Will Lester/The Orange County Register via AP
California Homeless Governor's Directive
Rhonda Almquist, 45, stands near her tent as she wipes away tears at Perris Hill Park in San Bernardino on July 25, 2024. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order directing state agencies “to move urgently to address dangerous” homeless encampments and clear them from state land.
Last week California Gov. Gavin Newsom directed state agencies to start clearing encampments of unhoused people throughout the state. It’s the most high-level and direct government attack on these unlucky people since the Supreme Court ruled in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson that cities and counties can ban camping outside even if there is not enough space in local shelters.
It is Kafkaesque cruelty to legally prohibit people from simply existing outside when the same government has not taken sufficient action to ensure they have somewhere to go. More practically, it’s also not going to work.
Grants Pass was a legal innovation—it overruled lower court decisions that found that such laws constitute cruel and unusual punishment, given the lack of space for anyone else to go. It’s nothing new out of arguably the worst Supreme Court since the 1850s. But Newsom, the Democratic governor of America’s largest state, favorably cited the Supreme Court’s decision as a reason he’s going ahead with this order.
“We have now no excuse with the Supreme Court decision,” Newsom said when announcing the directive. “This executive order is about pushing that paradigm further and getting the sense of urgency that’s required of local government to do their job.” How it would actually solve the problem went unmentioned.
Newsom’s order calls for state agencies to clear all encampments of unhoused people within each agency’s jurisdiction. It also urges cities and counties to follow suit. Newsom argued that California is home to more than 180,000 unhoused people, according to the 2023 point-in-time homeless count. The executive order specifically cites rules used by the state agency Caltrans, requiring at minimum two days of advance notice and storing unhoused people’s belongings for 60 days at least. However, it says that in cases where an unhoused camp is an “imminent threat,” state agencies can clear it immediately.
The problem with Newsom’s order is that it consists of mindless punishment without any practical solutions. The state has a severe housing shortage, rents are therefore sky-high, and thousands are being forced out onto the street each month, sometimes for short stints, or other times doomed to be unhoused for the long term. There are not enough shelter beds for even temporary spaces to stay. Even government-funded supportive housing projects, such as the number of projects under construction in Los Angeles, are not opening at a pace fast enough to match the rate that people fall into homelessness every year. So where are those who are getting displaced supposed to go? The only realistic option is to move to another block, where they face fines, arrest and additional risks that come from being displaced. And if they aren’t thrown in jail, they face the same cycle all over again.
Sweeps also don’t work. A study by the Rand Corporation—published in July before Newsom’s executive order—showed that although displacing residents and clearing encampments might remove tents from public spaces for a month or two, they generally return. In fact, the Rand study found that when sweeps occur, it leaves more people without any form of physical shelter, such as tents or cars, in which to sleep.
“We found continuing evidence that local encampment cleanup activities don’t appear to lead to a persistent reduction in the number of unsheltered residents in the area,” Jason Ward, co-author of that study, said during a video conference on the report’s findings. “They just tend to move them around and the numbers tend to return in our relatively small area to previous trends pretty quickly.”
The Rand study looked at several Los Angeles area neighborhoods, but other high-profile clearings in recent years show how much this tactic fails. In 2021, authorities violently cleared 183 people who had camped out at the park at Echo Park Lake, many of whom came there to use sanitary facilities to stay safe from the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite some city council members immediately claiming everyone was housed, only nine actually reached permanent housing, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, while UCLA’s Luskin Institute Institute on Inequality and Democracy found 17 were in some kind of housing, temporary or permanent. Some remained in limbo, while LAHSA lost contact with 82 people. Encampments still exist in the neighborhood. If that’s the model for sweeps, it doesn’t work.
Local authorities’ reactions to Newsom’s directive are mixed. Los Angeles County, home to Skid Row and more than 70,000 unhoused Californians, passed a resolution on July 31 saying it would not follow that approach and not criminalize homelessness. But in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed pledged to step up “aggressive” sweeps, including clearing encampments without advanced warning, as had previously been the case.
So what will happen to the victims of Breed’s and other cities’ sweeps? They’ll be pushed farther out from their current neighborhoods, either to other parts of cities where they might be displaced or fined again, or out to more rural areas, away from services, away from any friends or family who might be able to assist them. Those experiencing homelessness in rural areas or outside cities face additional risks tied to their isolation. For instance, protective programs and laws in the city of Los Angeles such as the Inside Safe program still lead to sweeps; those who are put into temporary housing often end up back on the street. Without permanent or affordable housing available for people experiencing homelessness, these policies amount to attempting to shove the homeless problem onto some other jurisdiction, either to get left behind or to go through the punishment all over again.
The research is clear: the overwhelming driver of homelessness is high housing costs.
It’s also worth noting that although many unhoused Californians are long-term, chronically homeless people, most are not. A large portion of people experiencing homelessness are simply people who suffered a turn of bad luck—working folks unable to afford rent thanks to an unexpected bills, or people fleeing abusive homes—who will only be living outside for a few days or weeks until they can connect with others, or find a new place. Randomly sweeping such people out into another city, or arresting and fining them, will likely keep them on the streets longer.
Beyond a lack of any real assistance, sweeps also provide material risks for unhoused people. Several lawsuits tied to local sweeps in California have accused city and county agencies of tossing out or destroying medicine, government documents and IDs, along with other important items people need. Those present both health risks and more challenges for people who need their belongings to help secure housing. Caltrans, which Newsom pointed to as the model to follow, has been sued for its destruction of people’s belongings in sweeps. Then there’s the matter of the “imminent threat” clause in Newsom’s executive order. How that will be determined isn’t clear, and it might vary by city or county, and could be used as a cudgel that could cause even more harm when people are displaced without any warning.
Newsom’s order and the argument behind it also run counter to what research, service providers and advocates for unhoused communities say works: housing. The “housing first” approach pushes for getting people into permanent, supportive housing as a way to mitigate some of the greatest risks and dangers unhoused individuals and families face, including displacement. The argument for the low barrier, housing first model is that once inside a safe space, unhoused people can get the support they need, be it medical or addiction help, direct connection with mental health experts or job programs. Newsom’s order, is more or less the opposite of this approach, and in fact aligns more with what conservatives are pushing for on a national stage.
The housing first approach is directly called out in Project 2025, the conservative policy guideline for a possible second Trump administration. The chapter, primarily written by former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, singles out the policy. The document demands the department abandon housing first as its priority, while pushing for more work requirements for housing assistance—never mind that more than half of unhoused Americans are working. Instead, Project 2025 argues that mental health and substance abuse issues should be prioritized, even though the root causes of homelessness are affordability and housing supply, not addiction or mental health issues. And this is not even getting to proposed social welfare cuts that could push more people into homelessness. Meanwhile senator and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has questioned the effectiveness of housing first, saying it ignores the root causes of homelessness, and expressed concern about low-barrier entries into housing.
Again, the research is clear: the overwhelming driver of homelessness is high housing costs. There is tremendously more homelessness in California than in West Virginia, despite the fact that the former is vastly richer and the latter has a major opioid addiction problem, because West Virginia’s rents are cheap. So it’s unclear what Newsom and supporters of his order think is going to happen. If state and municipal agencies clear encampments, it’s going to be an extremely temporary move that will only exacerbate the conditions unhoused people face. It won’t be cheap either, given what police actions cost in salaries and probably subsequent lawsuit settlements.
Homelessness is dangerous, humiliating, and traumatic. Nobody needs to be reminded of these truths. If Gavin Newson wants to fix the problem, he could work to get more housing built, especially affordable units—by, for instance, signing rather than vetoing a social housing bill. But if he wants to sweep the problem under the rug so as to pretend like he’s doing something useful while actually making the problem worse, he could continue on his present course.
