Judge denies push to keep SLO County safe parking site open. What happens next?

More than two years after it first opened to homeless residents living in their vehicles, San Luis Obispo County’s Oklahoma Avenue Safe Parking site is set to close next week after a recent ruling by Central District of California District Judge André Birotte Jr. denied another extension of the site’s closing date.

According to court minutes from a Wednesday hearing, Birotte denied a preliminary injunction sought by the San Luis Obispo County chapter of the California Homeless Union that would have prolonged the site’s closure.

Birotte also decided to vacate the court’s order to show cause for why the site should remain open.

According to the minutes, the homeless union failed to establish a “serious question” of whether the site residents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights would be violated by the county closing the site.

The court also found the union failed to establish that the county’s anticipated closure of the site — initially announced in February 2023 — is responsible for exposing them to likely danger, or that the county’s conduct is deliberately indifferent to that danger.

Site residents have had 87 days to seek shelter or housing since the county’s final Feb. 2 closure announcement, which nearly matches the original 90-day stay residents agreed to in August 2021 when they joined the pilot program, Birotte said in the minutes.

Birotte found residents have had plenty of opportunities to relocate and have agreed to several relocation deadlines in the past two and a half years, but have not made sufficient efforts to make good on those deadlines despite receiving extensions.

According to court documents, Birotte said the public interest does not favor extending the deadline, citing the 2023 grand jury report that found the site had a litany of health and safety issues as a drain on county resources as it works on its five-year plan to address homelessness.

“That the resources expended on this site are detracting from the county’s ability to address its broader homelessness issue is particularly troubling: This harms the county’s ability to be an effective policymaker and other individuals who may be deprived of limited county resources,” the minutes read.

What will happen to safe parking residents?

With the preliminary injunction denied, the site is on track to close Monday at 3 p.m., according to the court minutes.

Once the existing temporary restraining order is lifted, the county will not supply the site with restrooms, showers, trash cleanup, fencing, site security and food deliveries, according to the minutes.

The county doesn’t intend to arrest any site residents staying at the site once services have been closed, viewing it as a “last resort” in the event that individuals breach the peace or interfere with cleanup efforts, according to the minutes.

For the 90-day period following closure, the county will offer storage for residents’ recreational vehicles, vehicles or personal belongings, which will be followed by a cleanup to remove all trash from the site, the minutes read.

Homeless union lawyer Anthony Prince told The Tribune a more comprehensive statement will come Monday morning, but said the union is “disappointed” with Birotte’s ruling.

Prince said the Union intends to go forward with a civil rights lawsuit against the county, the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo County and others “for breaking their promise of housing for all residents, possible misappropriation of funds provided for assisting the homeless, violating laws under the Americans With Disabilities Act and increasing the dangers facing the displaced residents by closing the Safe Parking Site.”

He also said the union and county are close to reaching an agreement to keep the site open for another week and require the county to provide funds for residents to find temporary indoor shelter.

Because the county is engaged in litigation with the union, it cannot comment on any discussions of an agreement until if and when there is an agreement reached, county spokesperson Jeanette Trompeter told The Tribune in an email.

Meanwhile, Prince said he was proud of the members of the homeless union “who stood their ground and kept the site open for these many months with the assistance of the union legal team.”

“As the court acknowledged in a prior ruling,” he said, “it was the ‘fire’ lit by the unionized residents under the feet of the county and CAPSLO during this time period that resulted in more residents being provided with permanent housing than were provided by the county or CAPSLO in a similar time period in the last two years.”