After the U.S. Supreme Court granted cities broad new authority to clear homeless camps last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom had a clear message for local officials: no more excuses.
Newsom, under growing pressure to make progress on homelessness, ordered state agencies to work with cities and counties to shut down encampments and threatened to cut funding to local governments that fail to get more people off the street.
“This is a crisis,” he told local officials. “Act like it.”
In the Bay Area, officials’ public response to Newsom’s order and the landmark ruling has varied from full-throated support to promises to maintain the status quo. Even so, a shift in how cities are tackling street homelessness is already playing out across the region that, at last count, had an estimated 37,000 unhoused residents.
Days after the high court allowed cities to enforce no-camping laws without providing homeless people a shelter bed, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a much-publicized encampment crackdown, directing officials to offer homeless people in camps bus tickets out of town before offering them shelter. The Supreme Court ruling lifted an injunction that had partially limited the city’s ability to clear camps.
“We are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties,” she said at a mayoral debate earlier this month. “Thank goodness for the change in the Supreme Court decision.”
While winning fewer headlines than Breed, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan made clear in an interview that his city is also working to ramp up sweeps with “the goal” of offering encampment residents shelter whenever possible. His office said the city aims to hire 10 more people to disband camps while enlisting additional city employees to help with a plan to move 500 homeless residents from local waterways to sanctioned campsites.
“We’re going to continue to be aggressive and clear encampments that are unsafe and unsanitary,” Mahan said.
In Oakland, by contrast, Mayor Sheng Thao said in a statement that the Supreme Court ruling “does not change what my administration has been focused on and committed to from Day 1.” Instead of clearing more encampments, she emphasized efforts to build affordable housing.
Still, Oakland homeless advocate Talya Husbands-Hankin raised concerns over the city’s plans to update its “encampment management” policy as a result of the ruling. Officials have declined to offer details about the potential changes.
Husbands-Hankin argued the city’s ongoing sweeps are already traumatizing for homeless people and often accomplish little but pushing camps from one neighborhood to another
“I’m extremely concerned because the encampment management policy the city currently has has caused great harm to unhoused communities across the city,” she said.
At a recently cleared camp under a raised BART track in East Oakland, Luis Baillegas picked through a tangle of copper wires to sell for scrap metal. He was told to pack up his blue tarp tent and move along, he said, but work crews had so far spared his dwelling. He said no one had offered him shelter.
“For now, I’m going to stay here because there’s no other place to go,” Baillegas said.
The Bay Area’s smaller cities, meanwhile, have stayed largely quiet on their encampment plans. But this week, East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio Lopez announced that he aims to introduce an emergency ordinance that, if approved, would direct officials to clear camps after repeatedly offering homeless people a shelter bed. He called on cities across the Peninsula to adopt similar plans.
“We have to have a unified response — we have to have a unified stance,” Lopez told local news organizations.
In Berkeley, officials appear to be taking a different track, at least publicly. The city could soon consider a resolution to prevent new penalties for homeless people, even as it has continued carrying out sweeps.
“The status quo before the (Supreme Court) decision will remain in place,” said Stefan Elgstrand, assistant to Mayor Jesse Arreguin.
According to a recent poll from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, nearly 70% of Bay Area residents said homelessness is a “big problem” in the region. While the poll did not ask about clearing encampments, it found more than three-quarters of voters statewide supported policies to provide rental assistance for homeless families and build more tiny home shelters.
Experts say that while drugs and mental health issues are significant drivers of homelessness, a severe lack of affordably priced housing is the main reason the crisis is much worse in the Bay Area and California than in other parts of the country. High housing costs mean low-income residents are more vulnerable to losing their homes following a job loss or traumatic life event. They also make it harder for people to find a new home after being forced out.
Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, said despite widespread public frustration over street homelessness, officials’ differing public stances on encampments could have as much to do with politics as what they believe is good policy.
He noted that Breed, whose city has been in the spotlight for its struggle to combat homelessness since the start of the pandemic, is in the middle of a competitive reelection race and needs to convince voters she’s taking action. The city has received national attention for its tougher stance on encampments in recent weeks.
Mahan, on the other hand, sailed to reelection earlier this year. His comparatively lower-profile response to the Supreme Court ruling could signal he’s content with his progress on homelessness and doesn’t see the need to “take the kind of position that is changing,” McDaniel said.
Meanwhile, Thao is involved in a federal corruption investigation and faces an intensifying recall effort. As a result, she may be wary of upsetting her core supporters on the left, who are largely critical of sweeps.
“If you lose your core support, then you’ve got nobody,” McDaniel said.