San Clemente Councilmember Rick Loeffler sees a crisis on the Orange County city’s North Beach. Homeless outreach groups are showing up and sharing food. Sometimes they hand out clothing too.
The charity is not sporadic. At least one group holds organized potlucks every Sunday. Some volunteers conduct daily men’s Bible study. Christ Lutheran Church has been coming to the beach for decades.
This “same-time, same-place” giving is what Loeffler criticized at City Council meeting on Feb. 18. He also opposes giving away food to strangers. Picnicking with family and friends on public property is fine, he said, as long as no one gives comfort to an unknown person.
“It would be odd to think you could just go anywhere to any public place and open up and put out a table and just start serving food to people,” Loeffler said. “That just doesn’t seem right.”
His solution was an ordinance that would have required permits to share food with strangers on public property. If the measure had passed, code enforcers might have found themselves interrupting birthday parties and barbecues, demanding proof that all participants knew each other in advance.
Even then, the city would have had discretion to stop people from sharing food — a provision likely designed to prevent volunteers from claiming, truthfully, that people they serve are their friends.
Beachgoers need not worry, at least for now. The City Council voted 3-2 not to advance the ordinance. Yet issues surrounding homelessness continue to swirl, as record numbers of people find themselves on the streets nationwide.
California has responded with a pledge to spend $27 billion on shelters, food banks, and other solutions. Government agencies are happy to spend other people’s money. Yet the miracle on North Beach is something different. Instead of relying on taxpayers, community groups are rallying on their own with private solutions to a public problem.
State and local officials should welcome this help. Yet far too often, they criminalize kindness instead.
Officers actually arrested Norma Thornton, an 81-year-old grandmother in Bullhead City, Arizona. Her alleged crime was serving hot meals to homeless neighbors at a public park on the Colorado River.
When Thornton retired to Bullhead City, she discovered that many people lacked access to nutrition, so she decided to use her years of experience as a restaurant owner to help. She cooked food and shared it with those in need in a park where they already were. This was legal for years until the city enacted an ordinance in 2021 — similar to the one that failed in San Clemente — prohibiting the feeding of strangers on public land.
Not realizing the law had changed, Thornton continued sharing food in the park until her arrest. Now, she shares food in a private back alley that lacks shade, drinking water, and restrooms.
Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents her in a lawsuit against the city. We also helped the Catherine H. Barber Memorial Shelter overcome government hurdles in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. More recently, we helped the Flathead Warming Center save people from winter exposure in Kalispell, Montana.
None of these homeless advocates work for the government. People just saw a need and stepped up.
Churches drive some of this charity, but not all. “I am not religious,” San Clemente resident Jennifer Massey said at the recent City Council meeting. “But as a human being, I appeal to you, my City Councilmembers, to be comforting to those less fortunate than are we.”
Regardless of motive, the Constitution requires the government to get out of the way of those who help others. The Fourteenth Amendment protects people’s rights to engage in safe, normal activities without unreasonable government interference. It also means that government cannot allow some people to share food but not others, distinguishing based on a lack of money.
Loeffler might consider it odd and even dangerous to help strangers. But the tradition goes back more than a thousand years. California can pursue public solutions without stifling private innovation. The homelessness problem is big enough for contributions from everyone.
Diana Simpson is a senior attorney and Suranjan Sen is an attorney at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia.
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