Newsom To Order Dismantling Of CA Homeless Encampments

CALIFORNIA — Gov. Gavin Newsom will order state officials on Thursday to dismantle homeless encampments with a sweeping executive order, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, the New York Times reported.

The order comes in response to the June Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces. A lower court ruling had brought the practice to a halt, calling such bans cruel and unusual, at a time when the homeless population exploded across the Golden State.

The Supreme Court ruling opened the floodgates to a patchwork of approaches to homelessness across the state.

“The state has been hard at work to address this crisis on our streets,” Newsom said in a statement to The New York Times. “There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part.”

According to the Times, the executive order represents the nation’s most sweeping response to the ruling. Roughly 180,000 people are unhoused in California.

“This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities,” Newsom said in a statement after the ruling, which came the same day Los Angeles released an annual count of the homeless population.

While the governor can encourage cities to enforce bans on encampments, he can not force them to.

In Los Angeles, home to the nation's largest homeless population, Mayor Karen Bass denounced the Supreme Court ruling, and efforts to clear out encampments have been met with protests.

Bass issued a statement urging caution in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling.

“This ruling must not be used as an excuse for cities across the country to attempt to arrest their way out of this problem or hide the homelessness crisis in neighboring cities or in jail. Neither will work,” she said.

LA County is the nation’s most populous, with about 10 million people. More than 1 in 5 of all homeless people in the U.S. live in the county, according to The Associated Press.

Results released from a federally required tally conducted in January found 75,312 people were homeless on any given night across Los Angeles County, down slightly from 75,518 in 2023. About 45,252 were within the city of Los Angeles, where public frustration has grown as tents have proliferated on sidewalks and in parks.

In San Francisco, conversely, the Mayor London N. Breed applauded the Supreme Court ruling. This week she announced plans to begin clearing out the city's encampments.

“Effective August, we are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties," she said.

“We will continue to lead with services, but we also can’t continue to allow people to do what they want on the streets of San Francisco, especially when we have a place for them to go,” Breed, a Democrat, said in the wake of the 6-3 ruling.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.