Newsom Pushes Cities to Ban Homeless Encampments Across California

Updated at 4:56 p.m.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is making his most aggressive salvo yet in an increasingly contentious war on visible homelessness across the Golden State.

On Monday, in an effort to urge more California cities and counties to ban encampments, he released a model ordinance to use as a template for barring camping on public property.

“It’s time to take back the streets,” Newsom said during a Monday press conference. “It cannot be a way of life — living out on the streets and sidewalk in what have almost become permanent structures.”

Newsom can’t force cities to adopt the template, but the new guidance is paired with the release of $3.3 billion in new funding from Proposition 1, which voters passed last year to fund supportive housing, mental health and substance use treatment.

Though he hasn’t yet explicitly called for withholding Prop. 1 funds from cities that don’t comply, he has threatened in the past to hold back other state grants from cities that don’t take action to reduce homelessness. Asked why he introduced the proposal with no accountability measures built in, Newsom said it was about setting “basic expectations.”

“We’re also previewing expectations moving forward in terms of what we’ve been saying privately to cities and counties and our mayors and to what now we are socializing much more publicly,” he said.

League of California Cities Executive Director and CEO Carolyn Coleman seized on the announcement to reiterate calls for increased and ongoing funding to address homelessness. Like other critics of the approach, she highlighted funding cuts in the governor’s budget proposal as a threat to cities’ ability to make progress on the issue. The governor is expected to release a revised budget proposal on Wednesday.

“Clearing encampments may be the most visible part of this crisis, but without addressing the underlying root causes of homelessness, the cycle will only repeat itself,” Coleman said in a statement. “We have the blueprint to drive real solutions…sustained funding leads to decreases in homelessness.”

While conservative activists are lauding the announcement, advocates for people experiencing homelessness are condemning it as cruel and counterproductive.

“This ordinance is no model,” said Alex Visotzy, senior California policy fellow for the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “The proven model for reducing encampments is by bringing services and connections to housing to folks that are in encampments. That has to be coupled with taking the time to build trust and understand what people’s needs are.”

However, Paul Webster, a California-based fellow with the Cicero Institute, said in a statement that the proposal did not go far enough, calling it “a step in the right direction,” but also a “half-measure.”

“He could easily ban deadly encampments statewide,” Webster said, pointing to a handful of other states that have implemented statewide bans, which Cicero has promoted, as examples.

Under Newsom’s leadership, the state has invested some $27 billion to address affordable housing and homelessness, but frustrated with slow progress, he’s become a leading champion for cracking down on encampments. California’s homeless population is still the largest in the country, with more than 187,000 people at last count.

After the Supreme Court cleared the way for cities to enforce camping bans last year, Newsom directed state agencies to institute policies to remove encampments and encouraged cities to follow suit. Since then, dozens of cities and counties in California have passed new laws or begun enforcing existing bans governing homelessness, according to the National Homelessness Law Center.

Eric Tars, senior policy director for the center, drew a parallel between Newsom’s approach and President Donald Trump’s.

“Politicians want to blame and punish people for being poor and sleeping outside in a country where more and more people struggle to make ends meet,” he said in a statement, noting that high housing costs are a key driver of homelessness. “Newson’s ordinance, like Trump’s budget cuts and bad policies, will make homelessness worse.”

The state’s new template ordinance prohibits public camping that blocks sidewalks or remains in the same place for more than three days — an approach Visotzky described as “a recipe for creating chaos and confusion.”

“It’s a recipe for making it harder for outreach workers and case managers to stay in touch with the folks they’re trying to get inside. It’s a recipe for confusion between local jurisdictions,” he said. “So, I’m hard-pressed to believe that many local jurisdictions are going to see this model and think it’s workable for their jurisdiction.

The model encourages local governments to tailor policies to their needs, but calls on them to follow basic principles, including limits on criminal punishment for sleeping outside when no alternatives exist.

“Policies that prohibit individuals from sleeping outside anywhere in the jurisdiction without offering adequate indoor shelter, effectively banishing homeless individuals from the jurisdiction’s borders, are both inhumane and impose externalities on neighboring jurisdictions, which must face the costs and challenges of an increased unsheltered homeless population,” the template states.

It also requires officials to give notice and make reasonable attempts to house people before clearing camps, to “prioritize shelter and services” and ensure unhoused people and their belongings “are treated with respect.”

“It’s great to have the governor pushing alongside us to end the era of encampments,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement. Mahan has invested heavily in emergency shelter to move people off the streets and is now pursuing a policy of arresting unhoused people who refuse multiple offers of shelter.

He said the long-term success of Newsom’s approach requires ensuring local governments share the responsibility of providing shelter and treatment.

“Without sufficient beds and a requirement that people use them, we end up spending millions of dollars simply shuffling vulnerable people across jurisdictional lines,” Mahan said.