San Clemente considers banning large, unpermitted food gatherings in public places ...Middle East

City officials say regular gatherings at San Clemente‘s North Beach leave food debris, drink containers and trash on the sand, making the area an eyesore for neighbors and the public and requiring extra work for city staff, police and park rangers.

To combat this, Councilmember Rick Loeffler asked city staff to draft an ordinance he believes will help solve the problem of littering. He said the ordinance would also give the public confidence that the food and drinks served have been handled according to city permit requirements which include appropriate food-handling licenses and provisions to clean up and remove un-consumed items.

On Tuesday, Feb. 18, the San Clemente City Council will discuss the ordinance that Loeffler said was written up by City Manager Andy Halls. The ordinance is based on laws used in other cities to stop unpermitted food and drink distribution on public property. In Newport Beach, for example, vendors are regulated and public food distribution must be permitted in some public areas, but in others, it is forbidden.

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Local activists, however, worry the possible ordinance is another tool for targeting homeless people, while church groups say it infringes on religious freedoms and principles.

While San Clemente’s new ordinance, if passed, would apply to all city property, Loeffler said North Beach is presently the area that is most affected.

“We’ve got more groups using North Beach as a distribution center,” he said. “Now, it’s one day a week for a couple of groups; a couple of church groups are doing it there on the weekends. It’s become a magnet, and North Beach has already been struggling.”

“At what time does it start becoming like Venice Beach,” said Loeffler, referring to a sort of free-for-all with a host of unpermitted vendors. “Taxpayers have to pay for the beaches to be cleaned up.”

The problem, he said, is that more groups are gathering at the beach. He singled out a church group that holds a daily men’s Bible study and regularly serves food at North Beach.

“They come down and save benches and firepits at 10 a.m. for their meetings at 4 p.m.,” he said. “People guard them, and we’ve had some conflicts.”

There are also other gatherings on Sundays when church groups hold organized potlucks and distribute food. He said that a handful of volunteers routinely come to the beach and hand out things to homeless people in the parking lot near North Beach.

“We know who they are; they’ve been doing it for years,” he said. “They come down in a van, and it pulls up, and they hand out clothing and food.”

Loeffler worries that if left unchecked, it could turn into a problem like at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point, where city officials had difficulty getting the state’s park rangers to do something about what for years was an organized mass feeding of the homeless and food insecure people.

“Our trash cans get filled up, and stuff is left on the beach,” he said. “Maintenance people have to come out and do unscheduled pick-ups. When we allow these groups to congregate, bathrooms get dirtier.”

In comparison, he said that for groups that have city permits — including car shows and other larger beach events near the Pier Bowl or at Trestles — city staff know how to plan for more maintenance needs.

But Kathy Esfahani, chair of the San Clemente Affordable Housing Coalition, is concerned by what she calls bureaucracy intruding on people’s right to gather.

“They are interfering with people’s expression of Christianity to have fellowship with the less fortunate and create bureaucratic hurdles to simple friendship and socialization,” she said, adding that she lives near North Beach and has not witnessed a problem with litter and trash. “Why should government interfere with this?”

She and her husband are at the beach nearly every day, and she enjoys people socializing there, she said.

“I think there is something underneath this like anti-homelessness,” she said.

Among the groups that feed homeless people at North Beach is Christ Lutheran Church, which has held a “beach church” there for decades. The group holds a weekly potluck for homeless people and also distributes food and drinks on Sundays after its beach services.

Recently, the City Council granted an exception to a limitation on the church’s special events permit. The city had denied its application to hold 52 services a year at the beach because its municipal code allows special events to occur for no more than 30 days per year in public spaces.

The exception was given with the stipulation that any ordinance regulating groups in public spaces would apply to the church. Likely, if the proposed ordinance passes, the church group food distribution would need to be more regulated, Loeffer said.

Donna Vidrine, a church member who is active in its homeless outreach, calls the proposed ordinance “overreach.”

“Why would San Clemente want to monitor and investigate small groups gathering on the beach, sharing fellowship and food, to determine relationship status,” she said. “Who will be responsible for reporting these gatherings to the city for investigation and penalty?”

“If the intent behind this proposal is to target the homeless population, I believe this additional ordinance is unnecessary,” she added. “Instead, the city should focus on addressing the underlying issue, such as littering, which can be better managed through existing channels like park rangers.”

Vidrine said religious freedom, or the right to gather in a city park or public space for fellowship, shouldn’t require a permit just to share food. She pointed to Pilates in the Park at Maxburg Park, where people who participate bring homemade goodies to share with fellow Pilates practitioners.

Jeff Tyson has led a men’s Bible study in San Clemente for more than 10 years and holds a daily event at North Beach.

Some in the group are homeless, but that number has declined over the years, he said. Each day, they have coffee and some kind of food. One day, it’s donuts, then egg burritos, and another day, there is a casserole or sack lunches. City staff has warned Tyson that if the group comes back on the sand with food, he will be fined $100.

If a permit is required, he fears the Bible group won’t be able to meet anymore because the food service is critical to their fellowship, he said.

“I believe they’re doing this because of our group,” he said, adding that when he first held it on the train platform area at the Metrolink station, the city hassled him, and he moved to other locations.

Among those spots was the city’s former homeless camp, which was set up for a brief time in 2019. Tyson said, then, city officials encouraged him to bring breakfast and dinner to people in the camp, but eventually, he was kicked out of the camp. The group moved to a nearby park and then to picnic tables at North Beach. When suddenly, the picnic table disappeared, he said they moved to a nearby memorial bench. But that bench also was removed.

“It’s been 10 years of them chasing us all over the place,” he said. “Last week, we were told we were not allowed to provide food at a Bible study at the beach.”

The Feb. 18 City Council meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at City Council chambers on the second floor at 910 Calle Negocio.

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