California’s Push to Clear Homeless Encampments

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled definitively that cities are allowed to enforce camping bans, punishing people for sleeping outdoors even if they have nowhere else to go. The ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson drew criticism from national organizations that advocate for the homeless.

But many in California government welcomed the ruling. One in four homeless Americans live in the state, including half of those who are unsheltered. The crisis has led to frustration from all quarters: local residents who say large encampments create quality of life issues, and homeless advocates who say the government should be doing more to get people housed.

Within a month of the Supreme Court ruling, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order calling on agencies under his authority to prioritize clearing encampments on state property and urging local governments to adopt similar policies. Since the Grants Pass decision, more than 40 cities and two counties in California have enacted camping bans. In May, Newsom put forward a model ordinance that includes guidelines for relocating people moved from encampments, and announced funding to support housing and treatment for those with the most serious behavioral health problems.

In recent months, major cities including San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Fresno and Los Angeles have significantly stepped up efforts to clear encampments. At the end of August, Newsom announced the creation of a multiagency task force that would “aggressively” remove encampments on state rights of way in the state’s 10 largest cities. Again, he repeated an expectation that state and local governments would do the same.

For Adrian Covert, senior vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council, these developments mark a turning away from an emphasis on permanent housing that has been disastrous for the state. It’s not possible to build permanent housing faster than the rate at which California’s broken housing market creates homeless people, he says.

“We have to bring greater urgency to bringing people indoors, because the voters demand it,” Covert says. “And more people are realizing that it’s a matter of life and death.”

Camping bans aren’t a stand-alone strategy. A bigger push to move people off public land is also forcing more attention to what comes next.

Learning Opportunities

The city of Fresno’s ordinance, described as “tough love” by local leaders, states that “no person may sit, lie, sleep or camp on a public place at any time.”

In the past, clearing encampments just meant sending people to other parts of the city, unincorporated areas or across the county line, says County Supervisor Luis Chavez, who also served on the Fresno City Council for seven years.

When the city entered its post-Grants Pass phase of enforcement, it purchased old motels and refurbished them. “We took it further and provided services in those same motels — mental health providers, substance abuse providers, faith-based organizations,” Chavez says.

While this eases the immediate transition, it isn’t a long-term solution. Chavez is now working on an agreement between the county and city that will outline a shared, comprehensive strategy that includes long-term housing.

He points to a benefit from enforcement that might not be apparent. “Every time we clear a camp is an opportunity to find out exactly why those people are in that situation, and more importantly, to adapt and provide services,” he says.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan says he ran for office largely to change the city’s response to the unhoused. “We pivoted away from an approach that essentially asked voters to believe that the only way to end unsheltered homelessness was to wait to have enough money and time to build a brand-new apartment for every person on our streets,” he says.
He's shifted city spending toward interim housing, buying and converting motels, building prefab modular housing and creating safe parking sites for homeless residents living in RVs. By the end of the year, he expects the share of the city’s homeless population who are unsheltered to decline from 84 percent to less than half.

The city recently completed a clearing of Columbus Park, where more than 300 people were settled. Outreach to residents started 70 days before abatement began, Mahan says. The city acquired four motels, built a safe sleeping space and spent a month moving people, pets and belongings.

No one lives in the park now, and 500 residents volunteered for a weekend event to begin the cleanup.

But it's not all wins. The less good news, Mahan says, is that more than a third of the campers refused interim housing. More residential and inpatient treatment facilities could help fill this gap, he says, and tools to require people deep in the throes of drug or mental health problems to accept help.

Samantha Batko, an Urban Institute researcher focused on homelessness, says that her research in California suggests that encampment clearings can lead to negative outcomes for both the people who are displaced and the community's ability to end homelessness for them. "It can break trust between the people who are living in encampments and the services system," she says. Loss of documents such as birth certificates, bank documents and driver's licenses is also common. (Newsom's model ordinance attempts to address this last point.)

Dignity and Safety

California isn’t the only state to change course following the Grants Pass ruling. Batko has tracked a national “explosion” of ordinances banning camping, loitering and distributing food or supplies to people living in public places.

“We also saw them being enforced in a more dramatic way, but that hasn’t really been universal,” she says. If enforcement isn’t accompanied by connection to housing or services, people will simply move to other locations, Batko says. To their credit, leaders in California cities seem to recognize this.

A small percentage of the unhoused are responsible for almost all of the dismay and desperation that Californians see on the street, Covert says. The state is attempting to bring support to them.

In 2022, Gov. Newsom launched an initiative to create a path to help for the most troubled in the unhoused population. The CARE Court program allows doctors, first responders, family members and others to petition a court on behalf of someone they believe is unable to take care of themselves.

If the petition is accepted by the court, this person receives a treatment plan. If they refuse treatment, a judge can order participation.

Every county in California now has a CARE Court, but so far their impact has been below expectations. A survey by CalMatters found that 511 petitions had been filed in Los Angeles County, where 60 percent of the state’s homeless population lives. Just over 100 resulted in treatment plans. So far, there have been no graduations.

Two bills before the California Senate are intended to bolster development of interim housing. Covert hopes to see Gov. Newsom sign a bill that would allow local governments to use housing funds for drug-free “recovery housing” for those who need a clean and sober environment.

Mahan sees getting people off the streets as a matter of basic human dignity and safety. “The state of California has had about 50,000 people die on our streets over the last decade, nearly half from addiction and suicide,” he says. “That's nearly as many Californians dead as Americans lost in the Vietnam War.”