It's morning on Main Beach. The volleyball players lather up with sunscreen and the baby strollers roll past. A few dozen feet away, a woman lies in the sand, bundled in a puffy coat and plaid hat, her bags arrayed around her.
In Laguna Beach, a place with Mediterranean charm and spectacular ocean views, they all share the same sidewalks and seashore, whether they live in cliff-top houses or bunk under the boardwalk.
The balance in this tourist town has been an uneasy one: How to cope with the city's small but chronic homeless population while being true to Laguna Beach's reputation as a city with a kind heart. The city prides itself on its tolerance: Kooky locals are commemorated with their own statues, residents serve meals to the homeless in neighborhood parks, and painted parking meters collect change to help them. The town, once known as a bohemian retreat where psychedelic sojourner Timothy Leary lived in a cave, was slapped with a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union late last year that accused the city of harassing the homeless.
City officials were flummoxed by the suit. This was not the Laguna Beach they knew.
"The cities that are a little more liberal in their political leanings and generally have somewhat more of a social conscience are the ones being penalized," said City Manager Ken Frank. "It's crazy."
Some of the town's 24,000 residents viewed the suit as a harsh rebuke to Lagunans. "The people who live here are tolerant," Barbara Wilks, 57, said on a morning constitutional across the boardwalk with her husband. "They're characters, and Laguna is a place of characters."
Homeless people sprinkled around downtown recount run-ins with police but consider the city pleasant.
"I know Laguna pretty well," said Mark Lane, 51, who's lived on the streets since 1993. "They are pretty friendly to the homeless. They feed us and all. All the cops know me after all these years."
Drifters are even deemed hometown heroes: A 9-foot redwood statue of "The Greeter," a friendly local legend with a wild-bearded grin who used to wave and call out to passersby, marks the heart of downtown.
Although the lawsuit has "been viewed as an indictment to our community, I don't believe that that's so," said Dawn Price, executive director of the local homeless aid organization Friendship Shelter. "Some of our residents who care so deeply about these issues felt that it was almost a personal attack on them."
