Laguna beach city news City of Laguna Beach, California

The Next Regular Meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, September 24 at 5:00 P.M.

The "Tentative Agenda" is strictly tentative and there is no guarantee that items listed will be agendized as scheduled due to changing priorities, new information, staff workloads, and other unforeseeable events.

City Holds Insurance & Wildfire Town Hall Meeting With California Department of Insurance

On Tuesday, the City held an Insurance & Wildfire Town Hall meeting in partnership with the California Department of Insurance, addressing the ongoing insurance crisis in California.

The California FAIR Plan was discussed as a last-resort option, but it is not ideal due to its high costs and limited coverage. Juarez outlined how the Department of Insurance is implementing strategies to stabilize the market, improve access to coverage, and ensure fair treatment for consumers, while also encouraging community-wide efforts to reduce wildfire risks.

Missed the Town Hall Meeting? Watch the Replay Below (1 Hour):

Q: Did the US Supreme Court’s recent decision (Grants Pass) regarding homeless encampments change Laguna Beach’s approach?

A: It didn’t, at least so far. Laguna Beach has always been on the leading edge of responding to California’s homelessness crisis, in part due to litigation back to 2007 that involved the creation of the Alternative Sleeping Location (ASL) in the Canyon. The ASL has allowed the City to comply with the law before Grants Pass, which generally said that persons who are unhoused could only be asked to leave a camping site if shelter beds were available that night. In other words, because we had the ASL, we could enforce anti-camping laws even before Grants Pass.

Grants Pass essentially said (among other things) that the City of Grants Pass’ enforcement protocols against camping in public spaces were not cruel or unusual. The protocols involved “limited fines for first-time offenders, an order temporarily barring an individual from camping in a public park for repeat offenders, and a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail for those who later violate an order.” After the Grants Pass case, many cities have pursued existing and updated anti-camping ordinances providing that unhoused individuals do not have a right to camp in public spaces, regardless of whether shelter beds are available for those persons to sleep in at night.

But back to Laguna Beach. Because of the ASL, we have not allowed encampments to form. Yes, there will be unhoused individuals or couples transiting through town, but those folks are typically greeted by our PD teams (including officers, park rangers and private security), informed that they cannot remain there, and told about other options than camping in a public space. If they remain, they are subject to citation and arrest. The Laguna Beach Police Department has a strong relationship with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, and with the help of a dedicated Deputy District Attorney (DDA), we have successfully prosecuted repeat offenders. This has helped to reduce crime and quality of life issues impacting our community.

Our police teams and our service provider partners, like Be Well OC and the Friendship Shelter, work collaboratively to both provide compassionate services and to enforce the law. As the law changes around us, and as other cities may start different enforcement models more akin to our own, we are confident that we will be able to continue to limit encampments just as we have done for years. Should anything change – such as an influx of unhoused folks leaving other cities’ encampments – we will respond appropriately, including to consistently and appropriately apply our existing laws so that our public spaces and our overall community remain free of encampments.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t see unhoused individuals in Laguna Beach moving through town – you will. We will see them too and provide friendly but direct guidance. If you ever sense that your safety or your family’s safety is compromised by an individual acting out (either unhoused or not), don’t hesitate to call 911. That person will receive an appropriate response, such as a direct visit from an officer, from Be Well, or from a staff member from the County’s OC Links mobile support team (note that OC Links does not just address homeless individuals - if you are worried about anyone’s mental health status, call them at 855-625-4657).

Thanks for this question and for caring about the Laguna Beach community.