New Shopping Cart Law Worries Grocers, Homeless Advocates

A city ordinance passed this summer that restricts where shopping carts can be kept in the city has drawn criticism from grocers and homeless advocates who describe the law as too restrictive.

The City Council passed the ordinance in June in an effort to reduce blight and prevent the carts from being stolen from local businesses, according to city officials.

The ordinance requires that stores take preventive measures to ensure that their carts cannot be taken off a store's lot. Stores must install either electronic systems or other devices that will effectively shut down the carts once they cross the store's property line. The measures would render shopping carts useless outside of the store and prevent people from using them to transport goods.

But Matthew Dodson, director of local government relations for the California Grocers Association, said that the measures could prove too costly for local grocers.

"Grocery stores will have to spend $20,000 to $30,000 to install complicated systems and then continue to spend resources on cart retrieval because we know from experience that locking wheel systems don't completely solve the problem," Dodson said.

Retailers have long complained about carts being taken from their property, primarily by homeless people, said Shelia Spicer-Batice, business services officer for the city of Monrovia.

"We've been chasing this issue for years. The abandoned shopping carts are a source of complaints from store owners and residents alike," Spicer-Batice said. "We looked at what grocery stores owners were doing and tried to figure out what we could do to help them out."

A local homeless advocate fears the law will take away one of the few means homeless people have to earn money.

"This ordinance will cause us some difficulty," said Betty McWilliams, Deputy director of Foothill Unity Center, a nonprofit that provides services to the homeless. "Not only do several homeless use these carts as a means of transportation, but we use shopping carts to pick up food that storage gives to us. If we can no longer have access to these carts, it will affect us and our business."

The city is going to great measures to ensure that low-income residents will not be affected by the new ordinance, Spicer-Batice said.

"We actually met with officials of lower-income nonprofit organizations. We will give them a grant to purchase some of the smaller hand-held carts, " Spicer-Batice said.

The ordinance will affect 23 stores in the city. The stores must have a retrieval service in place in six months and a containment service in place within a year.

The city stands to save thousands of dollars by ensuring that every store develops their own system of cart security rather than relying on the city to do it, according to the ordinance.