Newsom asks cities to ban homeless camps, climbing repression

Governor Gavin Newsom increased California’s push to eradicate homeless camps on Monday, calling hundreds of cities, cities and counties to effectively ban tents on sidewalks, cycle paths, parks and other types of public goods.

The administration of Mr. Newsom collected and spent tens of billions of dollars on programs to bring homeless people in housing and highlight the treatment. But its move Monday marks a more difficult approach to one of the most visible aspects of the homeless crisis. The Governor has created a model for a local order that municipalities can adopt for camps and erase existing municipalities.

California is home to around half of the country’s homeless population from the country, a visible by-product of the temperate climate and the brutal state housing crisis. Last year, a record of 187,000 people was homeless in the state, according to the public Policy Institute of California. Two -thirds were no longer abundant in tents, cars or outside.

Mr. Newsom cannot force cities to adopt his model prohibition, but his issue coincides with the publication of more than $ 3 billion in the State controlled housing funds that local officials can use to put his model in place. And although this is not a mandate, the call for camps outside the law throughout the state by one of the best known Democrats in the country suggests a change in the approach of the party to homelessness.

Formerly a combative champion of liberal policies and a vocal critic of the administration of Trump, Mr. Newsom tested the positions of his party, to the point of raising the ideas of Trump supporters on his podcast. The liberal approach to the camps has traditionally put an emphasis on housing and treatments funded by the government and has gathered what some call for the criminalization of homelessness.

The ordinance of the M. Newsom model wants local officials to adopt not specifying criminal sanctions, but the ban on homeless camps on public goods makes it a crime by definition. The cities would decide on their own, how solid the sanctions should be, including arrests or quotes to those who violate the prohibition. The directives issued by the state of the model indicate that no one should face a criminal punishment for sleeping outside when he has nowhere to go. “

Frustration in the face of the persistence of homelessness has increased, both in Newsom administration and among many Californians.

Although California’s homeless people-as its global population-remains the largest in the country, federal data published in January showed an increase of 2024 of 3% in the state homeless, against more than 18% in the United States. And the number of homeless veterans and chronically decreased homeless.

But the camps, which proliferated during the coronavirus pandemic as public spaces empty of social distancing, remained a widespread problem in southern California, the central valley, the San Francisco Bay region and the Sacramento region. And an apparent disconnection has emerged between many elected officials from California and state residents above the state.

Nearly 40% of the electorate dominated by state democrats said they were so tired of sordid establishments exceeding the parks and blocking the sidewalks that they supported the arrest of homeless campers if they refused a shelter, according to a survey last month by Politico and the Jack Citter for Public Opinion Research at the University of California, Berkeley. At the same time, a complementary investigation in the state led by the Democrats showed that almost half of the political leaders of California and elected officials have opposed camps with the police.

Previously, the federal courts had ruled that punishing people for sleeping on public goods was “cruel and unusual” and therefore unconstitutional. This legal landscape changed last year after a decision of the Supreme Court allowed governments to penalize people to sleep in the parks, on sidewalks and in other public spaces.

The administration of Newsom seized the decision of the Supreme Court quickly, ordering state agencies to start cleaning the camps with humanity of state parks and motorway passages and urging cities to do the same in local courts.

Some have done so, attacking the camps with various degrees of compassion and assault.

Long Beach started cleaning the camps in a few weeks, urging the homeless to accept shelter and treatment, but also threatening to quote and stop the occupants of recurring camps. Fresno made an offense to sit, lie, sleep or camp in public places. The San Jose municipal council weighs a proposal from its Democrat mayor, Matt Mahan, to stop the homeless if they refuse the refuge three times.

But many Californian politicians have fallen. Some are worried about traumatizing the homeless with quotes, arrests and prison terms. Some fear that a bad word in a local law always invites defenders to the homeless to pursue them.

Some say that a hard line is not necessary. The Democrat mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, stressed that his signature program to move people voluntarily outside the tent camps and in the Motel rooms and the temporary shelters helped record the first two -digit drop in the roaming of the street in the city in almost a decade.

However, other political decision -makers – in the County of Los Angeles, for example – note both the shortage of safe shelter spaces and the complexity of the resumption of new programs. They argue that the State must finance even more housing and treatments that Mr. Newsom has only done possible. Until it happens, they say, stop, citing and exciting people in tent camps, only vulnerable people and move the problem.

Despite public pressure to contact the San Diego camps in Eureka – and billions of dollars in state funding to do this – only about a tenth of the 500 cities and state counties promulgated new camping restrictions, according to data from the National Homelessw Law Center in Washington. And many municipalities have resisted the addition of refuge space.

The financing of the State that the governor released with his initiative amounts to $ 3.3 billion in silver controlled by the state to extend local housing and treatment for the homeless with serious mental and behavioral health problems. The money, from a state deposit of $ 6.4 billion, was approved by voters last year.

“There are no more excuses,” said Governor Newsom in a statement accompanying the order. “Local leaders asked for resources – we have delivered the greatest investment in the state in history. They asked for legal clarity – the courts were delivered. Now we give them a model that they can put to work immediately, with urgency and humanity, to resolve camps and connect people to refuge, housing and care. ”

The defenders of the homeless denounced the initiative.

“Unfortunately, Newsom and Trump use the same failing manual,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center. He added: “We will not be duped by this approach upside down, and we will continue to put pressure for real solutions to homelessness, such as housing and services.”

Local officials were skeptical, accusing the governor of exaggerating the financing of the state of the programs to combat homelessness.

“More than half have gone to housing, not homeless,” said Jeff Griffiths, an inyo county official who is president of California State Association of Coutries, about the 27 billion dollars estimated that the Newsom administration said that he had spent on the issue of the homeless. “How many of this accommodation has been built?”

The Governor’s municipal model is based on the state protocol to dissuade homeless camps on the land and roads of the state. This would explicitly make illegal “build, place or keep on public property any semi-permanent structure”.

He would also prohibit camping on public property for more than three consecutive days or nights less than 200 feet in a single location. And it would make illegal “to sit, to sleep, to lie or to camp on any public street, road or bike, or on any sidewalk in a way that hinders the passage.”

The prescription of the model obliges cities to “make all reasonable efforts” to provide shelter or accommodation and give the homeless at least 48 hours of notice before cleaning a camp and properly store all the displaced personal effects.

Administration officials said that California Highway Patrol, which applies state camp cleaning, has rarely had to stop recalcitrant campers. When he said, he was generally for an assortment of accusations of offense such as the intrusion or obstruction or delay of peace agents who exercise official functions. The ordinance specifies that officers can also apply other laws on the city or the State, including the laws governing the use of controlled substances or weapons, fire codes and public laws on nuisances.

The directives issued by the State which accompanied him calls the order “a starting point that the courts can build” and underlines that it draws from an approach that the State has used since July 2021. This approach, said state officials, authorized more than 16,000 camps and other properties of the state.