s non-residential permitting authority, and mandated approval of residential buildings.
“Without any deliberation, the City Council unanimously passed an urgency ordinance, which declared the threat of Shelter and Supportive Housing so “deleterious” and “immediate” that it enacted a moratorium prohibiting the development of any Shelter and Supportive Housing in violation of numerous state laws,” wrote California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office in the lawsuit. “The City’s moratorium is nothing more than a shallow attempt to skirt obligations under the state’s housing and land use anti-discrimination laws, all in a misguided effort to retain absolute local control. But California’s housing laws are not optional.”
In an earlier statement, the city said its “experience with housing programs, particularly Project Roomkey, which placed a substantial number of homeless individuals with high acuity needs, near homes, schools, and public spaces, has raised significant concerns,” and that the moratorium was passed to protect residents.
When asked about the lawsuit, the city said it hasn’t yet been served, despite the announcement from the state’s governor and attorney general.
It’s unclear why the state opted to announce its lawsuit the day before the election, but three out of the five members of Norwalk’s city council are up for re-election now, including Mayor Margarita L. Rios.
The lawsuit stands in contrast with the governor’s new guidelines on homeless encampment removal policies, which encourages cities to remove tents but, in the absence of available shelter, have the homeless continue to sleep outside.
