Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday threatened a possible lawsuit against the city of Norwalk, urging city officials to reverse its newly adopted moratorium on emergency shelters for the homeless as well as supportive and transitional housing.
The Norwalk City Council had adopted the urgency ordinance on Aug. 6 to put a moratorium on a number of establishments, including emergency shelters, single-room occupancy, supportive housing and transitional housing.
While the city council noted the city’s power to make and enforce ordinances to regulate the use of land within its jurisdictional boundaries when it passed the ordinance, the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development sent a notice of violation letter to Mayor Margarita Rios and other officials, saying the ordinance is “unlawful.”
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“It is unfathomable that as our state grapples with a homelessness crisis, Norwalk would pass an ordinance banning the building of homeless shelters,” Newsom said in a statement. “We can’t leave people in dangerous and unsanitary encampments — the city of Norwalk needs to do its part to provide people with shelter and services.”
The state said the city has not done enough to ban homeless shelters and other facilities when there were nearly 170 people estimated to be unhoused in the city.
Although Norwalk passed the moratorium based on the Housing Crisis Act, which allows local governments to issue a housing or facility ban when there’s “an imminent threat” to public health and safety, the state argued in the letter that “there are no findings of a threat specific to the housing subject to the moratorium, nor any finding of a citywide threat.”
With the notice of violation, the state implied the Los Angeles County city with the population of 100,000 could face the same fate as Anaheim and Huntington Beach. The two Orange County cities were forced to bring forward new housing plans after they lost lawsuits brought on by the state in similar fashion.
The Norwalk City Council and Mayor Margarita Rios issued the following statement.
"Gov. Newsom’s threats of a lawsuit overlook Norwalk’s long-standing and effective efforts to address homelessness," they said in the statement. "The city has made significant strides, including opening affordable housing for homeless veterans, supporting L.A. County’s Homekey project, funding its own homelessness engagement teams, and being one of the few cities in L.A. County with a dedicated Social Services Department to assist people experiencing homelessness. Norwalk also hosted one of the largest Project Roomkey sites during the pandemic. Despite these efforts, Norwalk has received no Measure H funding, forcing the city to use its own resources to manage the fallout from abandoned state-mandated programs, which puts both residents’ safety and the city’s finances at risk. We urge Gov. Newsom to recognize Norwalk’s proactive measures and provide direct resources to support its ongoing efforts."
