Manhattan Beach is Venice if it went to college, an idyllic Los Angeles suburb that anyone can enjoy if they’re willing to brave the traffic. Well, maybe not anyone. The city has made it illegal to eat in your car, the idea presumably being to exclude undesirable hungry people from savoring the welcoming ocean breeze.
Live Oak Park, an eerily pristine, family-friendly public enclave just blocks from the Pacific Ocean, sports warning signs that read: “NO SLEEPING NO EATING, IN VEHICLES ON STREETS, PARKS, PARKING LOTS OR OTHER PUBLIC PROPERTY 10PM TO 6AM M.B.M.C. 3-1.1.”
Other exclusionist popped-collar communities around California have laws targeting the homeless, but this may be the only one to bar the essential human act of consuming nutrients. The code referenced, 3-11.1, is not even on record at Manhattan Beach City Hall, which would make enforcement problematic.
It apparently was repealed years ago, although the signs appear to be freshly minted.
The statute Manhattan Beach officials may have been looking for when they erected the signs is 14.36.160. The statute is known as the No Overnight Camping Ordinance. Indeed, being homeless is a form of camping. Conversely, camping is a means of being temporarily homeless for those who aren’t.
That statute is on the books, and it reads, “It shall be unlawful for any person to use or occupy, permit the use or occupancy of any vehicle for human habitation, including but not limited to sleeping or eating, on any street, alley, park, beach, public parking lot or parking structure, or any public property within the City of Manhattan Beach between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.”
…Stephanie Martin, a spokeswoman at the Manhattan Beach Police Department, denies the law is a thinly veiled method for displacing people of whom the 84.5 percent white town doesn’t approve, yet conversely confirms it’s not meant to apply to locals (who, by the way, enjoy a median household income of $140,000 a year, while Beverly Hills trails at $87,000.)
“Doesn’t matter if you’re in an Aston Martin or a Ford Pinto, we don’t police that way,” Martin says. “We get a call that someone says it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, somebody’s parked on Valley Drive in violation of the sign, then we’re going to go respond and investigate, and if a citation is warranted then it’s warranted. It’s not there designed for the locals. I don’t think any of the locals sit there and park their cars there at 10 o’clock at night and sleep or eat.”
