(Bloomberg) -- California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an order directing state agencies to remove homeless encampments, signaling a crackdown in the US state with the largest population of unhoused residents.
“There are simply no more excuses,” he said in a statement Thursday. “It’s time for everyone to do their part.”
Newsom is taking a harder line weeks after a US Supreme Court decision overturning an appeals court’s 2019 ruling that said people had a right to sleep on public property if no other shelter was available. While the governor’s order only applies directly to California agencies clearing encampments on state property such as freeway underpasses, the move encourages tougher enforcement by local governments as well.
California cities still face an uphill battle. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg called Newsom’s order “heroic,” but said cracking down isn’t a solution by itself.
“If we tell people to pick up their tents without helping navigate them to something better, voluntarily first and involuntarily if necessary, then they are still going to be in the neighborhoods without the help they need,” Steinberg said in an interview.
Homelessness has reached a crisis point in cities from Los Angeles to San Francisco, fueled in part by exorbitant housing costs. Despite pouring over $20 billion into addressing the issue since taking office five years ago, Newsom has struggled to curb the problem, with the homeless population surging 20% during his tenure to more than 180,000 homeless residents last year.
“We’re eager to work with the state to responsibly and quickly remove encampments from state property in San Jose, especially those adjacent to neighborhoods and in dangerous areas along our freeways and on- and off-ramps,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement. “We appreciate Governor Newsom’s order signaling that the state is also ready to solve this crisis with both compassion and urgency.”
Newsom’s decision is likely to draw national scrutiny amid the presidential campaign of his fellow California Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously served as the state’s attorney general. Republican candidates and conservative media have made the state’s struggle with homelessness part of the political narrative about what they describe as the failure of Democratic party rule in California.
Newsom’s order said agencies should adopt policies to prioritize efforts to address encampments by providing notice to vacate at least 48 hours in advance; contact service providers; collect personal property from removal sites and store it for at least 60 days.
Around the state, the response to the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling on homelessness last month has been varied. It still falls to cities and counties, many hampered by budget deficits, to clear encampments from their sidewalks and public property. Cities typically partner with nonprofit agencies to provide services to unhoused residents.
Newsom’s order risks increasing the burden on local governments, said Ben Henwood, a University of Southern California professor who studies homelessness.
“It begs the question of where the governor expects everyone to move to,” he said. Without additional resources, “I don’t see how this changes the picture.”
The order may even exacerbate the situation if homeless people face tougher enforcement without additional support, said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco.
“Displacing, destabilizing, and dispossessing people without real offers of permanent housing makes homelessness worse,” she said.
In Los Angeles — home to one of the largest US homeless populations, with more than 45,000 people sleeping without shelter every night — Mayor Karen Bass echoed those concerns. While she thanked Newsom for his partnership, she said she hoped he would “continue collaboration on strategies that work” to reduce the unhoused population.
“For the first time in years, unsheltered homelessness has decreased in Los Angeles because of a comprehensive approach that leads with housing and services, not criminalization,” she said in a statement. “Strategies that just move people along from one neighborhood to the next or give citations instead of housing do not work.”
In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has already vowed a more aggressive stance on clearing encampments. A court injunction that restricted the city’s ability to clear some encampments was overturned this month in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. Next week, the city will seek to formally lift the ruling, said Breed spokesperson Jeff Cretan.
“As soon as the injunction is lifted we are going to change our policies and be ready to go,” Cretan said. “The mayor has been very upfront about being in line with the governor.”
But Cretan said Newsom’s order appears to have little direct impact on San Francisco, which in most cases does not coordinate with state agencies on clearing homeless encampments. The city’s homeless population rose about 7% between 2022 and this year, to 8,323 people, according to the latest point-in-time survey.
“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,” said Jim Wunderman, chief executive officer of the Bay Area Council, a business-backed advocacy group. “This is not about criminalizing the unhoused, it’s about meeting our responsibility to help our neighbors.”
--With assistance from Karen Breslau, Nadia Lopez and Eliyahu Kamisher.
(Updates with Sacramento mayor comment in fourth paragraph.)
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