Editorial: Illegal homeless ordinance

Thursday, Nov. 23, 2006 | 6:58 a.m.

It's appropriate that this week started with U.S. District Judge Robert Jones finding a Las Vegas ordinance that bars people from feeding the homeless in city parks unconstitutional.

In the name of safety and cleaning up the city parks, the City Council passed an ordinance earlier this year that outlaws feeding indigent people in a park. The city defines indigent people as those " who a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance" under state law.

It was stunning that city leaders would think this somehow was legal, much less moral - it creates a caste system based on a person's net worth. What's even more stunning is that city officials, after Jones' ruling, said they still stand behind the ordinance. City Attorney Brad Jerbic said that it would just take some "tweaking" to make it legal.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said the homeless should be getting professional care and "deserve to be in service centers and with faith-based groups," but not parks.

"I know I'm right on this one," he said. "We just have to get the law in shape."

While we acknowledge the homeless problem and the concerns of residents who live near city parks, the law should never pass muster if the intent - to sweep homeless out of the parks - stays the same.

"Most disturbing about what transpired is the fact that the city was actually willing, shamelessly, to make the same argument in court as it has in the court of public opinion," said Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which sued on behalf of homeless advocate Gail Sacco. "The argument is: Poor people are different than the rest of us. We need to control them or they'll overrun us and they'll ruin everything."

The policy, he said, is "making sure they are herded into shelters and central locations where nobody else has to look at them or deal with them."

That's frightening and wrong. Instead of spending taxpayer money fighting over an unconstitutional ordinance, that money could be spent on much needed outreach efforts that would have a far greater effect toward solving the problem.

That's what city officials should be doing, and we hope that today, as they give their thanks over plates full of food, they will rethink their misguided approach to handling the homeless.