Increased enforcement is not just happening in the Bay Area. Homeless encampments in Sacramento have been receiving notices as well. (Photo by Crystal Sanchez)
Since the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling on June 28, some California cities have already changed their approach to homeless encampment sweeps. The Court ruled that it does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” for municipalities to use criminal penalties for sleeping outside, allowing cities to make policies that criminalize homelessness.
Soon after, California Governor Gavin Newsom voiced his support of the ruling, stating: “This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities.” He urged California cities to advance the dismantling of homeless encampments.
Despite the liberal opposition in the Supreme Court to the ruling, a number of prominent Democrats have recently changed their policies to be more aligned with the verdict. Among Bay Area cities, San Francisco was the first to follow Newsom’s order and is already taking an aggressive approach.
San Francisco
In a mayoral debate on July 18, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said, “We are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties.”
Breed then issued an executive order August 1 instructing city officials to give unhoused people bus tickets out of San Francisco, a program she calls, “Journey Home.” To be eligible for the program, the unhoused individual must have a connection to where they are going, but the program does not require that they have a home there. If the unhoused person refuses the ticket, the city is then supposed to offer shelter or services.
The San Francisco Standard reported on August 6 that San Francisco has sent at least 857 homeless people out of the city since August 2022, both to other California cities and out of state. According to the 2024 Point-In-Time Counts, San Francisco has 8,323 homeless people. The City and County of San Francisco website notes there are only 3,900 shelter beds for the homeless in the city.
Adjusting police procedures for the ruling, San Francisco Police Department released a notice in late July calling for officers to cite people who were ‘lodging’ in their vehicles, defining lodging as ‘more than just sleeping.’ The notice then lists several identifying factors differentiating between lodging and sleeping. The former includes the acquisition of food that suggests persons intend to cook or store food in the vehicle for over an extended period of time.
The notice lists eight laws that can be used against homeless individuals, all of which are related to lodging and encampments on streets or sidewalks. The eight laws provide officers grounds to criminalize homeless individuals, including the Sit-Lie law, which allows officers to issue a warning and citation to individuals who are sitting or lying on the sidewalk for 7 to 23 hours at a time, or for ‘Public Nuisance’ violations, a misdemeanor charge for an unhoused person the police see as doing something that is,“injurious to health, indecent or offensive to the senses, and interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property by any considerable number of persons.”
Oakland
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao said the ruling was not likely to cause any policy changes in her city. The notices the City of Oakland posts by encampments scheduled to close does not show much policy change either. In an encampment by San Leandro Street in Oakland, the notice to vacate states that the Public Works Department considers their home ‘uninhabitable,’ so all encampment residents must leave along with their stuff. The notice did not mention specific legal repercussions if residents refused to leave.
While the mayor and the notices seem unchanged, the people at the camps say the city has been more aggressive in practice since the ruling. Local homelessness advocate Talya Husbands-Hankin told The Oaklandside that there has been a “clear escalation” in the city’s approach to encampment closure. In the Wood Street closure on July 19, The Oaklandside reported city workers are using tactics they typically didn’t do before, like putting up fences to block off dwellings and making announcements threatening arrest if the residents do not comply with the closure.
In a CBS News Bay Area interview July 25, Mayor Thao spoke about Oakland’s current Encampment Management policy. “We will continue to go out with social services, offering of shelter beds,” Thao said. “However, if you do not choose to take shelter when we have shelter bed available, we are going to be forced to move you.”
A public notice in Berkeley reminds encampment residents at 8th and Harrison Streets of the city’s “Shared Sidewalk Policy,” which states that unhoused people must maintain a footprint of just 9 square feet. (Photo courtesy of Yesica Prado)
Berkeley
In comparison to San Francisco and Oakland, Berkeley seems to have a softer approach to the issue. According to Maitée Rossoukhi, the public information officer for the City of Berkeley, Berkeley continues to not have an encampment policy post-Grants Pass ruling. “Absent any policy, we currently follow the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness’ best practices for addressing and resolving encampments, which involves leading with services and avoiding enforcement as much as possible. If the Homeless Services Panel of Experts or the City Council wishes to adopt a policy to modify this, they may do so,” Rossoukhi wrote in an email on August 8.
Rossoukhi wrote that in October 2023, the City of Berkeley staff proposed an encampment policy and sent it to the Homeless Services Panel of Experts for their input. The panel has not yet shared its recommended edits to the proposal. Street Spirit sent a follow-up request for the proposal, which was provided.
In the “Policy Overview,” it reads, “…criminalizing the status of being unsheltered (i.e., citations/arrests for sleeping outside or violating overnight parks rules when they have nowhere else to go) is ineffective and contrary to Berkeley’s values. The policy affirms Berkeley’s commitment to non-criminal alternatives to enforcement, and to avoid citation and arrest wherever possible.” The document proceeds to inquire about what to do in cases where individuals are “non-compliant” while still using “non-criminal alternatives.” The draft does not currently provide an answer to this question.
While the encampment policy proposal is being completed, notices of “deep cleaning” were posted at some encampment sites in Berkeley by the Eastshore Highway and also by the railroad tracks on August 1. A fact sheet about deep cleanings specified that nobody would be asked to leave their encampments during the process and that encampments were not being closed. The notices mention that if encampment residents do not comply with the deep cleaning, they could face citation and/or arrest.
Aaron Stevens is a writer, journalist, and student. He’s currently News Editor for his school’s newspaper, the Berkeley High Jacket.