In Southern California, where the number of people living in urban encampments far exceeds the rest of the country, local leaders are struggling to find effective and compassionate ways to get people out and house them.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday that cities can ban people from camping or living outdoors has sparked a wide range of reactions, from sharp criticism from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to expressions of relief from California Governor Gavin Newsom, reflecting a divide that goes beyond political ideology, as both Bass and Newsom are progressive Democrats.
In fact, the two helped with a state-funded cleanup of an area along a Los Angeles freeway where an encampment had been cleared earlier this year. Bass’s “Inside Safe” program aims to remove people from encampments and place them in temporary housing, such as local motels. The program has received both criticism and praise from advocates for people experiencing homelessness.
“This ruling must not be used as an excuse for cities across the country to try to get away with this problem through arrests or to hide their homeless problems in neighboring cities and prisons,” Bass said in a statement.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 6: A person pushes a cart through the rain near a Skid Row homeless camp as a powerful, long-lasting atmospheric storm continues to affect Southern California for the second time in less than a week on February 6, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Getty Images
Newsom, meanwhile, joined other northern politicians, including the mayor of San Francisco, in supporting the Supreme Court’s decision, saying “for too long there has been legal ambiguity that has tied the hands of local officials.”
“Today’s Supreme Court decision gives state and local officials clear authority to implement and enforce policies to rid our cities of unsafe encampments,” Governor Newsom said, adding that the state will “work compassionately” to provide homeless people with “the resources they need to improve their lives.”
Just hours after the landmark ruling, the city of Los Angeles released its annual report counting the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city and county. The number dropped slightly after five consecutive years of increases. But perhaps most notably, there was a big drop in the number of people living outside and without shelter.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) said Friday that the city’s homeless population has decreased by 10.4%. “This is encouraging,” LAHSA CEO Dr. Va.-Lecia Adams Kellam said.
“We believe in housing and services, not arrest,” Kellam said, calling the new findings “evidence” that such an approach works.
More than 75,000 people are experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles County, according to the latest count, which LAHSA described as a “snapshot” of the crisis because it was only a point in time in January.
From last year to this year, the total number of people experiencing homelessness countywide — people living both indoors and outdoors — fell just 0.27%.
How will this impact Southern California?
California accounts for just under 12 percent of the nation’s population, but is home to more than 27 percent of Americans experiencing homelessness, according to a report the Department of Housing and Urban Development submitted to Congress this year.
Big cities suffer the most from the problem, with tents lining the streets of Downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row and San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, but Los Angeles and the South Coast have the highest rates of homelessness in California overall, and are estimated to be home to 49.9% of the state’s homeless population by 2022, according to the California Budget and Policy Center.
As home prices continue to rise, Los Angeles’ estimated population has grown for five consecutive years, only to decline slightly this year.
A homeless encampment on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, California, USA. Getty Images/iStockphoto
And according to a HUD report to Congress, 68% of California’s homeless people are living outdoors, in tents, or in other temporary housing — the exact people who would be affected by the Supreme Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court has ruled that bans on sleeping outdoors do not violate the Eighth Amendment because they are not “cruel and unusual punishment.” Therefore, cities can enforce such bans with penalties like fines or 30 days in jail, as the small Oregon town involved in this case did, because the court found that such punishments “are not intended to inflict fear, pain, or disgrace,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
“Homelessness is complex; its causes are diverse; therefore, the public policy responses needed to address it will also be diverse,” he wrote.
In the Southern California region, some local leaders said they were still evaluating how the Supreme Court’s decision would affect their towns and cities. The city of Long Beach said the ruling simply gives public officials “the tools” to address the issue.
Some, like Newsom, support the ruling.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 4: People walk through a residential street in Los Angeles, California on August 4, 2022. Rising home prices and cost of living have led to San Francisco and Los Angeles ranking first and second in the U.S. for net outmigration, according to a July Redfin report. Getty Images
“To truly solve homelessness, law enforcement must be accompanied by an aggressive effort to build all kinds of housing opportunities, including permanent supportive housing, affordable housing and workforce housing,” Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, whose district is made up of mostly affluent coastal communities including Laguna Beach, said in a statement.
Other local leaders and nonprofits have joined Bass in criticism. “Punishing individuals because of a lack of housing is fundamentally wrong,” said Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo D. Garcia.
“Criminalizing homelessness is a shameful failure that does not address the underlying issues that created this crisis,” he said in a statement.
Some say arrest and incarceration do nothing to address the broader problem. The California Community Empowerment League slammed the court’s decision, saying it was “unconscionable to allow authorities to enforce laws that punish people simply for not having a home.”
“Thousands of people in California are being evicted because they cannot afford to live in the richest state in the richest country in the world, with few to no other options for shelter,” the social and economic justice nonprofit said in a statement.
Los Angeles experiences small changes with unique approach
The Los Angeles Housing Services Department reported that the number of people experiencing homelessness in both the city and county of Los Angeles fell for the first time in six years.
But those changes were very small.
Citywide, the number is down 2.2% from last year this year to 45,252, while countywide, the number is down very slightly, just 0.3%, to an estimated 75,312.
But LAHSA, which compiled the study with researchers from the University of Southern California, said the real change is in the number of people living outdoors and without shelter, which the latest survey found is falling and more people experiencing homelessness are living indoors in motels or other housing options.
The agency’s CEO, Kellam, said this meant “things are moving in the direction we want to see.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 31: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks during a press conference as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra looks on in Los Angeles, California on May 31, 2023. Getty Images
The county saw a 5.1% decrease in the number of people living outdoors and a 12.7% increase in the number of people living indoors. In Los Angeles, the number of people not outdoors or indoors decreased by 10.4% and the number of people living indoors increased by 17.7%.
It is important to note that these findings were only collected from one point in time.
“Homeless counts are best thought of as a local snapshot of people experiencing homelessness at a particular point in time,” said Paul Rubenstein, LAHSA’s associate director of external relations.
Mayor Bass’ approach to homelessness has been to move people out of encampments and into temporary housing through the city’s “Inside Safe” program, a strategy that some advocates have criticized for not being a long-term solution and for only temporarily moving people out of tents and putting them back on the streets.
Advocates say it’s a compassionate approach that works, and is the reason they’ve seen a change in the homeless population this year.
“I don’t support criminalizing homeless people,” Kellam said. “We believe in providing housing and services. Arrests are not the point.”
“We’ve been waiting for something that would give us more hope,” she said, “and now we’re in that moment.”
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Marissa Wentzke