Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) will issue an order on Thursday for officials to start dismantling thousands of homeless encampments around California.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that cities can begin to ban people from sleeping and camping in public areas. The ruling overturned a lower court decision that called it cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment to punish those sleeping outside if they had nowhere else to go.
Newsom’s move is the most sweeping response to date following that decision.
Newsom’s executive order will affect thousands of people in his state, which has the highest housing costs and the highest number of homeless people in the country.
Last year, 180,000 people were homeless. About 123,000 Californians were unsheltered on any given night, according to a recent count. Unlike New York City, which guarantees people the right to housing, California does not.
“Where do people experiencing homelessness go if every community decides to punish them for their homelessness,” asked Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Newsom’s order states agencies should adopt policies to prioritize efforts to address encampments by providing notice to vacate at least 48 hours in advance. They should also contact service providers, collect personal property from removal sites, and store it for at least 60 days.
The Democratic governor’s order also notes that state agencies aren’t allowed to simply move campers from one location to another but that they should work with local officials to start housing people and provide services that will allow them to leave the streets for good.
California has spent billions of dollars to curb its homelessness problem, with little success.
The streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district are lined with people who are homeless. Some are addicted to drugs and alcohol while others have mental problems. There are also those who simply can’t keep up with the high rental rates in an area that caters to Silicon Valley billionaires.
Los Angeles’s Skid Row is home to one of the largest populations of homeless people in the United States. More than 4,400 men, women, and children sleep on drug- and disease-infested streets and under dirty tarps where crime, prostitution, and beatings take place in broad daylight. Skid Row started to take shape in the 1930s and has morphed into a modern-day nightmare.
Since taking office in 2019, Newsom has directed $24 billion to California’s homelessness problem. His administration said it moved more than 165,000 people into temporary or permanent housing two years ago but that there is more to be done.
“There are simply no more excuses,” he said. “It’s time for everyone to do their part.”
Last week, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat who is facing a tough reelection in November, said city officials would become “very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments” starting in August.
“My hope is that we can clear them all,” she said at a news conference, adding that homeless people who refuse service have only added to the city’s economic decline, which includes businesses abandoning the downtown area and tourists staying away.
About 62 miles north of Los Angeles in Lancaster, Republican Mayor R. Rex Parris put it bluntly.
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“I’m warming up the bulldozer,” he told the New York Times. “I want the tents away from the residential areas and the shopping centers and the freeways.”
“I get that some of these people have fallen on hard times and we have a state-of-the-art shelter with beds available. But the population we’re talking about doesn’t want a bed,” he added.
