City and county leaders are facing renewed calls from Gov. Gavin Newsom to clean up homeless encampments after the Supreme Court threw out requirements for shelter beds, but many local leaders haven’t said how they plan to enforce the law moving forward.
For years, cities were blocked from clearing homeless encampments unless they had shelters to send those homeless people to, but that rule was thrown out last month in a new Supreme Court ruling dubbed Grants Pass v. Johnson.
[Read: Is Orange County About To Enforce Anti-Camping Laws Again?]
Cities protested the shelter rule for years, with local leaders repeatedly taking aim at the suit called Martin v. Boise that established the rule.
Since 2018, the cities of Fullerton, Laguna Beach, La Habra, Newport Beach, Westminster, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Orange, Placentia, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, and the county government have signed onto statements calling for Martin v. Boise to be overturned so they can go back to enforcing anti-camping rules.
But now that it’s gone, city and county leaders haven’t laid out many plans for what they want to see next, even as Newsom put out a call last week to start cracking down on encampments.
[Read: Gov. Newsom Calls on Local Leaders to Clean Up Encampments – Will They?]
Molly Nichelson, spokesperson for the county government, said there won’t be any changes to the county’s Office of Care Coordination that handles homelessness.
But she also said they can’t speak for law enforcement, the primary agencies that clear homeless encampments.
Sheriff Don Barnes put out a statement last week saying he supported the Supreme Court’s decision and that “anti-camping and loitering laws provide law enforcement another tool to keep communities safe,” but noted the department used a mix of “education, outreach and enforcement.”
In most cases, county supervisors haven’t said one way or the other if they support clearing encampments.
“We will do what we believe is appropriate for our local communities,” said supervisor Don Wagner in a statement last week, noting they would be “compassionate,” to the homeless but would give “reprieve to the law-abiding citizens who have for far too long been forced to tolerate this unacceptable situation.”
Supervisor Katrina Foley said the new ruling would “enhance efforts to move people from unsafe encampments to shelter,” but that the county needed to focus on building more housing.
The only one to come out against clearing encampments was Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, who called arresting individuals at encampments a “short-sighted approach that merely moves the problem.”
Elsewhere, city leaders are praising the return of their ability to clear encampments, but noting they won’t use it if they can’t get people into housing.
San Clemente Councilman Mark Enmeier, whose city has frequently wrestled with homelessness amidst encampments on the beach, said the new ruling shouldn’t change the city’s policy of trying to get people into housing before pushing them out of encampments.
[Read: San Clemente Bussed Homeless People Out During Surf Competition]
“While Martin v Boise may have put an undue burden on municipalities to address homelessness, it also forced us to reflect on the tools we should use,” Enmeier said in a statement. “Before…our only tool was a hammer, and everything looked like a nail.”
“Since then, we’ve been successful in using other tools to assist people in rebuilding their lives,” he continued. “Just because we have been allowed to use the hammer once again, I hope we do not slide backward in our improvement to govern with logic, ethics, and concern for our fellow human beings.”
In Huntington Beach, Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark said she was “excited,” about the ruling and that previously cities were “intimidated,” into not clearing encampments, but didn’t state one way or the other if the city would start clearing encampments.
Anaheim spokesman Mike Lyster said the city is already clearing encampments after offering assistance to those living there, and that the ruling wouldn’t change the day to day operations.
The only city leader that has promised renewed focus on clearing homeless encampments is Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua, who’s called for a renewed focus on clearing out homeless people in the city.
“They should not be passed out, drugged out, half naked on our bus stops because people need to use the bus and they need to sit there,” Amezcua said. “I would love to help people more, but we don’t have the ability to carry every single person on our back in the city of Santa Ana.”
[Read: Is An Anti-Camping Crackdown Coming To Santa Ana?]
Eve Garrow, a policy analyst at the ACLU who tracks homelessness legislation throughout Southern California, said she’s worried that there could be a new “race to the bottom,” if cities start actively sweeping encampments.
“I’ve never met an unsheltered person who wanted to live that way,” Garrow said. “Housing lists are years long, shelters are often difficult to get into, there’s not enough capacity for everybody who’s unhoused.”
She pointed to policies in cities like Fresno and Palm Springs, who’ve already introduced new legislation blocking people from sleeping on public property, and said Orange County residents should be on the lookout for similar proposals in their cities.
“People are going to get harassed and persecuted by their local governments, pushed from place to place and perhaps pushed outside city limits,” Garrow said. “But if every city engages in these practices, then people literally have nowhere to go.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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