Supreme Court to Hear Case on When Cities Can Clear Homeless Encampments

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to review lower-court rulings that make it harder for cities in California and other Western states to prevent people from sleeping on the streets when there aren’t enough shelter beds available.

The justices will hear an appeal from the city of Grants Pass, in southwest Oregon, which is seeking to enforce local street-clearing ordinances. The city has the backing of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, as well as other Democratic and Republican elected officials who have struggled to deal with homelessness brought on by rising housing costs and income inequality.

It’s unclear whether the case will be argued in the spring or the fall.

The High Court’s announcement comes a day after a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower-court ruling blocking anti-camping ordinances in San Francisco, where Newsom was once the mayor.

“California has invested billions to address homelessness, but rulings from the bench have tied the hands of state and local governments to address this issue,” Newsom said in a statement Friday. “The Supreme Court can now correct course and end the costly delays from lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear encampments and deliver services to those in need.”

A separate 9th Circuit panel ruled in the Oregon case that Grants Pass could not enforce a local ordinance that prohibits unhoused people “from using a blanket, pillow, or cardboard box for protection from the elements.” The decision applies across nine Western states, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

The two rulings — along with another 9th Circuit decision from 2018 — found that punishing people for sleeping on the streets when no alternative shelter is available amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment,” in violation of the Constitution.

The 9th Circuit rulings “have contributed to the growing problem of encampments in cities across the West,” Theane Evangelis, a lawyer for Grants Pass, said in a statement. “These decisions are legally wrong and have tied the hands of local governments as they work to address the urgent homelessness crisis. The tragedy is that these decisions are actually harming the very people they purport to protect.”

But Eric Tars, legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center, which is supporting plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Grants Pass case, said that most people living on the street simply don’t have other options.

“The bottom line is, where else are people supposed to go? We do not have enough affordable housing in our community and in any community across the country,” he said. “This doesn’t say that we have to house everybody. Unfortunately — I wish it did. But at a minimum … you shouldn’t be punished for not having housing.”

Elected officials urged the justices to take up the case because they say the 9th Circuit rulings complicate their efforts to clear tent encampments, which have long existed in some West Coast cities but have become more common across the U.S.

Cities from Los Angeles to New York have stepped up efforts to clear encampments, records reviewed by The Associated Press show, as public pressure has grown to address what some residents say are dangerous and unsanitary living conditions. But despite tens of millions of dollars spent in recent years, in many cities there appears to be no significant reduction in the number of tents propped up on sidewalks, in parks, and along freeway off-ramps.

The federal count of unhoused people across the country topped 653,000 in 2023, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That’s a 12% jump from the previous year, amid rising rents and the phasing out of pandemic-related assistance. More than 181,000 of them — nearly 30% of the total unhoused population — are based in California.

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said the Supreme Court review will directly impact his city’s ongoing litigation.

“San Francisco has struggled with the significant, unresolved legal questions created by [these] decisions,” he said in a statement. “Given the impossible situation our city finds itself in, it is appropriate for the Supreme Court to step in and resolve these questions.”

But unhoused people and their advocates say homeless encampment sweeps are cruel and ineffective, and argue that taking aim at the lower court’s ruling is a misguided approach.

“The 9th Circuit’s ruling did not create our street homelessness crisis, and so it is disingenuous for cities to try and blame a court ruling for a crisis that is decades in the making,” said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which represents unhoused San Francisco residents in the city’s ongoing suit over encampment sweeps.

Tars, of the National Homelessness Law Center, said allowing more encampment sweeps without offering suitable housing options would only acerbate an already dire problem.

“Homelessness won’t improve at all,” he said, “because we aren’t addressing the root causes.”

This story includes reporting from The Associated Press and KQED’s Vanessa Rancaño and Matthew Green.