Santa Monica city officials are asking the City Council to re-ratify the city’s local emergency declaration on homelessness Tuesday night, a move that would keep the measure in place through Dec. 31 and preserve powers the city says it needs to respond to the crisis.

The council is scheduled to meet at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the City Hall Council Chambers at 1685 Main St. Under California Government Code, local emergency declarations must be renewed every 60 days until they are terminated, and the proposed resolution would renew the city’s 2025 proclamation first adopted in March 2025.

The declaration gives Santa Monica tools to accelerate programs and services aimed at addressing homelessness and preventing residents from becoming unhoused. It also allows the city to pursue additional county, state and federal funding, streamline certain municipal processes, prevent rental price gouging and authorize emergency actions by the city manager.

Santa Monica first declared a local emergency on homelessness in February 2023, and officials say the conditions that prompted that step have not gone away. The city later adopted a subsequent proclamation in May 2024 to advance homelessness-related initiatives, then approved a 2025 proclamation in March 2025 that has been renewed repeatedly since.

The council has already approved multiple renewals over the past year, including votes in April, June, July, September, October and December 2025, as well as February and March 2026. That steady chain of extensions shows how the city has treated the declaration less as a one-time response than as part of its regular response to an ongoing regional homelessness crisis.

The tension in Tuesday’s meeting is not whether the city wants to keep the declaration alive. Officials have said the emergency remains necessary, and the resolution would extend it through Dec. 31. The question is whether the council again treats emergency powers as a bridge to services and funding, or as a standing fixture of local government in Santa Monica.