Gov. Gavin Newsom has a new strategy to eliminate the large, long-standing homeless encampments that have been a thorn in his side throughout his administration: Push cities to make them illegal.
The governor on Monday called on every local government in the state to adopt ordinances that restrict public camping “without delay.” He provided a hypothetical model ordinance that lays out exactly what he’d like to see banned: Camping in one place for more than three nights in a row, building semi-permanent structures such as make-shift shacks on public property, and blocking streets or sidewalks.
“We want to see this model ordinance across the state of California,” Newsom said during a virtual news conference Monday. “We want to see how quickly communities that have not adopted a local ordinance adopt it.”
On the other hand, some cities have gone too far — the governor cited Fremont’s brief attempt to make aiding and abetting a homeless encampment illegal — and need to “right size” their ordinances, Newsom said.
Newsom warned that cities should not prohibit camping everywhere at all times if no shelter beds are available, and that they should “prioritize shelter and services.” He said cities should store belongings confiscated during encampment sweeps and give their owners a chance to claim them. He urged cities to give encampment residents a 48-hour warning before a sweep.
Though nothing about Newsom’s Monday missive would force cities to adopt this camping ordinance or any other, Newsom suggested that there could be financial consequences for those that fail to address encampments.
“I’m not interested anymore, period full stop, in funding failure,” he said, two days before he was scheduled to release an updated budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. “I want to see real results, and you’ll see in my budget on Wednesday that we’re going to hold that line.”
Newsom coupled Monday’s announcement with an update on new funding that is supposed to help the sickest people on California’s streets — people with severe mental illnesses or struggling with addiction — come indoors. He said his office has awarded $3.3 billion to create more than 5,000 residential treatment beds and more than 21,800 out-patient treatment slots across California.
That money comes from Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond that California voters approved in March that’s supposed to fund beds and mental health and addiction services.
Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, called that news “awesome,” and said the state has done plenty of good things to help move people inside – such as turning hotels into homeless housing via its Homekey program.
But she doesn’t see how Newsom’s model ordinance would address the core problem: a lack of housing and shelter.
Unless a city has enough shelter beds or affordable housing to offer their entire homeless population — which is almost never the case — homeless Californians under Newsom’s ordinance would be forced to pack up their belongings and move at least 200 feet every three days.
The National Health Care for the Homeless Council has found that encampment sweeps can damage residents’ health, sever their connections to services and set them back on their path toward housing.
“We know that disrupting people, making them move every two or three days, disrupting them from the outreach workers who are desperately trying to engage with them and build their trust — it just makes things worse,” Kushel said.
Even in cities that have shelter beds available, going to a shelter often requires people to abandon their pets or belongings, or to go without their partner. A CalMatters investigation earlier this year found some shelters throughout California are plagued by violence, poor conditions and little oversight.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who has proposed arresting homeless residents if they reject shelter three times over 18 months, applauded Newsom’s efforts.
“It’s great to have the Governor pushing alongside us to end the era of encampments,” he said in a statement. “To get the job done, we will need his leadership to ensure that every city provides its fair share of shelter options and every county does the same for mental health and addiction treatment beds.”
The League of California Cities and the Big City Mayors (a coalition of mayors from the state’s 13 largest cities) said there’s only so much local governments can do without more money.
“When it comes to addressing homelessness, the question is not how many cities have encampment ordinances, it is whether cities have the ongoing funding from the state to match the scale of the crisis,” Carolyn Coleman, executive director and CEO of the League of California Cities, said in an emailed statement.
Her organization was pleased to hear about the $3.3 billion in Prop. 1 funds the governor has released, but that money can’t be used to implement the encampment ordinances Newsom is asking for, she said.
Newsom’s first budget draft, released in January, included no new money for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program – the main source of state homelessness funding for cities and counties.
Newsom will negotiate with lawmakers before the legislature passes a final version of the budget this summer. On Monday, he said he wants any new money for homelessness to come with “new criteria” regarding encampments.
Newsom’s call to ban certain homeless encampments is the latest salvo in his ongoing fight against street camping. The push started last summer, after the U.S. Supreme Court in Grants Pass v. Johnson ruled that cities can make it illegal to camp on all public property, even if there is nowhere else for people to go. That decision overturned six years of legal protections for homeless residents in California and other western states, where cities effectively had to make sure shelter was available before cracking down on camps.
A month later, Newsom ordered state agencies to adopt policies to clear encampments on their property, and urged local governments to do the same. Since then, more than two dozen California cities and counties have passed new camping bans, resumed enforcing old bans or made existing ordinances more punitive.
Approaches vary. Fresno bans camping, sitting or lying on all public property at any time. In San Diego, it’s illegal to camp on all public property — but only if shelter beds are available — and it’s always illegal to camp in city parks and near schools or shelters.
Many cities, even those that haven’t passed new encampment bans, also cite and arrest people for a myriad of other encampment-related offenses, such as trespassing, squatting, public urination or obstructing the public right-of-way.
Violations for camping-related offenses are typically misdemeanors handled with a citation or a brief trip to jail. Many aren’t prosecuted, and even those that are often don’t get very far — either because the person doesn’t show up for their court date, or the charges are dropped.
A bill this year sought to ban cities from punishing people for sitting, laying or sleeping in public places. It was gutted early this legislative session after fierce opposition from cities and law enforcement agencies.
CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.
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