California's cracking down hard on unhoused people – and they're running out of options

Homeless advocates across California say they're terrified people living without housing are running out of places where they can legally sleep outside.

The web of sleeping bans unhoused Californians face is growing more complex, as cities respond differently to Gov. Gavin Newsom's executive order telling local officials to start cracking down harder on homeless encampments.

Newsom said he wants cities to implement the kind of enforcement the U.S. Supreme Court legalized last month, when it ruled in its Grants Pass decision that cities can fine and arrest homeless people for sleeping on public property, including when no shelter beds are available.

“It’s been very upsetting because these efforts end up exasperating homelessness," said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco. "People are traumatized daily."

More than 180,000 people live without housing in California, representing nearly a third of the U.S. homeless population, and the majority live outside, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

"There are simply no more excuses," Newsom said in his announcement. “I don’t think there’s anything more urgent and more frustrating than addressing the issue of encampments in the state of California."

While the legality of sleeping bans was tied up in federal courts for years, unhoused residents in the Golden State could not be arrested for sleeping outside if there was nowhere else for them to go. Police no longer have to offer assistance or help them get indoors, and police departments in San Francisco and San Marcos have updated their policy to match what's allowed under the Supreme Court.

“They’re worse off after these operations than they were before," Friedenbach told USA TODAY.

The San Francisco Police Department told USA TODAY it is enforcing new guidelines released in late July that correspond with the Supreme Court's Grants Pass decision, and that officers may enforce sleeping bans "without first assuring that the City has made offers of available shelter."

Homeless people living in tents along highways and under overpasses are particularly vulnerable to police sweeps, because Newsom's order has more power over state-owned land controlled by state agencies like the California Department of Transportation, also known as Caltrans.

"All this order does is cut off those areas and force people into the municipalities and jurisdictions where they are subject to yet another patchwork of enforcement strategies," said Shayla Myers, a lawyer who works on homeless issues with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. "It is becoming harder and harder for people to figure out where they can go without breaking the law."

New encampment sweeps bring 'more worry'

In Venice, California, Dani Rodriguez, lived in a tent along a highway for two years, until moving into an RV. Speaking on the phone, she said her stomach tightened and she became nauseous imagining what could happen if she was still living in her old spot this summer.

“I don’t know what I would do. All I know is I would be scared as hell," said Rodriguez, speaking through tears. “Things are always life-changing in our situation, but that would be a big blunt of more worries and feeling hurt inside.”

Rodriguez, a transgender woman, said she and her partner feel safer in their RV, but there's still no guarantee authorities won't make them move in the future, she said.

Police no longer have to offer shelter

Even though California has spent more than $24 billion on tackling homelessness and increasing mental health services under Newsom, Friedenbach said there still aren't enough resources to solve the crisis.

On the more pro-enforcement side, elected officials said the large spending effort under Newsom needs to be matched with more urgent enforcement of anti-camping laws governing public places.

In a July 31 San Francisco Police Department notice, the department said staff are "encouraged" to provide people experiencing homelessness with an info card highlighting shelters, but they're "not required to do so."

Sacramento, San Jose say more enforcement is necessary

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan told USA TODAY they desperately want to get people indoors and into safety, and that enforcing more encampment sweeps is part of their strategy.

Steinberg said treating unhoused people with compassion is the most important part of the process, and said he's against sending homeless people to jail for sleeping outside or fining them when they have no money to pay the tickets.

But, Steinberg said, “over time there is going to be more enforcement."

"The way I viewed it, it's an enforcement order that also says cities and counties need to spend the resources to increase capacity and to offer people help," Steinberg told USA TODAY, referring to Newsom's directive.

Around 6,600 people in Sacramento experienced homelessness last year, down from more than 9,000 in 2022, according to HUD. The city's total population is around 530,000.

In San Jose, where just over 6,300 people of 1 million are experiencing homelessness, Mayor Mahan told USA TODAY he appreciated Newsom signaling even more urgency is needed to clean up city streets.

Along with increased enforcement, Mahan said, San Jose will create 1,000 new shelter spots in 2024 "so that we have places for people to go when we clear their encampment."

Other cities in California are considering new camping restrictions. In nearby Fresno, a city of about 550,000, elected officials proposed increasing anti-camping misdemeanor fines to $500, or up to six months in jail. The city council and mayor did not respond to a request for comment.

San Marcos, a town in San Diego County, recently passed a ban on camping in public areas. The community has a homeless population of only 35, according to a local count, representing a small portion of the county's 10,600, most of whom live in the city of San Diego. The town's city council and mayor did not respond to request for comment on their new camping ban.

Los Angeles won't follow Newsom's guidelines

In Los Angeles, which has spearheaded efforts to move thousands of unhoused people from the streets into temporary hotel shelter programs, officials in recent weeks said they will prioritize getting people indoors without complying with Newsom's directive.

The city still has anti-camping bans, but officials often offer temporary housing during sweeps. Beyond temporary hotel programs, more affordable housing is desperately needed to reduce homelessness − something elected officials harp on often, Rodriguez, 48, said.

“I’d really like to know, with them doing the crackdown, are they going to stand by their word and try and put us in places, or just clean up the spots and dust us along with the rest of the debris," she said.

But hotel shelter programs only apply to those picked up from city-owned public property, and homeless service providers said they're worried harsh sweeps of homeless people living along state-owned highway land will increase.

Eric Menjivar, the Caltrans District 7 Media Relations Manager, told USA TODAY the department will “do things the way we do it already."

That could still lead to negative outcomes for homeless communities, said Myers, the Los Angeles legal aid lawyer, noting the department in 2020 had to pay $5.5 million to settle claims that it illegally removed and destroyed property belonging to hundreds of homeless people.

In an email, Caltrans' statewide Public Affairs Chief Edward Barrera told USA TODAY the department "will continue to follow its guidelines and the Governor’s Office directives regarding encampment removals on the state right-of-way that it oversees."

Rodriguez, who was laid off from her job at a bank after taking a long medical leave following a rollover accident, said it's hard enough for people living along highways to survive.

"It would be really hard because we’d have to find another spot to move to. On top of that, there’s no guarantee we’d even be able to stay in another spot," she said.

San Diego moves people to sanctioned campsites

The city of San Diego had already been enforcing its Unsafe Camping Ordinance since June 2023, moving unhoused residents to sanctioned campsites, where dozens of identical blue and red tents blanket hillsides in uniform rows.

"We have not seen any changes or impacts in San Diego," said Tony Manolatos, a spokesperson for the county's Regional Taskforce on the Homeless, referring to changes in enforcement after Newsom's order.

In San Diego County, where San Marcos is located, Jennifer Hark Dietz manages teams of outreach workers with the nonprofit People Assisting The Homeless to get services and housing offers to people living in encampments.

Hark Dietz said the street outreach team dedicated to San Marcos will not enforce the town's new camping ban, because asking people to leave the site of their campsite is "completely against our model." Instead, she said, the team will notify people that more police may tell them to move.

In municipalities like San Marcos that don't have any shelters or sanctioned campsites, “this has given cities more opportunities to criminalize," Hark Dietz said.

Bans in towns with smaller homeless populations are particularly frustrating, Hark Dietz said, because it would take less resources to get housing to the relatively few people who need it. Similar to San Marcos, Grants Pass, the town that brought the camping ban case to the Supreme Court, also does not have a city-run shelter.

"It's still pretty early for many cities, but we're terrified about what's going to happen," Hark Dietz said. "We notify folks that this is possible, and then the other question that comes is, 'then where do they go?' And that's a question we don't have an answer to, because there's not additional services or additional beds that have come online."