SANTA CRUZ >> The Santa Cruz City Council this week took its first of two votes to approve an ordinance prohibiting other cities “frankly, in and out of the county” from delivering homeless people to Santa Cruz without a pre-arranged support system and communication.

The new ordinance, which requires a second council vote at a future meeting, also banned city officials from transporting homeless individuals to other cities without similar preparation.

Vice Mayor Renée Golder said at Tuesday’s council meeting that homeless drop-offs would “not be tolerated” in Santa Cruz.

“It’s the responsibility of every jurisdiction in this country to contribute to ending homelessness and because we have a generous community of people willing to use our tax dollars to support getting people back into housing doesn’t mean that we’re going to solve homelessness for the entire state or the entire country,” Golder said. “Everybody needs to stand up and do their fair share.”

Mayor Fred Keeley introduced the new ordinance during a press conference last week at the Santa Cruz Police Department. He told gathered media that two plain-clothes city of Hanford police officers drove a woman experiencing homelessness and her possessions more than three hours to Santa Cruz for a drop-off in June, inspiring the new law. A Hanford city spokesman responding to the allegation in an email told the Sentinel that the woman requested to be taken to Santa Cruz after allegedly refusing services in the San Joaquin Valley area. According to a narrative documenting conversations with the unnamed woman in a report to the council, the woman had been pressured to go to Santa Cruz by the officers and had no connection to Santa Cruz or its services.

“I am supporting this because I am opposed to the forced displacement by any agent of the state, whatever agent that might be — local, state, national — forcibly moving a person,” said Councilmember Sandy Brown after stating she had a different take on the ordinance than her colleagues. “I think that’s something we should all be concerned about, as well.”

The ordinance’s language stresses a priority to people experiencing homelessness who already reside in the city.

“We will do our very best with our county government partners and with our folks in various nonprofits and the faith community to assist our fellow residents who are experiencing homelessness,” Keeley said. “What we know from the point-in-time survey is that most of the folks who are homeless in Santa Cruz became homeless in the city of Santa Cruz. And the point-in-time survey further indicates that they became homeless because they lost their job. We want to assist those folks first and foremost.”