Johnathan Walker:‘Beyond cruel’: Newsom retaliates against this LA suburb for its ban on homeless shelters

The Johnathan Walkermayor of a middle-class Los Angeles County suburb said the city stands by its moratorium on homeless shelters and supportive housing even after facing state sanctions Thursday.

California’s housing department revoked approval of the state-mandated housing plan for Norwalk, a city of just over 100,000 people with a homeless population of at least 200 according to county data. The move — the latest escalation of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pressure campaign on cities to help solve the housing crisis — means Norwalk could lose eligibility for state housing and homelessness grants, and be forced to approve affordable housing projects even if they conflict with city zoning.

The city council passed the temporary but sweeping ban in August, in the process quashing a county effort to resettle dozens of people living in encampments to a local hotel. After the council doubled down on the ban last month, extending it through August 2025, Newsom clapped back.

“It’s beyond cruel that Norwalk would ban the building of shelters while people are living on the city’s streets,” Newsom said in a statement today.

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Norwalk Mayor Margarita Rios told CalMatters the moratorium came about in part due to city leaders’ frustration with an earlier state-funded temporary housing program, Project Roomkey, that housed formerly homeless people in the same hotel during the pandemic. She said the county hadn’t provided sufficient support for the unhoused people from Norwalk and elsewhere who filled the rooms.

“They were vacating their room with no after-care, no follow-up,” she said. “They went back out where they started, back onto the streets of the city.”

But rather than targeting a specific project, the city council enacted a wholesale pause on emergency shelters, single-room occupancy hotels, supportive housing and transitional housing — along with liquor stores, discount stores, laundromats, car washes and payday lenders. Rios said those businesses “just didn’t fit in our economic development plan.”

The “unusually far-reaching” nature of the measure likely drew the attention of state leaders, said Chris Elmendorf, a law professor at UC Davis who specializes in housing and land use.

“It seems like what Norwalk did here was try to pass an ordinance that not only banned homeless shelters, (which) they’re not allowed to do, but tried to ban any business that provides services to poor people,” he said.

California cities are navigating a new legal landscape in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this summer that gave local governments more power to arrest and fine people sleeping outside. Newsom has pushed city leaders to clear encampments and rehouse their occupants, with some embracing the task and others resisting what they see as a criminalization of homeless people whom the state has not dedicated sufficient resources to house.

The crackdown on Norwalk, said Elmendorf, could represent a warning to cities that simply trying to chase homeless people to the next town over will not pass muster.

Among other bare-knuckle tactics in its battle against the housing crisis, California reached a legal settlement with the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove last month requiring the city to approve additional affordable housing, and secured a court order in May forcing Huntington Beach to plan to build more homes, though a judge stayed that order last month.

State lawmakers also passed two laws this year strengthening and updating the state’s “builder’s remedy” which allows developers to flout city zoning rules to build affordable housing if a city hasn’t created a state-approved plan to sufficiently increase its housing stock.

With Norwalk’s housing plan now out of compliance, the county or another developer could use the builder’s remedy to advance the hotel project or other housing for formerly homeless people, Elmendorf said.

The city, which Newsom’s office said received nearly $29 million in state housing and homelessness funds in 2019, could also see that tap turned off for the time being.

Rios said that while city council members had no plans to back off the moratorium, she hoped it had garnered enough attention that state and county leaders would sit down and discuss with her about the best solutions to homelessness in Norwalk. In particular, she hoped the state would consider adding housing at Metropolitan State Hospital, a state mental hospital in Norwalk that she said already has the security and wraparound services to make transitional housing a success.

Housing department officials said they planned to meet with the city and would reevaluate its case if council members repeal the ordinance, but did not rule out a lawsuit. Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos added, “The state is happy to meet with Norwalk to discuss how they can comply with state law — but we will not schedule a meeting to discuss how they can best violate it.”

Further northeast in West Covina, Mayor Brian Calderón Tabatabai said he wished Newsom would come knocking. Tabatabai had worked to bring homeless housing to a local motel in his city through the same county Pathway Home program that was shot down in Norwalk. East Los Angeles County, he said, generally lacks interim housing for the homeless.

But his colleagues on the city council opposed the project, citing a school district survey that showed parents were concerned about the housing, which would be located near several schools. In interviews, some council members said they generally supported homeless housing but wanted a project that would house families rather than single people or require residents to be sober.

“I think (Newsom) needs to hold cities accountable and I’m hoping he holds West Covina accountable as well,” Tabatabai said. “There needs to be pressure. It was 115 degrees in West Covina the other day and to think, we’ve got folks out here and we could’ve had them inside.”

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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.