Newsom Orders Removal of Thousands of Homeless Camps

California state agencies will start dismantling homeless encampments under a new executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom, multiple news outlets reported Thursday. This marks the most significant response to a June Supreme Court decision that allowed governments to crack down on homeless campers.

Newsom’s executive order directs state officials to remove thousands of homeless encampments across California, which has the nation’s largest homeless population. This move follows a Supreme Court decision last month where the six conservative justices overruled lower court decisions that deemed sweeps of homeless encampments as cruel and unusual punishment.

The order mandates state agencies to clear encampments on state-controlled land, such as state parks, highway overpasses, and wildlife preserves. Campers will be given multiple days’ notice and offered housing and other services. While Newsom cannot compel cities to act on encampments, many local leaders, including those in San Francisco, have already outlined plans to clear them.

Advocates for the homeless have condemned camping bans as both inhumane and ineffective. The National Housing Conference, in a press release on the day of the Supreme Court’s decision, argued that cracking down on camping without investing in more housing would be counterproductive. “There are few more effective ways to condemn them to chronic homelessness than prosecuting rather than housing them,” the statement reads. “Ironically, the cost of incarceration is significantly greater than the cost of affordable housing.”

The Supreme Court decision stems from a lawsuit filed in Oregon, where two homeless individuals argued that a city’s ban on camping in public spaces violated the Eighth Amendment’s protection against “cruel and unusual punishment.” A federal court on the West Coast had initially sided with the plaintiffs, stating the city could not punish people without access to shelter for sleeping in public places. In June, the Supreme Court reversed this decision, with all six Republican-appointed justices in the majority and the three liberal justices dissenting. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his opinion, stated that the Eighth Amendment does not allow federal judges to “dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.”

California’s cities have long struggled with homelessness crises. In Los Angeles, despite billions of dollars spent addressing the issue, the unhoused population has continued to grow. In 2023, over 75,000 homeless people were reported in Los Angeles County. According to an Associated Press report, one in three individuals who entered the shelter system in 2023 eventually returned to the streets, and the wait time for placement into permanent housing can be longer than two years.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass condemned the Supreme Court decision, stating, “This ruling must not be used as an excuse for cities across the country to attempt to arrest their way out of this problem or hide the homelessness crisis in neighboring cities or in jail.”

San Francisco has faced a similarly high-profile homelessness crisis, although the raw numbers are much lower, with 3,000 people living on the streets as of January 2024. San Francisco Mayor London Breed had a different perspective on the ruling, promising “very aggressive” sweeps of encampments beginning in August.