BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1111
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 26, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY
Mike Feuer, Chair
AB 1111 (Fletcher and Mitchell) - As Introduced: February 18,
2011
As Proposed to Be Amended
SUBJECT : DEBT COLLECTION: HOMELESS YOUTH
KEY ISSUE : WHEN, IN THE COURSE OF ITS ROUTINE EFFORTS TO
COLLECT FINES, THE COURT OBTAINS INFORMATION INDICATING THAT A
PERSON WHO HAS AN OUTSTANDING UNPAID CITATION FOR TRUANCY,
LOITERING, CURFEW VIOLATIONS OR ILLEGAL LODGING IS HOMELESS AND
UNDER 25 YEARS OLD, SHOULD THE COURT BE PROHIBITED FROM
GARNISHING THE WAGES OR LEVYING AGAINST A BANK ACCOUNT OF THAT
PERSON UNTIL THE PERSON IS AGE 25 OR OLDER?
FISCAL EFFECT : As currently in print this bill is keyed fiscal.
SYNOPSIS
According to the author, homeless youth are often caught in a
catch-22 situation where their homelessness inevitably results
in citations for offenses like truancy or illegal lodging, but
wage garnishment to collect any unpaid fines makes it much
harder for these youth to escape the cycle of
homelessness--virtually ensuring that further citations for the
same type of offenses will continue to occur. To address this
problem cycle, this bill seeks to prohibit courts from wage
garnishment of a homeless youth under age 25 for outstanding
unpaid citations related to truancy, loitering, curfew
violations, or illegal lodging until the youth is at least 25
years old, in situations where, in the course of its routine
efforts to collect fines, the court obtains information
indicating the youth is homeless. The bill does not exculpate
youths from any offenses for which they have committed, nor does
it relieve youths of the legal obligation to pay any associated
fines or prohibit any ticket from being issued. Supporters of
the bill, including advocates for youth and low-income persons,
contend that temporarily freezing the authority of courts to
garnish the wages of homeless youth until the age of 25 is
needed to give these youth a better chance to find legitimate
work and establish stable housing to escape the cycle of
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homelessness. They also contend that temporarily limiting these
methods of debt collection in this context makes good financial
sense in light of a recent Judicial Council study that suggests
collection of delinquent court-ordered debt is not a
cost-effective use of court resources in cases where no reliable
address information exists for the debtor--as is true of many
homeless youth. This bill is a repeat of a measure that was
vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger last year, and currently has no
known opposition.
SUMMARY : Prohibits courts from garnishing the wages or levying
a bank account of a homeless youth under age 25 for outstanding
unpaid citations related to truancy, loitering, curfew
violations, or illegal lodging until the youth is at least 25
years old. Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes Legislative findings about the prevalence of homeless
youth and the reasons they become homeless; the garnishment of
their wages and savings for offenses inevitably associated
with being homeless; and the negative effect these debt
collection practices have on the ability of homeless youth to
escape the cycle of homelessness.
2)Provides that, notwithstanding any other provision of law, if
a court, during the course of its routine efforts to collect
delinquent court-ordered debt, obtains information indicating
that a person under 25 years of age, who has been issued a
citation for truancy, loitering, curfew violations, or illegal
lodging that is outstanding or unpaid, is homeless or has no
permanent address, the court shall not garnish the wages or
levy against bank accounts of that person until that person is
25 years of age or older, as that age is recorded by that
person's credit report or other document already in the
possession of the court.
3)Provides, for the purposes of this act, that a person is
considered to be "homeless" or as having "no permanent
address" if that person does not have a fixed, regular,
adequate nighttime residence, or has a primary nighttime
residence that is one of the following:
a) A supervised publicly or privately operated shelter
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designed to provide temporary living accommodations,
including, but not limited to, welfare hotels, congregate
shelters and transitional housing for the mentally ill.
b) An institution that provides a temporary residence for
individuals intended to be institutionalized.
c) A public or private place not designed for, or
ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for
human beings.
4)Provides that nothing in this act shall be construed to:
a) Prevent a court from engaging in any other lawful debt
collection activities;
b) Require a court to perform any further investigation or
financial screening into any matter beyond the scope of its
regular duties;
c) Prevent the Judicial Council from altering any best
practices or recommendations for collection programs
pursuant to Section 1463.010;
d) Prevent a court from garnishing a person's wages or
levying against a person's bank accounts if the court
subsequently obtains evidence that the person is no longer
homeless.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Authorizes a county or court to establish a comprehensive
collections program to enhance the collection of delinquent
court-ordered debt and improve recovery efforts, and requires,
until July 1, 2012, the comprehensive collection program to
include at least 10 of a possible 17 characteristics, as
specified. Among the characteristics provided are:
a) Monthly bill or account statements to all debtors;
b) Telephone contact with delinquent debtors to apprise
them of their failure to meet payment obligations;
c) Issuance of warning letters to advise delinquent debtors
of an outstanding obligation;
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d) Requests for credit reports to assist in locating
delinquent debtors;
e) Access to Employment Development Department employment
and wage information;
f) The generation of monthly delinquent reports;
g) Participation in the Franchise Tax Board's Interagency
Intercept Collections Program;
h) The use of Department of Motor Vehicle information to
locate delinquent debtors;
i) The use of wage and bank account garnishments. (Penal
Code Section 1463.007.)
2)Defines "homeless youth" as either of the following:
a) A person who is at least 18 years of age, but not older
than 24 years of age, and meets one of the following
conditions:
i) Is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless;
ii) Is no longer eligible for foster care on the basis
of age; or,
iii) Has run away from home.
b) A person who is less than 18 years of age who is
emancipated and who is homeless or at risk of becoming
homeless. (Government Code Section 11139.3(e)(2).)
3)Defines a "homeless person" as any person who lacks a fixed,
regular, and adequate nighttime residence, or has a primary
nighttime residence in one of the following:
a) A supervised publicly or privately operated shelter
designed to provide temporary living accommodations,
including, but not limited to, welfare hotels, congregate
shelters and transitional housing for the mentally ill;
b) An institution that provides a temporary residence for
individuals intended to be institutionalized;
c) A public or private place not designed for, or
ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for
human beings. (Health and Safety Code Section 50582(b).)
COMMENTS : According to the author, homeless youth are often
caught in a catch-22 situation where their homelessness
inevitably results in citations for offenses like truancy or
illegal lodging, but wage garnishment to collect any unpaid
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fines makes it much harder for these youth to escape the cycle
of homelessness, virtually ensuring that further citations for
the same type of offenses will continue to occur. To address
this problem cycle, this bill seeks to prohibit courts from wage
garnishment of a homeless youth under age 25 for outstanding
unpaid citations related to truancy, loitering, curfew
violations, or illegal lodging until the youth is at least 25
years old, in situations where, in the course of its routine
efforts to collect fines, the court obtains information
indicating the youth is homeless.
Stated Need for the Bill . The author and sponsor contend that
most homeless youth in California are involuntarily homeless,
usually as a result of running away from home to escape an
abusive home life; being forcibly evicted from home by their
parents; or as a result of exiting the foster care system and
"left to fend for themselves " on or around their 18th birthday.
According to the Children's Advocacy Institute, the sponsor of
the bill:
Sometimes these homeless youth are ticketed for
infractions that are the consequence of their
involuntary homelessness. Such offenses include
vagrancy, loitering, and the like. To reiterate:
ticketing homeless youth cannot dissuade them from
being homeless. It is like ticketing someone for being
tall. They do not choose to be homeless - living
dangerously on the streets. The danger and
precariousness of their every nighttime is a far
greater disincentive to engage in the offending conduct
than a ticket.
CAI further contends that wage garnishment of homeless youth
to collect unpaid citations for infractions associated with
living on the street perpetuates the cycle of homelessness,
making escape more difficult for those youth trying to
legitimately work and establish stable housing. They state:
Collections will sometimes garnish their wages or bank
accounts making it far harder for homeless youth to end
their homelessness by the sweat of their own brow,
making it far more likely that the offense the tickets
are supposed to dissuade will re-occur. Indeed,
according to the Bureau's study, 43% of homeless youth
surveyed were trying to earn money through employment,
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temporary work, or odd jobs. The number of youth who
reported obtaining money through employment exceeded
the number of youth obtaining money through public
assistance.
�W]here involuntarily homeless youth are concerned, the
garnishment of their wages makes it far harder for the
youth to find a place to live, thus making it even more
likely that the offense will be repeated. Worse, such
garnishments signal to homeless youth that the only way
that can reliably earn their way out of homelessness is
through illegitimate employment. �This bill] narrowly
and simply presses a temporary pause button on the
ability of the courts to garnish wages and bank
accounts of homeless youth until their 25th birthday to
give them the space to be able to pull themselves up by
their bootstraps through legitimate, tax-paying
employment.
Recent California Research Bureau study demonstrates the impact
of wage garnishment on the plight of homeless youth. In 2007,
the non-partisan California Research Bureau (CRB) conducted a
survey reporting the results of 208 open-ended interviews with
homeless youth between age 13 to 25, living in 23 cities across
the state. Some of the survey questions focused on the issue of
youth being ticketed for so-called "quality of life" offenses
associated with subsistence and survival aspects of homeless
life, such as sleeping outside, trespassing, camping, and
loitering. CRB found that almost 60 percent of the 59 youths
who answered interview questions on this subject had received
tickets for these types of offenses. CRB reported that the
great majority of these youth said they did not and could not
pay these tickets, and that their failure to pay led to problems
including "having their wages garnished and having warrants
issued for their arrest, complicating subsequent cases involving
the custody of their children and going to jail." (Voices From
The Street. Bernstein, N., Foster, L. California Research
Bureau, (2008), p. 57. Accessed at
http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/08/08-004.pdf)
An interview with one particular youth from Los Angeles
highlights the wage garnishment problem that this bill seeks to
address:
�A]t the Los Angeles focus group, one young man
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described getting a job at a bank and saving up nearly
$1,000 towards the deposit on an apartment. But he had
unpaid tickets for sleeping on the street; as a result,
his wages were garnished and his path to stable housing
sabotaged. Years later, this young man is still without
a bank account for fear any deposits would be seized to
cover unpaid tickets. "All it's going to do is prolong
homelessness," he observes. "They garnish all your
wages because you were sleeping on the streets, (when)
you have no choice but to be on the streets." (Id. at
p. 58.)
As proposed to be amended, the definition of "homeless" in this
bill is made consistent with the Health and Safety Code. This
bill, as currently in print, utilizes a definition of "homeless"
largely based on the federal definition of "homeless children
and youths" pursuant to 42 U.S.C. � 11434a and 42 U.S.C. �
11302. To promote consistency in state law, the author proposes
to amend the bill's definition to mirror that provided by Health
and Safety Code Section 50582.
Although this bill suspends collection methods for unpaid fines
arising from certain offenses, it does not exculpate any offense
or discharge any fine. This bill seeks to prohibit courts from
wage garnishment of a homeless youth under age 25 for
outstanding unpaid citations related to truancy, loitering,
curfew violations, or illegal lodging until the youth is at
least 25 years old, in situations where, in the course of its
routine efforts to collect fines, the court obtains information
indicating the youth is homeless. In other words, the bill goes
no further than temporarily suspending the authority of the
court to garnish the wages or bank account of a homeless youth
until the youth turns 25 years old. Supporters note that the
bill does nothing to exculpate the youth of the offense, relieve
the youth of the legal obligation to pay any associated fine, or
prohibit any ticket from being issued. As such, it does not
appear this bill dismisses accountability for so-called "quality
of life" offenses committed by homeless youth as much as it
represents an effort to give them a better chance of escaping
homelessness before wage garnishment can be resumed after the
youth turns 25.
As proposed to be amended, this bill allows garnishment to begin
if the court subsequently obtains evidence a youth under age 25
is no longer homeless. The author proposes to amend the bill to
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clarify that if a homeless youth who was exempt from wage
garnishment or levy under this section no longer is homeless,
then nothing in the bill prevents the court from garnishing the
youth's wages if the court subsequently obtains evidence (during
its routine collection process) that the youth is no longer
homeless. In other words, as proposed to be amended, under this
bill wage garnishment of a homeless youth is only frozen as long
as the youth remains homeless or reaches the age of 25,
whichever occurs first.
This bill is crafted with input from Judicial Council so as to
not significantly increase the workload of courts and possibly
conserve judicial resources. Under this bill, a court is
prohibited from garnishing the wages of a youth when "during the
course of its routine process to collect" unpaid fees or fines,
the court "obtains information indicating that a person under 25
years of age . . . is homeless." This language was developed
with the consultation of the Judicial Council, which is neutral
on the bill.
Section 1463.007 of the Penal Code describes the types of
actions that courts already take to enhance the collection of
delinquent court-ordered debt where the court runs a
comprehensive collections program. In these debt collection
cases, the court will typically attempt to mail an account
statement and/or a warning notice to the debtor's address, if
known, and also contact the debtor by telephone. Among other
things, the court may request a credit report of the debtor or
initiate the use of wage or bank account garnishments. Under
this bill, however, if the court in the process of its ordinary
collection efforts (emphasis added) obtains information
indicating the person is (a) under age 25; (b) has unpaid
citations for offenses associated with homelessness, like
truancy, loitering, curfew violations, or illegal lodging; and
(c) is homeless or has no valid permanent address, only then
would the court be prohibited from garnishing the wages of the
debtor because such indicators, in all likelihood, demonstrate
that the debtor is a homeless youth covered under the bill.
According to CAI, based on Section 1463.007 and the January 2010
report by the Judicial Council regarding statewide collection of
court-ordered debt, "it appears safe to assume that every court
collector will already, as a part of its current collection
efforts, obtain information as to whether a debtor has a valid
address or likely falls within one of the categories" under the
definition of "homeless."
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In addition, the bill specifically provides that nothing in its
provisions shall be construed to require a court to perform any
further investigation or financial screening into any matter
beyond the scope of its regular duties, nor prevent a court from
engaging in any other lawful debt collection activities.
Finally, supporters also contend that the bill may actually help
conserve judicial resources by reducing debt collection efforts
that are empirically cost-ineffective because of the difficulty
and expense involved in garnishing the wages of youth who are
homeless and lack any permanent address. In a study
commissioned by the Judicial Council and published in December
2009, researchers from Gartner, Inc., examined the relationship
between the "inherent collectability of debt" and factors such
as the size of the debt, age at referral, and validity of
address information. They found, generally, that the rate of
study cases where collection efforts resulted in the debt being
paid-in-full was 13 percentage points below the average, and 19
percentage points lower than cases where there was a valid
initial address. (Judicial Council, Report to Legislature on
Statewide Collection of Court-Ordered Debt (January 2010) p.10.)
As a result, proponents contend that this bill would reduce
court debt collection efforts in a particular area (garnishment
of homeless youth) that would likely prove to be
cost-ineffective for courts because homeless youth by definition
lack reliable address information.
Prior Legislation. This bill is identical to the chaptered
version of AB 2264 (De Leon) of last year that was vetoed by
then-Governor Schwarzenegger with the following message:
Although I laud the intent of this bill to help our
youth become productive members of society, this bill
goes too far in its provisions. Criminal fines provide
a means to not only deter criminal conduct, but also to
help pay for the consequences of undesirable behavior.
Encouraging those to avoid accountability for conduct
the local or state government has found harmful would
set a bad precedent for all citizens, particularly our
youth. Moreover, the bill is drafted too broadly,
applying to segments of the population who are not in
need and are capable of being responsible for their
conduct. Courts regularly decide on payment schedules
based on a person's ability to pay and many counties
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have created Homeless Courts to address concerns that
prompted this bill, thus this bill would unnecessarily
limit judicial discretion.
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : In its letter of support for the bill,
Western Center on Law and Poverty specifically refute two main
points contained in the Governor's veto message above, stating:
In his veto message of this measure last year, the
then-Governor argued the bill would allow homeless
youth to avoid accountability. Yet homeless youth are
not homeless by choice. The greatest numbers of them
are former foster youth who have "graduated" out of the
system with no resources. Others have parents who are
unwilling or unable to care for them. To say that
homeless youths lack accountability is a textbook
example of blaming the victim for his misfortune.
The Governor also claimed the bill was not needed in
part because "many" counties have established homeless
courts. According to the Administrative Office of the
Courts, only 16 out of the 58 counties have established
homeless courts. We would not use the adjective "many"
to describe this state of affairs. Furthermore,
continuing fiscal problems put even these courts at
risk. This bill is a reasonable, measured approach to
give homeless youth a better chance to get on their
feet, and not spiral into repeated and expensive
contacts with the criminal justice system.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Children's Advocacy Institute of the University of San Diego
School of Law
Advancement Project
California Coalition for Youth
California State PTA
Western Center on Law and Poverty
Opposition
None
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Analysis Prepared by : Anthony Lew / JUD. / (916) 319-2334