Torrance may soon make it illegal for homeless people to refuse shelter and potentially build military-style camps with tents as temporary housing.

The Torrance City Council last week directed staffers to put such an ordinance on the next agenda. The request was brought made by Councilmember Aurelio Mattucci in an effort to address the homelessness crisis by creating an ordinance similar to what San Jose enacted earlier this year. San Jose’s Responsibility to Shelter Initiative requires the arrest of anyone who refuses shelter three times.

“Even though Torrance is virtually free of any encampments thanks to the policy and outreach we have in place, it is still evident that we have a large number of vagrants that wander around our community, and many are showing signs of drug addiction and/or mental health issues,” Mattucci said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “These are not your typical individuals who may have lost their job six months ago and are finding themselves in hard times. These are individuals who are chronically homeless, and I would like to refer to them as chronically helpless. Chronically helpless because of the fact that they are often refusing help even though they desperately need it.”

The statewide and regional homeless crisis isn’t nearly as dire in Torrance as elsewhere in Los Angeles County. Torrance had 355 homeless people, according to the county’s 2025 point-in-time survey of those without shelter. Of those, 171 were in shelters, 50 were unsheltered and 134 people were in nonpermanent dwellings of their own, such as tents and cars. By comparison, similarly sized Pasadena had 581 homeless people, with 342 of them unsheltered, according to that city’s 2025 point-in-time homeless count.

Still, the Torrance initiative would create an ordinance saying that any person who refuses shelter three times during an 18-month period would be subject to arrest.

Critics of the San Jose initiative have said it further criminalizes homelessness, overlooks shelter inaccessibility and conditions, and fails to provide resources for physically and mentally ill people.

“My goal is not to criminalize homelessness,” Mattucci said. “My goal is to ensure that these individuals are taken off our streets and put on the right path to either recover or placed in long-term facilities and in some cases, for the rest of their lives.”

The San Jose initiative specifically states that people are not being arrested for being homeless but for trespassing. Current Torrance policy, meanwhile, allows police officers to decide whether to cite or arrest a homeless person at their own discretion.

The second part of the proposed initiative would expand temporary shelter beds. Mattucci’s suggestion was to create “low-cost military-style tents with cots, bathrooms and basic services.”

“If these are good enough for our soldiers,” Mattucci said in a recent Facebook post, “they are good enough for the homeless.”

Some residents disagree.

“Homeless folks exist on a much wider spectrum and more than often, are unfortunately in the thralls of addiction, disease, and intense mental illness,” Charlie Giordano said in a reply to Mattucci’s Facebook comment. “The accommodation and services required by people on the streets are likely to be quite different than our troops.”

Mattucci said in a written statement Friday that his intention is not to create something akin to internment camps for Torrance’s homeless population but to provide low-cost shelters.

“My intent,” he said, is to “expand our current capacity of helping individuals experiencing homelessness to transition off the streets.

“If that means we have temporary tent-style accommodations available,” Mattucci added, “that will be one of the options up for consideration.”

The proposal also comes at a time when the region and the state are trying to build as much permanent and transitional housing as possible, which has frequently rankled city officials throughout the county, including in Torrance.

The Torrance City Council, for example, previously opposed a Project Homekey+ transitional housing facility for homeless people that would have been located at the Extended Stay America Hotel, 3525 Torrance Blvd. The state’s Homekey+ program was created by Gov. Gavin Newsom and works to identify potential housing sites for Los Angeles County’s homeless population.

Concerns about the Extended Stay America project in Torrance included the location and the scale of the project, noting its proximity to the Civic Center and businesses. Because of this, the application submitted by the nonprofit Weingart Center was formally withdrawn in August.

“While this proposal will not move forward, the city remains committed to addressing homelessness with compassion and responsibility,” the city said in a statement. “Future initiatives will be thoughtfully located, appropriately scaled and developed in collaboration with the community.”

That is what Mattucci said he aims to do with the military-style camps by having them located in industrial parks away from residential and retail business areas.

Torrance does have a tiny home interim housing program. The 3290 Temporary Housing Village was launched in 2022 and includes 40 tiny homes, along with shared bathrooms, showers and laundry facilities, and an air conditioner in each unit.

The residents are provided three free meals a day, support with finding housing and job assistance.

The last part of the initiative, if it passes, would create an advocacy group that would work with federal, state and county partners to provide solutions.

“Normal everyday people are being negatively affected by governments and actions,” Mattucci said. “People are being attacked and in some extreme cases killed by people who should not be on the streets — people who need to either be in jail, treatment or, at the very least, not in Torrance.”