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According to the Seal Beach Police, it is not a crime to be homeless. The local homeless population appears to be small. Most homeless individuals are traveling through Seal Beach on their way to neighboring beach cities. Most individuals do not accept resources. (For more on this subject, see the “Briefing Room” column on page 4.)
Those were among the main points raised during a Seal Beach Police Department presentation about the homeless at the Jan. 27 City Council meeting.
“I kind of want to set the stage here for how we got here,” said Police Chief Michael Henderson.
“We’re trying to engage in a dialogue with the community about homelessness,” Henderson said.
He described it as a complex societal issue.
“We’ve been faced with a lot of challenges when dealing with this this issue and our goal tonight is really to help to work to bridge any information and perception gaps that there may be,” Henderson said.
“At the Seal Beach Police Department, we practice community oriented policing and a fundamental principle of community policing is listening to the community, understanding their concerns, gaining an understanding of the characteristics of the quality of life issues that are affecting them, as well as the homeless and working to find responses that serve all the parties involved,” Henderson said.
He said last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Grants Pass case. (The Supreme Court essentially upheld laws against sleeping or camping on public property.) Henderson said the SBPD had integrated the ruling into the department’s response to the issue.
“That particular case law didn’t really address the issues that we deal with in Seal Beach,” Henderson said.
“Our goal here is to engage in a dialogue with the community to have a back and forth to understand the quality of life issues that are addressing our residents, as well as the person’s experiencing homelessness, and trying to bridge those gaps and find a way forward,” Henderson said.
He introduced his community oriented policing, Officer Kendra Owen and David Rael-Brook. They are two of the SBPD’s quality-of-life officers.
Owen spoke first. “In this presentation I will discuss the definition of homelessness, how the law applies, and the approach the Seal Beach Police Department takes, and the availability of resources,” Owen said.
As she began giving a slide presentation, she said PEH stands for “person experiencing homelessness.”
“These persons do not have a permanent residence or shelter and may be living on the streets or in vehicles,” Owen said.
“Each person who is unhoused has their own unique and specific story,” Owen said.
She said there tended to be a variety of reasons they were homeless.
Owen said SBPD has three quality of life officers, two of them being Officer Rael-Brook and herself.
“As members of the COP team, we patrol the beaches, Main Street, and Old Town over the summer months due to the increase in beachgoers and visitors,” Owen said.
“During the remainder of the year our duties transition from proactive patrol to quality of life issues throughout the city,” Owen said.
She said a large part of their time was spent helping the homeless.
Numbers
She said the Point in Time count was a census of the Orange County homeless population. The count is taken every two years.
The last Point in Time count was taken in January 2024.
According to Owen, the count at the time found 7,300 individuals who were experiencing homelessness in Orange County.
According to Owen, the Point in Time count put Seal Beach’s unhoused population at 29.
She said that was 0.39% of the city’s population.
“We believe the true number of the unhoused to be less than 10 based on our daily activity and contacts with people,” Owen said.
“The point in time count may have been in inflated on that specific day due to weather and other encampment cleanups from surrounding areas, along with just people passing through,” Owen said.
Officer Owen said some neighboring cities have “clinicians,” non-sworn employees who work with the homeless.
According to one of the slides, the Point in Time survey counted 52 homeless persons in Cypress, four in Los Alamitos, 433 in Huntington Beach, 71 in Newport Beach, 288 in Westminster, 239 in Garden Grove, and 3,376 in Long Beach.
“As you can see on the slide, our unhoused count is significantly less significant than our surrounding cities,” Owen said.
The next slide showed SBPD calls for service in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
According to the slide, in 2022 the SBPD received 26,980 calls for service, of which 1,041 (or 4.07%) were related to homeless persons. In 2023, SBPD received 31,520 calls, of which 1,084 (or 3.62%) were related to homeless persons. In 2024, SBPD received 31,500 calls, of which 975 (or 2.23.%) were to homeless persons.
“Overall, our city has a low percentage of calls related to [the] unhoused,” Owen said.
Law
“Prior to June of 2024, there were case laws that prohibited cities from enforcing anti-camping ordinances unless there was an available shelter bed,” Owen said.
“”In June of 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in the Grant Pass versus Johnson [case] that cities can now enforce anti-camping ordinances on public property even when the homeless individuals have no alternative,” Owen said.
“It is important to understand that being unhoused is not criminal,” Owen said.
According to one of the slides she showed, a homeless person sleeping on a bench or lying on the grass is no different than anyone else doing the same thing.
Owen said the city has a Municipal Code that prohibits camping such as tents on public property and the right of way.
“This does not apply to private property persons trespassing on private property are subject to Penal Code violations, which would require the owner of the property to be a victim and willing to press charges,” Owen said.
She turned the presentation over to Officer Rael-Brook.
Responses
“When it comes to our response to persons experiencing homelessness, the Seal Beach Police Department takes a compassionate approach,” Rael-Brook said.
“When contacting persons experiencing homelessness, it requires them to want the resources that are being offered and we cannot force people to accept help and go into a shelter,” Rael-Brook said.
“Ninety-nine times out of 100 they’re going to say no and hopefully that 100th time when we ask they say yes,” Rael-Brook said.
“Enforcement actions are taken only when individuals violate laws such as trespassing, theft, or vandalism and have refused assistance,” Rael-Brook said.
“It is important to note that the unhoused persons have the same rights to public spaces as any Seal Beach resident or anybody visiting our city,” Rael-Brook said.
“When we have instances of individuals who set up structures or block public sidewalks or access or have a large amount of property, enforcement action will be taken,” Rael-Brook said.
He said individuals were notified verbally and with signage that says to remove the property or the property will be removed and stored for up to 90 days.
“We often get calls for persons sleeping on private property and from concerned citizens and in these instances it requires the owner of the private property to contact police for assistance,” Rael-Brook said.
He said only property owners can ask that someone be charged with trespassing. He said officers can contact the individual and document a verbal warning of trespassing. “If the individual refuses to leave or returns after being advised, they may be arrested if the owner is willing to press charges,” Rael-Brook said.
He said a trespass letter may be kept on file with the SPBD for businesses that request a trespass letter.
Rael-Brook said the only shelter available to the SBPD is the Navigation Center in Santa Ana.
He said once a week the Health Care Agency Outreach and Engagement Team works with the community oriented policing team to contact homeless individuals.
He said the team helps with shelter bed reservations, DMV identification waivers, Social Security benefits, and medical benefits.
“We don’t have access to the psychiatric emergency response team,” he said.
He said another resource is 2-1-1, a county resource that connects people to social services.
Other resources he mentioned included, the Veterans Hospital in Long Beach, the Long Beach PD, Hellman Property Management, Southern California Edison, and Caltrans.
Challenges
Rael-Brook repeated that the biggest challenge is getting individuals to accept help.
“Each day we receive an email from the Yale Navigation Center informing us how many shelter beds are available, which usually ranges from zero to three beds,” Rael-Brook said.
“When a person does request a shelter bed we fill out a referral form and an email is sent to Yale,” Rael-Brook said.
“When Yale accepts the referral it may be the same day or even days later, so another challenge is then going to be relocating the individual hours or days later,” Real-Brook said.
“When the referral is accepted, it is always difficult to locate persons when they do not have a phone or no way to be reached and are often moving from place to place or change locations,” Real-Brook said.
“On top of that, they may even change their mind in that time period,” Rael-Brook said.
What to do
He listed circumstances when the public should call the police:
When someone is sleeping on your property or blocking a walkway, setting up a structure or a tent, creating a disturbance, appear to be under the influence, or when they are relieving themselves in public.
“Some persons tend to talk to themselves out loud,” he said. Rael-Brook said that alone is not a crime.
“However, if a subject is making verbal threats or displaying aggressive behavior, we will respond and are happy to protect our community,” Rael-Brook said.
“We’re in the process of having all of our officers attend quality of life training,” Rael-Brook said.
He said the city was updating the Municipal Code to be more specific.
Council questions
District One Council Member Joe Kalmick said: “We’ve had a situation in Old Town where an individual has repeatedly refused services and continues to be somewhat troublesome in the community.”
He asked if there was a way to mitigate that situation.
Rael-Brook said the police would address a criminal hazard, but if the person was merely there, the SBPD would take a compassionate approach.
“I think that’s something that in all of our districts where it happens that we wrestle with because we’re not putting homeless people in a van and driving them over the city line,” Kalmick said.
“We need to understand how much leeway that our officers have to deal with some of the situations that we have that are fairly troublesome,” Kalmick said.
District Four Councilwoman Patty Senecal complimented the police on the way the SBPD does the outreach. “You guys seem to have a good attitude about it,” Senecal aid.
She asked Rael-Brook for some of the reasons why the homeless refuse resources.
Officer Owen said she would say they are not interested. “Sometimes there’s rules at shelters that people just don’t want to follow,” she said.
“But for the most part, people kind of want to just live their life the way they want to live it,” Owen said.
“The other difficult part is, we only have access to one shelter,” Rael-Brook said.
“So maybe somebody’s been to that shelter before and had a bad experience or a negative experience at a shelter,” he said.
Senecal asked what happens to the property that’s stored for 90 days. “What happens after that?”
“It can be destroyed. It depends on the situation. Everybody’s property is different,” Rael-Brook said.
According to Rael-Brook, any property that’s abandoned is stored for 90 days. “After that, it can be auctioned off,” Rael-Brook said.
Capt. Michael Ezroj said sometimes the homeless will reach out to the police. “They’re extending their stay or they’re incarcerated for something, they’re trying to get their life back on track and these are their worldly possessions,” Ezroj said.
“We’ll hold on to them longer, but it’s about establishing the relationships that these two officers have with them,” Ezroj said.
According to Ezroj, one of the reasons homeless individuals don’t want to go to shelters is they can only take so much property there and they don’t want to part with their worldly possessions. He said in some cases, that’s all they have and they don’t have the means for getting it back or communicating with the police.
“The vast majority of my neighbors believe that homelessness is a crime; that just because they are homeless and out on the street that they should be arrested and removed,” said District Five Councilman Nathan Steele.
“That’s the message that we need to get out there, that homelessness is not a criminal offense,” Steele said.
He said a session with a club in Leisure World and one of the comments was, “why don’t you haul away the homeless people?”
“It’s not that simple,” Steele said.
District Two Councilman Ben Wong asked which agencies the public can call if there are homeless people along the river.
“The riverbed’s a unique situation,” Rael-Brook said.
“You have multiple jurisdictions,” Owen said.
Ezroj said Long Beach has taken the lead on the San Gabriel River Bike Trail since so much of it goes through that city.
District Three Councilwoman/Mayor Lisa Landau asked if the 29 persons experiencing homelessness are Seal Beach’s regulars?
“That was a Point in Time count and it happens every two years,” said Owen.
“In Orange County, that’s a specific day that they choose,” Owen said, referring to the County of Orange.
“I would say we’re closer to 10 people,” Owen said.
Rael-Brook said even if they were passing through Seal Beach, they would be counted toward the city’s homeless count.
Landau said she had seen a couple of individuals that she sees all the time.
Landau said she sees a man who walks around with a massage table. He sleeps on it at night.
“We have contacted him several times,” Rael-Brook said. “He’s refused resources. We’re still trying to get there with him. He’s made references to the fact that he’s going to move on and so we want to give him that opportunity before we take any kind of enforcement action.”
“Do we have any violent people at this point?” Landau asked.
“Anything of that nature, we’re pretty Johnny-on-the-spot with that and deal with that right away,” Rael-Brook said.
She expressed the council’s appreciation for their work. “It’s got to be difficult and heartbreaking at the same time, but I’m sure rewarding when you do get positive results, so thank you,” Landau said.
