California lawmakers push new bill to ban encampments on sidewalks, near schools

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is behind the measure.

As frustration grows over sprawling homeless camps up and down California, a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers is pushing a new bill to ban encampments on sidewalks and near schools and bus stops.

Lawmakers said the goal is to quickly disband unsafe encampments while bringing more unhoused residents indoors and connecting them with needed mental health and addiction services.

“Californians should not have to tolerate the encampments that now fill our open spaces with trash, needles and human waste,” Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, a Republican from San Diego who spearheaded the bill, said during a news conference this week.

The measure would prohibit homeless people from setting up camp on sidewalks as long as they can access a shelter bed. But most cities and counties don’t have anywhere near enough shelter for everyone who needs it, meaning many sidewalk encampments might not be automatically cleared.

The bill would also prevent homeless people from staying within 500 feet of “sensitive community areas” such as schools, open spaces and transit areas. And it would require that officials give encampment residents 72 hours’ notice before any sweep and offer them information about shelters and services.

Anyone violating the law could be charged with a misdemeanor crime or infraction.

“Public spaces are not living spaces,” Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said in a statement. “People deserve to live inside, and the public deserve to use their parks, sidewalks and streets as they were designed.”

Senate Bill 1101, modeled after a recent San Diego ordinance, comes as state and local officials from both parties have turned to increasingly forceful approaches to solving homelessness as an exasperated public has watched the crisis worsen despite unprecedented billions spent to get people off the street. California’s homeless population swelled 6% last year to an estimated 181,000 people — an increase propelled by the state’s deepening affordable housing shortage, fentanyl emergency and overburdened mental health system.

Across the state, localities including Oakland, Milpitas, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, and, most recently, San Mateo County, have adopted new encampment restrictions. San Jose is now considering similar rules. At the same time, the state has given cities hundreds of millions of dollars to clear camps and is phasing in new reforms to compel more homeless people with severe mental illness into treatment.

Since 2018, federal court rulings have required officials across the western U.S. to offer shelter before removing most encampments. However, after frustrated state and local officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn or modify the mandate, the justices agreed to review it later this year.

But advocates for homeless people say clearing encampments traumatizes those forced to move and often achieves little but pushing camps from one location to another.

“This isn’t a solution,” said Solinna Ven, organizing director with the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco. “There’s not enough shelters, there’s not enough of any type of resources.”

In recent years, the coalition and other groups have successfully sued to pause sweeps of some of the state’s largest encampments until local officials could provide shelter for camp residents.

Still, advocates maintain shelter, unlike permanent affordable housing, is only a temporary solution. And even when shelter beds are available, homeless people sometimes turn them down for various reasons, from health and safety concerns to a reluctance to follow curfews.

As lawmakers begin discussing the proposed encampment ban, voters will weigh in on a $6.4 billion ballot measure to add more than 11,000 new psychiatric beds and homeless housing units. Prop.1, on the March 5 ballot, also has support from both Republicans and Democrats.

“Solving the homelessness crisis is not a partisan issue,” Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat from Napa, said in a statement. “And I’m happy to join with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to connect homeless people with services and get them shelter.”