PALMS UNHOUSED MUTUAL AID


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Demands
The City Must  
  1. End Criminalization Laws (41.18)
  2. Provide Harm Reduction
  3. Put Housing Offers in Writing
  4. Audit Private No-Bid Partners
  5. Build Social Housing
  6. Include Wraparound Services
  7. Permanent Housing First Model
  8. Defund Cops 
  9. Close Jails and Stop Cash Bail 
The US Must       
  1. End Landlord Ownership
  2. Abolish Police and Prisions
  3. Dismantle the US Empire
  4. Fund Social Services and Programs



    Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid —
    Ethos
    1. Working towards a socialist future is the only way to end the housing crisis. Capitalism and its agents, prioritize the profit of corporate and landlord development and ownership. While the working class organizes for a better future, we focus on meeting the survival needs of unhoused individuals who suffer the most under the capitialist system. Understanding that care is more effective than carcerality.
               
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    3. Stop the 
    Sweeps 41.18




            As mutual aid volunteers, we have spent the last several years working directly with LA’s unhoused communities throughout the Westside, primarily in CD5 and CD11. At every turn, the City rejected our recommendations for a humane, effective, and functional system that actually gets people off the street and into housing. Instead, the City has implemented a cruel system that moves people around from block to block, throws out their belongings, and houses virtually no one.
           Now, after months of community pressure, the City has finally released a report back on the “cost and efficacy” of LAMC 41.18 implementation and how to improve the policy.

           Let us be clear: there is no improving 41.18. It is a racist municipal code designed to criminalize the existence and visibility of poor people in public, dating back to the 1930s. Rather than actually getting people off the street and into supportive housing, all 41.18 does is violate unhoused people’s constitutional rights and ensure that they never end up housed. As the Jasmine Avenue unhoused community wrote in an open letter to Council District 5, 41.18 moves them away from the areas where they are often required to stay to receive support from service providers, thus cutting them off from services and displacing them to areas far from their communities and support systems.

           Our documentation of 41.18 sweeps includes the City using this municipal code to justify throwing away narcan, clothing, food, medicine, cell phones, and other important personal belongings that people need to survive. There is no reforming a policy as dangerous as 41.18 that gives LAPD unprecedented power to regulate public space at their discretion.
           The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has already ruled that our enforcement of 41.18 violates the Constitution. Yet the City continues to put itself at massive liability by enforcing 41.18 and similar policies.

           Our communities urge the city to repeal LAMC 41.18 and stop wasting taxpayer money on this inefficient and cruel mechanism. We also demand that the city invite unhoused community members who have been impacted firsthand by these cruel policies before the entire City Council to actually hear about the problems it creates for those who experience it every single day.