California Cracks Down on Homeless Encampments Following SCOTUS Ruling

How It Started

In a previous article in late June…we looked at the 2018 Martin vs. Boise ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had just been essentially overturned by the US Supreme Court. 

Martin vs. Boise found that citing or arresting homeless people camping on public land when they had nowhere else to go was a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause. The Supreme Court brushed that argument aside with its June 28 ruling in the City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson case. 

That decision was quickly followed by an executive order by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, directing state agencies to immediately begin clearing homeless encampments from state property. He also encouraged cities and counties to do the same, and went so far as to threaten to withhold state funds if they refused.

As we reported, this came only after Newsom spent years working with the legislature to get more housing in the pipeline and pumping funds into county public assistance budgets.

Whew.

How It’s Going

Immediately following his executive order for state agencies to clear encampments on state property, Newsom took some heat for this “cruel order.” While he directed agencies to move with “urgency and dignity,”  a cleanup of a homeless encampment often results in a homeless person losing everything, their belongings, in effect being stolen from them and tossed in a dumpster.

One critic included San Jose Mayor Matt Mahon, who in July argued against clearing encampments immediately unless there were alternatives, “Clearing encampments only works if we have places for people to go, and require that they use them.”   

This is the root nut of the problem, but also the source of some impatience as expressed by the governor. Since he took office in 2019, California has funded $40 billion toward affordable housing and more than $27 billion to address homelessness.  Mayor Mahon is correct in pointing out that homeless encampment clearing is pointless (and cruel) if there is nowhere else for our unhoused neighbors to go, but on the other hand Gov. Newsom and the state legislature have been sending billions of dollars to the counties and municipalities to support their statutory obligation to ensure adequate housing for all of their residents for several years.

In many cases, it’s hard to account for the results. Here in my hometown, a civil grand jury reported that to be the case in 2024 when it issued a report finding the City of Santa Cruz didn’t track the eligibility status of residents of affordable housing units. In other cases, it’s residents of unlicensed group homes or veterans living in squalor.

Clearly, some counties and municipalities are already having problems with accountability and transparency, and inspection and maintenance of standards. Well, things are about to crank up a notch.

Slowly, Then All at Once

In Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a character is asked how they went bankrupt, and the answer is “Two ways: gradually, then suddenly.” The Internet group mind has abstracted that into a useful theory of change expressed as “Slowly at first, then all at once,” which surely seems to apply to the state’s response to homelessness.

Over the past five years, Newsom and the legislature have slowly built a funding pipeline and a legal framework for addressing the pent-up issues of housing and homelessness.

And now suddenly, all at once,  2024’s Proposition 1 provides billions of dollars to build new mental health, addiction and homeless housing and treatment facilities; the recently created CARE court establishes a legal means for compelling individuals into mental health and addiction treatment and housing, and the US Supreme Court clears the way to compel homeless individuals camping on public land to find alternative housing.

Here in Santa Cruz, the City Council in August 2024 awarded a contract to clear some 40 encampments along the 1.5 mile Nature Loop trail in the Pogonip Open Space on the outskirts of town. A City of Santa Cruz spokesperson related “that all people located at encampments along the Nature Loop were offered shelter and that none had accepted.”

It’s clear that people can’t be allowed to camp in public spaces if they don’t have toilets, bathing, laundry, cooking or garbage facilities. You don’t get to just shit on the ground or dump your garbage on the ground or build a cooking fire in an open space preserve and burn a forest to the ground.

What isn’t clear is how counties and municipalities will utilize the Proposition 1 funds and leverage the CARE court system and work with neighborhoods and communities to locate emergency and temporary facilities in the short term and permanent solutions in the longer term when previous and current efforts have fallen short.

This is where you come in.

How to Get Involved

• Get to know you county Board of Supervisors—one of their primary jobs is setting the county budget
• Get to know your county budget—state public assistance funding flows through the county
• Get to know your county General Plan—this establishes budget priorities and the overall vision of governance for the county
• Get to know your county Civil Grand Jury—they keep an eye on how well local government is doing its job

As a citizen, it’s your job to make sure the government is working in your interests. An enormous amount of government funding and energy is being directed at the interlinked issues of housing and homelessness. 

You can and should demand accountability and transparency, and leverage both to assess outcomes. 

In the case of homelessness, the desired outcome is housing for unhoused people that meets basic standards of health, safety, security, privacy and dignity as an alternative to camping in squalor in public spaces.

“Squalor” shouldn’t be such a difficult bar to clear.