Bay Area Cities Start Clearing Homeless Encampments After Newsom Order
Four Bay Area cities have ramped up their actions to clear populations of homeless people out of public areas following an order from California Gov. Gavin Newsom last month.
On Aug. 1, San Francisco issued its Journey Home executive directive that enables the city to issue citations and arrest residents of homeless encampments. On the other end of the spectrum is San Jose, which is focused on creating transitional housing and assisting with substance abuse issues.
The sweeps come after years of concerns from commercial property professionals and downtown advocates about how homeless populations and their presence in urban areas have impacted activity and property.
Properties in urban areas across the U.S. have lost value in the years since the pandemic began, with high office vacancies and multifamily debt loads intersecting with eviction moratoriums that hit apartment landlords’ coffers.
But with many executives pointing to homelessness and crime as the main reason for these issues, those cities removing homeless populations now face the open question of how the sweeps will impact the vibrancy of downtowns.
“The continuing losses of San Francisco’s economic base are a symptom of a city that has become politically dysfunctional and is perceived by people and businesses to be dangerous and unworkable,” according to a May 2023 white paper authored by Lee Ohanian of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
“These losses will continue until those who govern San Francisco make different choices regarding the very related issues of drug abuse, homelessness, and crime,” Ohanian wrote.
Major California cities are taking very different approaches to Newsom’s order granting cities permission to clear homeless encampments from state property. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, for example, refused to take part in the sweeps. Bass has made the housing crisis in her city, as well as creating residences for homeless people, a pillar of her term so far.
San Francisco’s program, Journey Home, offers a one-way bus ticket for the homeless population to leave the city, where shelters are approaching full capacity, Los Angeles ABC News reported.
“This directive will ensure that relocation services will be the first response to our homelessness and substance use crises, allowing individuals the choice to reunite with support networks before accessing other City services or facing the consequences of refusing care,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a written statement. “This approach, while firm, is rooted in our commitment to compassionate care by delivering the support that so many desperately need.”
The city wasted no time enforcing the Journey Home order. It has already begun ticketing RV owners on Winston Drive on the south side of San Francisco, according to a Saturday Hoodline article.
Meanwhile, San Jose has created transitional housing units in many neighborhoods and vacant lodging properties, created safe parking sites and is doubling down on social services, said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
San Jose provides transitional housing, mental health and addiction counseling and inpatient treatment, while creating incentives for people to accept shelter treatment, Mahan said.
This week, Mahan plans to meet with the officials from the Governor’s office “to discuss proposing a statewide framework for allocating targets and responsibilities for cities and counties to build shelter, treatment and housing capacity.”
In Oakland, there must be adequate interim shelter or permanent housing available before it sweeps homeless encampments.
Oakland has an encampment management team, or EMT, as well as a commission on homelessness. According to the city’s website, the EMT tracks every encampment and prioritizes interventions based on health and safety.
The city has also closed the Wood Street encampment, Northern California's largest multiblock site near the West Oakland BART station, and secured 169 units of affordable housing for all displaced residents.
Mayor Sheng Tao has a longer-term approach to providing affordable housing for the city’s most vulnerable populations.
During her term, Tao secured about $260M in state and local grants to create 1,100 affordable rental units, according to the Mayor’s office.
In the next four months, 15 new projects are slated to bring another 1,100 affordable units to Oakland.
For its part, the city of Berkeley joined Los Angeles in refusing to comply with Newsom’s order.
Instead, the city and nonprofit groups have committed to clean up these sites, “without citations, arrests or removal” Vanguard News Group reported on Monday. The cleanups included trash removal and street and sidewalk cleaning.
