Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging California to step up homeless sweeps after a landmark court ruling lifted restrictions that prevented San Francisco and other cities from clearing encampments.
The directive announced Thursday comes after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which Newsom says provides “definitive authority” for state and local officials to clear unsafe homeless camps.
The executive order directs state agencies to “move urgently to address dangerous encampments while supporting and assisting the individuals living in them.” And it pushes cities and other local governments to do the same.
“The state has been hard at work to address this crisis on our streets,” Newsom said in announcing the mandate. “There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part.”
Local governments now have the tools they need to address the decades-long issue of homelessness.
— California Governor (@CAgovernor) July 25, 2024
Today, we are issuing an executive order that directs state agencies & urges locals to address encampments while connecting those living in them to housing & supportive services. pic.twitter.com/z9dYwAct5w
The order says state agencies should ask local organizations to help displaced encampment residents. But it doesn’t require any follow-through by the state. And it says nothing about how public agencies should reconcile the disparity between supply and demand: California counts 71,000 shelter beds for a homeless population of 181,000.
The executive order advises local jurisdictions to adopt versions of the California Department of Transportation encampment policy that guided 11,188 sweeps along state highways, on-ramps and off-ramps over the past three years.
The Caltrans policy requires officials to give residents of homeless camps a 48-hour notice before a sweep, to store their belongings for 60 days and to work with organizations to help anyone displaced by the cleanups.
Even with that guidance, however, Caltrans has run into legal trouble over the sweeps. In 2020, the agency agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle a lawsuit that accused it of wrongfully destroying property it was supposed to safeguard for unhoused camp residents.
Newsom’s order goes on to encourage cities and counties to apply for their share of $3.3 billion in newly available grant money through Proposition 1, which voters passed this year to expand behavioral health services for the unhoused.
The high court decision that prompted the ruling was handed down last month, when six conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices determined that laws against camping on public property don’t violate constitutional protections against “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three liberal justices who dissented, countered that Grants Pass, Ore. — whose policy prompted the lawsuit — was effectively criminalizing people based on housing status.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” Sotomayor wrote in an opinion co-signed by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “For some people, sleeping outside is their only option. The city of Grants Pass jails and fines those people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow. For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
Since the Grants Pass ruling, Newsom has said he hopes California can balance the dignity of the unhoused with public safety concerns. His latest executive order echoes that message, saying agencies should “prioritize offers of shelter and services as a first step to resolving any encampment.”
Previous rulings by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had limited options for local governments in addressing homelessness, often resulting in prolonged legal battles over encampment clearances.
Newsom previously filed an amicus brief requesting the Supreme Court to hear the Grants Pass case, seeking clarity on what actions officials could take to address encampments.
Meanwhile, the state allocated $1 billion to an Encampment Resolution Fund that aims to move people into shelter and, ideally, long-term housing.
Well before the governor released his executive order, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and several of her reelection challengers began weighing in on next moves after an appeals court said the city could once again enforce a ban on homeless people sitting, lying or lodging on public property.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals announced this month that it would lift the injunction, which ends this coming Monday and sets the stage for the “very aggressive” sweeps Breed said the city will commence in August.
A spokesperson for Breed said San Francisco has been ahead of the state — even before the Grants Pass ruling — by “actively leading on encampment resolutions regularly for years.”
“San Francisco is already doing what the governor is calling for,” Breed spokesperson Parisah Safarzadeh told The Standard. “Our city encampment teams and street outreach staff have been going out every day to bring people indoors, and to clean and clear encampments. This is why we are seeing a five-year low in the city’s tent count on our streets.”
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan echoed Breed’s enthusiasm, saying the city is “eager to work with the state to responsibly and quickly remove encampments from state property in San Jose” — especially those by neighborhoods and freeways.
“Here in San Jose we’re working around the clock to stand up safe, managed placements and require they be used,” he continued in a statement emailed Thursday morning to The Standard. “We appreciate Gov. Newsom’s order signaling that the state is also ready to solve this crisis with both compassion and urgency.”
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao applauded the state’s willingness to provide additional help for cities to tackle homelessness — something she said her administration has prioritized from the get-go.
Last year, Oakland worked “tirelessly and compassionately” on clearing the city’s largest encampment on Wood Street, she told The Standard, and steered 85% of the camp’s residents into some kind of social support program. Meanwhile, she added, Oakland invested $127 million into below-market-rate housing.
“Creating a clean and safe city with compassion and dignity,” she said, “has always been, and remains, a key tenet of my administration.”
The Bay Area Council, a regional business advocacy nonprofit that submitted an amicus brief in the Grants Pass case, celebrated the governor’s new directive.
“California cities must now rise to meet this moment, to grab this opportunity and provide the shelter and housing that can end our long homelessness nightmare and restore a sense of order and civility to our streets, sidewalks and other public spaces,” Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman said. “This is not about criminalizing the unhoused; it’s about meeting our responsibility to help our neighbors.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who spoke out against the Grants Pass decision, was equally critical of the governor’s mandate in the wake of the ruling.
“Strategies that just move people along from one neighborhood to the next or give citations instead of housing do not work,” she told reporters in an emailed statement. “We thank the governor for his partnership thus far and hope that he will continue collaboration on strategies that work.”
Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative who led one of the most comprehensive studies of homelessness in the U.S. since the 1990s, voiced similar concerns.
“We know from our study that 78% of the homeless population in California is unsheltered, and many have chronic physical impairments and complex behavioral health needs that are difficult to manage without stable housing,” she noted in a statement emailed to The Standard. “Nearly all people living outside want permanent housing but cannot currently access it.”
Additionally, Kushel added, homelessness is inextricably linked to the nation’s history of racism, resulting in a disproportionate impact on Black, Indigenous and other people of color. So any response to the issue should center racial equity and avoid over-policing, she said.
“We all share the goal of moving people out of encampments into stable housing,” Kushel continued. “This requires expert outreach with sufficient time, and enough affordable housing for them to move into. It includes addressing basic needs and providing health care and storage, assessing the individual and household needs, finding appropriate and humane interim strategies, and implementing comprehensive, evidence-based programs and practices to help people access the services they need to be well and stay housed.”
Washington state, Houston and Denver have modeled the kind of approach that she said keeps the vast majority of people housed.
“In the long term, ending homelessness in California will require increased investments in housing and support services, while simultaneously making it easier to rapidly develop affordable housing,” Kushel concluded. “It will require time. And it will require all of us working together — including local, state, and federal officials.”