Suit against city focuses on homeless rights

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 23, 2006 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

A long simmering legal battle to force the city of San Diego to deal with the homeless is coming to a head. The outcome could set a precedent for other cities with growing homeless populations. KPBS r

A long simmering legal battle to force the city of San Diego to deal with the homeless is coming to a head. The outcome could set a precedent for other cities with growing homeless populations. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

A federal judge in San Diego is expected to rule soon on whether ticketing homeless people for sleeping on public property might be violating their constitutional rights. Attorney Tim Cohelan, represents nine homeless people in the class action suit.

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He argues since the city isn't providing alternatives, preventing people from sleeping in public places amounts to sleep deprivation, which is cruel and unusual punishment.

Cohelan: "Once you've established that there are these limitations on what we can ask the police to do, then it becomes our responsibility to find other methods of dealing with this problem of homelessness and displaced persons in a more responsible way."

If the judge denies the city's attempts to get the case dismissed, Cohelan says the next step for the homeless would be to ask for safe zones where they could sleep in peace without fear of being woken with a ticket. Alison St John, KPBS news.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.