Weeks removed from Governor Gavin Newsom’s directive to remove unauthorized homeless encampments from the streets of California, one city is set to begin a teardown of tents this week.
Speaking to KTLA’s Annie Rose Ramos, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said the city didn’t want to rush the actions, but now’s the time to act.
“We fully understand how sensitive this is for our residents and also the urgency of some of the chronic encampments, so we took our time,” Richardson said.
Long Beach has waited a little less than a month to dismantle encampments following the July 25 executive order from Newsom that gave local governments the authority to remove the encampments and issue citations for camping in public.
In the weeks since, Newsom himself has helped tear down some encampments and expressed deep frustration at the lack of action from some local governments, even after his executive order. The Democratic Governor has threatened to withhold funds from cities that fails to remove encampments.
“We need local government to step up. This is a crisis,” Newsom told reporters on Aug. 8. “The state’s unprecedented billions of dollars of support? I’m not interested in providing that support and not seeing the results. I’m a taxpayer, not just the governor. It’s not complicated. We’ll send that money to counties that are producing results.”
Newsom’s push against homeless encampments comes after a recent Supreme Court ruling that allowed governments to criminalize “public camping,” or sleeping on streets and sidewalks.
In a memo released last week, Long Beach officials detailed their intention to comply with the order, saying that unhoused people may be cited or arrested for refusing to leave encampments.
Critics of the recent push against encampments have raised ethics concerns regarding the treatment of California’s unhoused population, saying the criminalization of homelessness could create more problems than it solves.
“If the only crime you are arresting or citing someone for is just existing in public space, that’s criminalization [of homelessness],” said John Ralphing of Human Rights Watch.
Long Beach officials say that people experiencing homelessness won’t be arrested or cited outright without committing any other crimes in the process, but instead will be offered outreach programs first. The city does, however, intend to tear down tents in public spaces.