Arroyo Grande City Council counters recommendation to pause safe parking ordinance adoption 

The Arroyo Grande City Council recently resisted city staff's recommendation to suspend efforts to adopt a safe parking ordinance.

That recommendation stemmed from being unable to receive commitment from its preferred social service provider, 5Cities Homeless Coalition (5CHC), to support potential sites in the city should the ordinance be adopted and enacted.

"What's the harm in passing what we've done?" Mayor Caren Ray Russom asked Planning Manager Andrew Perez at the Aug. 8 meeting. "We know that nobody can fulfill that permit but maybe tomorrow we can. Why wouldn't we validate staff's work and all the public hearings that we've had?"

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• Photo Taken From 5Cities Homeless Coalition Website
• MORE ROOM 5Cities Homeless Coalition is now working on opening a second Cabins for Change program in Grover Beach—one of the reasons why it couldn't currently give resources to support individual safe parking sites in Arroyo Grande.

According to Perez, city staff remained hesitant to pursue the adoption of an ordinance that "couldn't be fulfilled." They preferred to have an agreement with 5CHC with whom the city has a long-term partnership.

Arroyo Grande staff drafted the safe parking ordinance in February for a study session hoping that the City Council would one day include it in the city plan. City staff was inspired by talks with faith-based leaders in 2020 to ease rising homelessness through a temporary site set up at St. John's Lutheran Church. Since that study session, the City Council's deliberation on the ordinance focused on a series of future complexities that ranged from site security to the appeals process of permits.

But 5CHC Executive Director Janna Nichols politely warned the Arroyo Grande City Council in March about adopting the ordinance too hastily. She continued to stress the need to detail out exactly what a local safe parking program would entail.

"Safe parking is a tool to secure those who are experiencing homelessness in a continuum of services," she told New Times on Aug. 9. "We need to be clear before we open the program on what those services are and who we are serving. In the priority list of all the things we are working on, where does it fit?"

Nichols is also thinking beyond the cityscape.

"Our interest is we don't do something in South County that can't be replicated elsewhere," she said. "How can we help you collectively do this as opposed to city by city?"

Nichols told New Times that while the group appreciates the city's efforts to have local safe parking programs to alleviate homelessness, the nonprofit has time constraints. 5CHC has been running the Cabins for Change program in Grover Beach since last December. Program managers are now working on opening a second Cabins for Change project at the South 4th Street property 5CHC leased from Grover Beach last year.

Arroyo Grande City Councilmember Jim Guthrie echoed the need to have widespread safe parking programs, similar to the New Beginnings safe parking program in the city of Santa Barbara.

"They have a whole bunch of 10 or 12 sites around town and one person oversees them all on any given night," Guthrie said at the Aug. 8 meeting. "It could very well be that somebody other than 5Cities can provide this."

A member of the public also recommended thinking about service provision beyond 5CHC. During the public comment period, she wondered if the ordinance could lay out a list of responsibilities required from a social service provider, and then be passed. This way, any provider group that can meet those requirements could then commit to Arroyo Grande's future safe parking sites knowing what's expected of it.

"Would having it passed lead to a service provider be coming, because it would be a clear set of requirements, responsibilities, and abilities already laid out?" the commenter asked.

That's exactly what the City Council decided to do. The council voted to return at a future date to discuss the ordinance again, this time with a checklist of what the city is looking for from a service provider. Δ