Gov. Gavin Newsom upgraded California’s push to eliminate homeless camps Monday, calling on hundreds of cities, towns and counties to effectively ban tent camps on sidewalks, bike lanes, Parkland and other types of public property.
Mr Newsom’s government has raised hundreds of billions of dollars in plans to bring homeless people into housing and emphasize treatment. But his move on Monday marked a tougher approach to one of the most obvious aspects of the homeless crisis. The governor created a template for local ordinances that could employ municipalities to ban camps and clear existing camps.
California is home to about half of the uncovered homeless population in the United States, a visible by-product of temperate climate and the state’s brutal housing crisis. According to the California Institute of Public Policy, 187,000 people in the state were homeless last year. Two-thirds of people live in tents, cars or outdoors.
Mr Newsom cannot force the city to pass his modeling ban, but its issuance coincides with the release of a state-controlled housing fund of more than $3 billion, which local officials can use to place its templates. While it is not a task, the call for statewide elimination of camps by one of the country’s most famous Democrats shows a change in the party’s attitude to homelessness.
Newsom, once a belliger advocate of liberal policy and a voice-over Trump administration critic, has been highlighting his party’s stance to the point that he has raised the minds of Trump supporters in the podcast. Traditionally, the liberal camp approach highlights government-funded housing and treatment and crumpled it as homeless.
Mr Newsom hopes that the model ordinance adopted by local officials does not specify criminal penalties, but prohibits the definition of a camp where public property is homeless makes it a crime. The city will decide on its own how difficult it should be for a fine, including arresting or citing people who violate the ban. The guide to the national issuance of the template says no one “should face criminal penalties when there is nowhere to go.”
The persistent frustration of homelessness has been rising in news agency management and among many Californians.
Although California’s homeless population (like the overall population) remains the largest in the U.S., federal data released in January showed that 3% of the number of homeless people in the state increased by 3%, while the U.S. grew by more than 18%. The number of homeless veterans and long-term homeless people has declined.
But camps that breed with socially distant open spaces during the coronavirus pandemic remain a common problem in Southern California, the Central Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento area. There is a clear disconnect between many elected officials in California and adopted residents in the state.
Nearly 40% of the state’s Democratic-led voters say they’re so squalid settlements beyond parks and blocking sidewalks that they reject shelter, supporting the arrest of homeless campers, according to a poll by Politico and the University of California’s Jack Citrin Center for Berkeley. Meanwhile, a peer survey conducted by the Democratic-led country shows that nearly half of California’s policy leaders and elected officials oppose solving the camp through law enforcement.
Previously, federal courts ruled that it was unconstitutional to punish people who sleep on public property “cruel and unusual” and therefore unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruling gave the government the right to punish people in parks, sidewalks and other public areas, the legal landscape changed last year.
The News Magazine government quickly seized the Supreme Court ruling, ordering state agencies to start humanely clearing camps in state parks and highway underground access, and urging cities to do the same in local jurisdictions.
Some did so, addressing the camp with varying degrees of sympathy and aggression.
Long Beach began cleaning up camps within weeks, urging homeless people to receive shelter and treatment, but also threatened to cite and arrest residents repeatedly. Fresno sits, lies, sleeps or camps in public places. The San Jose City Council is weighing a proposal by its Democratic Mayor Matt Mahan to arrest homeless people if they refuse shelter three times.
But many California politicians refused. Some fear further traumatize homeless people to quote, arrest and jail time. There are concerns that the wrong words in local law will still invite homeless people to file lawsuits.
Some people say that hard lines are unnecessary. Democratic mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles pointed out that her signature plan aims to voluntarily leave tent camps and motel rooms and temporary shelters, helping to record the first double-digit decline in street homelessness in the city in nearly a decade.
Still, other policy makers (for example, in Los Angeles County) have noticed the shortage of safe shelter space and the complexity of strengthening new plans. They believe that the country needs to promote more housing and treatment than Mr. Newsom. They said that until this happens, they said arresting, citing people in tent camps would only torture vulnerable people and move the problem around.
While the public is trying to address the pressure on camps from San Diego to Eureka — and billions of dollars in state funding, only one in ten of the state’s 500 cities and counties have enacted new camping restrictions. Many municipalities have resisted increasing shelter space.
The governor’s funding and its initiative release, totaling $3.3 billion in state control funds to expand local housing and treatment for homeless people with serious mental and behavioral health problems. The money received voter approval from $6.4 billion in state bonds last year.
“There are no more excuses,” Governor Newsom said in a statement to the ordinance. “Local leaders demanded the resources – we provided the largest national investment in history. They demanded the law clear – court delivery. Now, we give them a model that can be adopted immediately, urgently and humans to address camps and connect people to shelters, housing and care.”
The governor’s municipal template is based on the state’s agreement to block homeless camps on state land and roads. It will explicitly “build, construct, or maintain public property on any semi-permanent structure”.
It will also camp on public property for three consecutive days or nights within 200 feet of a location for three consecutive days or nights. This will make “sitting, sleeping, lying or camping on any public street, road or bike path, or sitting, lying or camping in a way that blocks access.”
The model regulations require cities to “do their best” to provide shelter or housing, notify homeless at least 48 hours before clearing camps, and properly store any items being moved.
The California Highway Patrol performs camp cleanups in the state and rarely has to arrest stubborn campers, government officials said. They say when it encounters it is often out of various misdemeanor charges such as trespassing, obstructing or delaying the execution of formal duties. The ordinance provides that officials can also enforce other city or state laws, including laws governing controlled substances or weapons, fire regulations and public nuisance laws.
The accompanying state-issued guidance called the ordinance a “starting point for jurisdictions to be established” and noted that it was drawn from a method the state has used since July 2021. The method has cleared more than 16,000 camps and cleared more than 311,873 cubic cubic YARDS, removed more than 311,873 cubic feet of debris from highways and other state properties, state officials said.
