A person walks past an encampment of unhoused people in the Skid Row community on June 28 in Los Angeles. California Governor Gavin Newsom's order mandates that California departments 'prioritize efforts to address encampments' on state land.Mario Tama/Getty Images
California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered new efforts to clear homeless encampments and called on local governments to follow the state’s lead in responding to what he called a crisis on the streets, weeks after a U.S. Supreme Court decision did away with legal restrictions on enforcing anti-camping laws.
In an executive order released Thursday, Mr. Newsom demanded swift action on what he called the humane removal of encampments from public spaces.
“I don’t think there’s anything more urgent and more frustrating than addressing the issue of encampments in the state of California,” Mr. Newsom said in a short social-media video released alongside the executive order.
The order mandates that California departments “prioritize efforts to address encampments” on state land. It says there should be 48 hours’ notice before clearance operations, when possible, and storage of personal property for at least 60 days for items not considered a health hazard. It establishes no requirements for where those evicted should go, saying only that authorities should request services for the homeless people affected.
State and local leaders were given a much freer hand to act on encampments after a Supreme Court decision last month struck down lower court rulings that found evicting homeless people from public land was cruel and unusual punishment if adequate shelter space was not available. In its ruling, the Supreme Court removed those constraints, finding that anti-camping ordinances are neither cruel nor unusual
“We’re done,” Mr. Newsom said. “It’s time to move with urgency at the local level to clean up these sites.”
His evident unhappiness reflects the seriousness of the problem. California’s nightly homeless population has swelled to 180,000, and encampments have proliferated throughout the state. In the past three years alone, the California Department of Transportation has removed 11,188 encampments, and many others remain.
California’s social ills have become a favoured target for Republicans, with Donald Trump seizing upon it to criticize Kamala Harris, a former San Francisco prosecutor and state attorney-general, who is now his likely opponent in this year’s presidential election. “Just like she destroyed San Francisco, she will destroy our entire country,” Mr. Trump warned at a rally this week.
For Mr. Newsom to act now suggests political motivation, said Harmeet Dhillon, a California lawyer who is the Republican National Committeewoman for California. “Lawlessness in Democrat cities, and especially in Kamala’s home state of California, is inevitably going to be a factor in this election,” she said.
But Mr. Newsom’s new edict also underscores how this year’s U.S. presidential election, in which Mr. Trump has enjoyed a months-long lead in polls, is set against a shifting political landscape. Across the United States, liberal-minded voters have come to favour a more conservative state response to social problems – one more in line with the policies traditionally associated with Republicans.
In states such as Colorado and New York, record levels of illegal immigration have prompted Democratic leaders to advocate for stricter border measures.
On homelessness, too, those who pride themselves on political compassion say change is needed.
“Our compassion is not limitless, and these encampments have even Democrats feeling and expressing frustration, impatience and, honestly, downright disgust,” said Garry South, an influential Democratic strategist in the state. He described overpasses charred by fires, sidewalks blocked by tents and the crunch beneath car tires “when you drive over the crap” near such locations.
On Thursday morning, Mr. South texted Mr. Newsom to applaud the new order.
“Democrats control California lock, stock and barrel. And it’s up to us Democrats to take control of the situation – even at the risk of being labelled insensitive by certain people of groups – and clean up these God-awful messes that have been made, which have really made parts of our cities look like hellscapes,” Mr. South said.
In the charged environment of a presidential election year, liberal support for new clearance efforts may provide a political tailwind to conservatives, said Tim Lineberger, a California political consultant.
“The Trump campaign and Republicans can point to it as an admission of failed policy,” said Mr. Lineberger, who worked for Mr. Trump’s first presidential campaign, in 2016.
At the same time, the tougher stance from leaders like Mr. Newsom risks provoking anger among their own Democratic supporters.
Ms. Harris, for example, has in the past called housing a human right. Mr. Newsom’s order, by contrast, “aligns him more with the criminalization approach that’s being pushed by former president Trump,” argued Eric Tars, the legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center in Washington.
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It’s a debate playing out in cities across California.
Sacramento, for example, has increased the number of available shelter beds to 1,350 a night, from less than 100 – and counted a 41-per-cent reduction in unsheltered homelessness this year. Local leaders must seek to provide housing solutions beyond simply clearing away tents, the city’s mayor, Darrell Steinberg, said in an interview. But without enforcement, encampments grow, which helps no one, he said.
“People should not be living in squalor,” he added. “And in these large tent encampments, it’s unsafe, it’s unhealthy – not only for the people living there, but for our neighbourhoods and our business corridors.”
Mr. Steinberg called Mr. Newsom’s executive order a “prod to achieve even more and better. Because there are still too many people on our streets.”
But Niki Jones, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, called it a “banishment order.”
She disputed Sacramento’s claimed progress in reducing the number of people without homes, saying it was achieved through heavy-handed enforcement “that scattered people and made them harder to count.”
Advocates for the homeless now fear worse is to come.
“The Supreme Court has enabled the Governor to start a new reign of terror,” said Robbie Powelson, who has participated in several lawsuits against encampment sweeps in the San Francisco Bay area. “This order is greenlighting police raids, property destruction and arrests of people who are unsheltered across the state.”