Newsom orders California officials to remove homeless encampments

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered California state officials on Thursday to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments, the nation’s most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets.

More than in any other state, homeless encampments have been a wrenching issue in California, where housing costs are among the nation’s highest, complicating the many other factors that contribute to homelessness. An estimated 180,000 people were homeless last year in California, and most of them were unsheltered. Unlike New York City, most jurisdictions in California do not guarantee a right to housing.

Newsom, a Democrat, called on state officials and local leaders to “humanely remove encampments from public spaces” and act “with urgency,” prioritizing those that most threaten health and safety.

Some of his own agencies are expected to take action immediately on state property. He cannot force local governments to sweep encampments, but can exert political pressure through the billions of dollars that the state controls for municipalities to address homelessness.

His executive order could divide Democratic local leaders in California. Some have already begun to clear encampments, while others have denounced the decision from the majority conservative Supreme Court as opening the door to inhumane measures to solve a complex crisis.

Despite extensive investment in homelessness programs, California still has a shortage of emergency housing. While the directive instructs state agencies to connect occupants of encampments with local service providers, it does not mandate that they relocate people to shelters. Nor does the order indicate under which conditions recalcitrant campers might be penalized.

Republicans have frequently pointed to homelessness in California as an example of the state’s purported decline under Newsom and other Democrats. They are expected to do the same with Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator and prosecutor from California, in the coming weeks, as Democrats unite around her to replace President Joe Biden on the ballot this fall.

California Republicans on Thursday accused Newsom of “trying to take credit” for the efforts of conservatives who had sought the Supreme Court decision, and they charged that his executive order had come only after prolonged inaction.

“It’s about damn time!” said Brian W. Jones, the state Senate minority leader. Jones, of San Diego County, has long championed bipartisan legislation to clear encampments, but complained that it has gone nowhere under the Democratic supermajority that runs the Legislature.

The Supreme Court decision on June 28 upheld an Oregon city’s ban on homeless residents sleeping outdoors. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had found in earlier opinions that it was unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping in public spaces when they had no other legal place to spend the night.

Encampments spread as the 9th Circuit, which covers nine Western states, limited the ability of cities to tackle homelessness with arrests and citations. Many politicians from both parties blamed the appellate court’s rulings, and Newsom was among a host of leaders who begged the high court to intervene.

The justices granted their request, taking the case that originated in Grants Pass, Oregon, and subsequently ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that the city had not violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by ticketing homeless campers. Advocates for the rights of homeless people denounced the decision as cruel and predicted that it would incite a “race to the bottom” as cities cracked down.

Newsom’s order expanded to other state agencies an approach that the California Department of Transportation has used to clear encampments alongside freeways. Newsom mandated that state officials not simply move campers along, but also work with local governments to house people and provide services.

“The state has been hard at work to address this crisis on our streets,” Newsom said in a statement.

“There are simply no more excuses,” he added. “It’s time for everyone to do their part.”

Some state agencies are poised to immediately ramp up enforcement, said Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, while others must develop policies and plans, which could take a couple of weeks.

Newsom, who is widely viewed as having presidential aspirations, has channeled about $24 billion into homelessness since he took office in 2019. His administration says it helped move more than 165,000 homeless people into temporary or permanent housing two fiscal years ago, the most recent period for which data was available.

Some local Democratic leaders, including Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, have criticized the Supreme Court ruling. Bass has had early success in reducing the homeless population by moving people off the streets and into motels and shelters, where they receive supportive services.

After the ruling, Bass said the decision “must not be used as an excuse for cities across the country to attempt to arrest their way out of this problem or hide the homelessness crisis in neighboring cities or in jail.”

But others have welcomed the new legal landscape.

In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, said last week that city officials planned to become “very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments” starting next month and might start citing homeless people who refused offers of shelter. The Republican mayor of Lancaster, California, said after the ruling that his community was eager to get moving. “I’m warming up the bulldozer,” Mayor R. Rex Parris said.

Most local governments, however, have been torn since the decision over whether to aggressively enforce laws against homelessness. The Supreme Court ruling left many civil protections intact, including prohibitions on excessive fines and violations of due process, and civil liberties groups have warned local governments that they would sue over mistreatment of vulnerable people living on the street.

Research also indicates that clearing encampments may be of limited value. One recent study of three Los Angeles encampments, by the Rand Corp., found that dismantling them cleaned up the area for a few months but seemed to have little or no long-term effect on a city’s homeless population. Another survey, conducted last year by the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, found that 75% of homeless adults in California were local residents who had become homeless in the county where they were last housed.

Administration officials, who spoke on background before the executive order was issued, said it had been drawn up as a regulatory template for government entities that still must deal with encampments, which continue to sprawl across sidewalks, peek from rural wild lands and crop up nightly along beaches and waterways.

So many people have sought shelter near freeways, for example, that the California Department of Transportation has developed its own protocol and dedicated employees for clearing encampments. From one-person pup tents pitched near offramps to large encampments sheltering dozens of people beneath overpasses, Caltrans, as the department is known, has cleared more than 11,000 campsites since 2021, removing more than 248,000 cubic yards of debris, Newsom administration officials said.

The governor’s directive ordered other state agencies — including California State Parks and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, both of which oversee immense tracts of land — to adopt versions of the approach being used at Caltrans. Under that approach, the departments will first target encampments that pose a health and safety risk. The state will provide 48-72 hours of advance notice, and state officials will work with local service providers to connect homeless campers with services and housing.

Personal property collected at each site will be bagged, tagged and stored for at least 60 days.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento applauded the order and said Newsom’s approach to homelessness was similar to one already taking place in his city, which logged a 41% drop in unsheltered people last year.

“This has to be about both ends of the strategy and the spectrum,” Steinberg, a Democrat, said. “It’s appropriate to say that people cannot be living with this kind of squalor on our streets.”

Eric Tars, senior policy director at the National Homelessness Law Center in Washington, D.C., called the executive order “a misdirection of a systemic problem onto the victims.”

“The only way to end homeless encampments in California is to end the need for homeless encampments,” he said. “California has an affordable housing crisis, and unless Newsom’s executive order is coming with sufficient resources to address that, this new push isn’t going to work.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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