On Monday, Dec. 21, attorneys with Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman and Zeldes LLP sent a letter to the City of Los Angeles, calling for the City to stop displacing people during encampment cleanups.
According to the attorneys, “Given the unprecedented and uncontrolled level of community spread of COVID-19 and the
catastrophic strain it is placing on our health system, there is no public health justification for continuing this displacement at this time. Doing so puts unhoused residents at risk, to say nothing of the risk to city workers, contractors, and the general public.”
According to Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, “The Centers for Disease Control guidance against clearing encampments applies with equal force to this sort of temporary displacement of individuals from encampments for the duration of a cleanup, as it does to the permanent displacement of individuals from a specific location.”
