City says it will clear encampments from 5 parks emblematic of Long Beach’s homelessness crisis

It wasn’t a free meal. It wasn’t jail. It wasn’t a voucher, Jesus, or a hot shower. Tiffany Royal’s 20 years of homelessness ended through a stroke of luck: a job opening, no experience needed, that included room and board.

The 35-year-old is a caregiver. She changes diapers, cooks and sorts medication for enfeebled seniors. It’s no paradise, she said, but it’s far enough from the life she led before: homeless at Gumbiner Park.

Meant as a public space for the 32,000 who live within a half-mile, the park today is occupied almost exclusively by the unhoused. Across a patch of soft loam at the park’s center, Royal sits with a half-dozen of her homeless friends, some lying inside tents or lounged across tarps.

The visit, for the most part, is congenial. Pouched in her front-slung backpack, “fat bastard,” Royal’s baby lab, licks at the air under her chin. “He’s a real fatty,” she said with a grin, patting his belly. But the group knows — as do Long Beach’s elected leaders — the mood won’t last; very soon, they will all have to leave.

Starting Aug. 19, officials plan to temporarily close Gumbiner Park as the start of an aggressive new strategy aimed at the pervasiveness, or at least the visibility, of its homelessness crisis: locate the most obstructive and dangerous encampments in Long Beach and clear them out. Those who refuse to move from these sites, called “Priority Focus Areas,” could be ticketed or arrested .

The new strategy was detailed in a city memo released Monday in response to a pivotal June 28 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows local governments to more forcefully remove homeless encampments from public spaces.

Later Monday, officials confirmed five inaugural sites chosen for the program: Billie Jean King Main Library and nearby Lincoln Park, Gumbiner Park, Veterans Park, and Jenni Rivera Memorial Park.

The problem encampments will first undergo “multiple days of outreach, credible offers of supportive services and shelter, “ before the city begins the process of clearing them out, Deputy City Manager Teresa Chandler wrote in the 11-page memo . If those efforts fail, the city teams will issue misdemeanor citations “as appropriate,” she added.

Word about the plan has spread on the street. When asked, many at Gumbiner Park already knew that by Monday, it would be fenced off.

Speaking above the others, Royal called the court ruling that enabled the crackdown “foul,” saying jail never helped her; she has been jailed twice and cited more than a dozen times. While not homeless anymore, she speaks in the present tense.

“We’re only living our lives,” Royal said. “And in all honesty, the people coming in and trying to kick us out, they’re not really putting in the effort they can to really help us out.”

An estimated 3,370 people are living homeless in Long Beach, about 70% of them sleeping in tents, cars or makeshift shelters.

Despite a years-long effort to move people into temporary shelter or permanent housing, there is not enough space. Encampments remain a glaring problem, often bringing trash, theft and open drug use.

And patience is wavering among a liberal base long bent on handling the crisis with compassion.

At city meetings, the discussion on homelessness rouses an ambivalent mixture of toleration and disgust, guilt and anger.

Gumbiner Park is “overrun with homeless,” Long Beach resident Julie Heisen told City Council members Tuesday night. She called it “a mini-Skid Row.”

Administrators at next door St. Anthony’s High School have a direct view into the squalor. Through their building’s cross-shaped windows, they say they can routinely watch drug dealing, use and violence on the street.

Renae Waestman-Furlow, the director of advancement at St. Anthony’s, recalls a shooting outside the neighboring church in late June. It started, she said, as an altercation in Gumbiner Park.

The human suffering outside has stifled the school’s summer of renewal. The paint just dried on $2.7 million in renovations to their main campus, from new classrooms to a makeover according to the school’s historical color palette with “1,200 gallons of paint,” Waestman-Furlow said.

But with 450 students expected to roam the hall in the coming weeks, school leaders said they cannot reopen their gym, out of fear from the local transients. Once she heard about the city’s new initiative, Waestman-Furlow said she “fought like hell” to have them do something. She contacted the office of Councilwoman Mary Zendejas, who represents much of the city’s Downtown.

“We’ve never been a huge fan of the park; we have always drafted concerns and unfortunately that’s become the reality,” Waestman-Furlow said.

The school would like to have permanent fencing around their campus and increased security over the nearby park, not just to ensure their students’ safety but for those going to the three other schools within a three-block radius.

“Being unhoused is not a crime, but some of their activities are,” Wasetman-Furlow said. “We don’t know who’s in there. Are they felons? Do they have guns? There’s so much violence we are adjacent to, so we’re having to take a stance… Just turning the blind eye isn’t serving the rest of our students.”

City Prosecutor Doug Haubert, who would be responsible for enforcing the misdemeanor penalties issued under the new strategy, said the goal of the program isn’t to criminalize homelessness but rather to compel people into housing while also reclaiming public spaces.

The system in place, he added, has the ability to divert cases before they get filed and dismiss them in court. But that only works if people accept services.

“It puts the control into the hands of the person experiencing homelessness, and if that person wants to take advantage of the programs, the programs are very generous,” Haubert said. “But we can’t allow people to continue to live in parks, abuse drugs, have mental illnesses that go unresolved forever and ever. … We need people to meet us halfway.”

He acknowledged the city needs far more upstream fixes, like easing the housing crisis and providing addiction and mental health services. Local shelters typically average at 95% capacity, while the city’s Section 8 housing voucher waitlist hasn’t accepted new entrees since 2016.

One man living at Gumbiner Park, Anthony Seth, said he’s been on the waitlist for supportive housing for three years. “Maybe it’s my bad hair,” he laughed, brushing back the locks from his face.

The group expressed skepticism about clearing encampments without offering people a place to go, such as a hotel room or other temporary shelter, or services like medical care.

It is unclear whether the city will guarantee a shelter, motel or treatment bed to those they remove from encampments, even as the recent court ruling means they no longer have to.

Officials did not respond to the question of guaranteed shelter availability at the time of publication.

Royal is convinced the city won’t stop until the homeless are pushed to either of the riverbeds that flank Long Beach. Until that day comes, she plans to continue coming out, to support her friends.

“I’ve seen so many people that have gotten off the streets and changed their lives around,” Royal said. “Stopped doing drugs, completely turned around and became hypocrites, saying they’re not going to come out here, that they’re not going to be like us anymore — I’m never going to give up on my fellow homeless people because I know where they’ve been.”

Viviana Leon, meanwhile, is open to leaving.  She’s reserved among the garrulous group, half hidden by the door flap to her tent and digging into the callous that has formed around her left thumb. “I’m sick of living out here,” she said.

Since the shooting two months ago, the camp has been especially skittish. Police come by every day. Nights are sleepless. Walks to the city’s intake center for a shower are longer under the August heat. Without an ID, she’s waiting on the city’s outreach team to set her up with a new one.

“But they never came back,” Leon said. “They didn’t come to look for me or anything. That was about two weeks ago.”

While the others talked among themselves, Leon muttered that she somewhat agrees with the looming citations, even though it may result in more of her friends being arrested.

“I mean someone’s got to hold people accountable out here,” she said quietly.

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