A new plan is underway for California to crack down harder on encampments of unhoused people. On May 12, Governor Gavin Newsom (D) released a model ordinance, intended as a blueprint for cities and counties to follow. Jurisdictions can adopt the ordinance as local law.
“Encampments pose a serious public safety risk, and expose the people in encampments to increased risk of sexual violence, criminal activity, property damage and break-ins, and unsanitary conditions,” the governor’s office stated.
The key provisions include a ban on “persistent camping” in a single location, a ban on any encampments that “block free passage on sidewalks,” and a requirement that local officials “provide notice and make every reasonable effort to identify and offer shelter prior to clearing an encampment”.
Back in July 2024, Newsom’s office issued an executive order calling on state agencies to “urgently address” encampments. He cited the work of the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) for its actions to “resolve” over 11,000 encampments. CalTrans has years of complaints against it for unlawfully seizing people’s belongings—in 2020, it settled a lawsuit for $1.3 million over such allegations. The agency also struck and killed a woman with machinery during a 2018 encampment raid in Modesto.
The governor’s new plan follows a big Supreme Court decision in 2024. Newsom threw his support behind a lawsuit about whether cities have the legal right to evict people from encampments when no shelter is available, supporting local governments in what was known as the Grants Pass case. The court ruled 6-3 in favor of the cities—a decision that Justice Sonia Sotomayer criticized in her dissent as “cruel and unusual.”
“It’s perpetuating the criminalization of people despite the lack of shelter and housing … it makes people sicker and some will die.”
“In some ways it’s codifying what the Grants Pass case has done,” Laura Guzman, executive director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, told Filter of Newsom’s latest move. “It’s perpetuating the criminalization of people despite the lack of shelter and housing, which are the true ways to end homelessness. This ordinance allows cities to continue sweeping encampments—it makes people sicker and some will die … The implementation of an ordinance requiring people to move every three days is probably impossible, but cities will be jumping on the bandwagon.”
Newsom’s framework advises cities to not impose criminal punishment for sleeping outside when there is no shelter available. Further, “Encampment policies must prioritize shelter and services and ensure that people experiencing homelessness and their belongings are treated with respect.” However, it continues, cities should be free to enforce “common-sense policies to protect the health and safety of their residents and maintain their public spaces.”
Encampments, according to the governor’s office, “dampen and deter both commercial and recreational activity through the accumulation of hazardous material and excessive debris.” The model ordinance prohibits people from sleeping more than three nights in the same location in “a tent, sleeping bag, blanket, or other materials.”
Newsom’s enforcement guidelines say that officials should try to offer shelter and services to people being evicted from a site. A notice to vacate should be posted at least 48 hours prior, stating when an enforcement action will take place, what shelter options are available, and options for storing or retrieving personal belongings. But enforcement actions may take place faster in “exigent circumstances involving an imminent threat to life, safety, health, or infrastructure.”
Personal items collected during enforcement should be tagged and stored for at least 60 days. That includes anything of at least $50 in value, and “items of apparent personal value” including wheelchairs, medical equipment, tents, personal documents and photographs, bicycles and strollers. But officials can dispose of items they deem to be a health or safety risk, and no large items like mattresses or sheds will be stored.
Along with the announcement, Gov. Newsom released $3.3 billion in funding through the voter-approved Proposition 1. According to the state, this money will expand behavioral health housing and treatment for chronically unhoused people and those with severe mental health issues. The governor’s office said it will create 5,000 residential treatment beds and 21,800 outpatient treatment slots, and announced that a second round of funding will follow.
Homelessness remains a severe issue throughout California. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the state had over 187,000 unhoused people in 2024—a record total, which accounts for nearly one in four of the United States’ unhoused population.
It is also true that homelessness is growing faster—unsheltered homelessness, especially—nationwide than in California. The national population grew 18 percent from 2023-24, versus a 3 percent rise in California.
Yet homelessness is still a disproportionately large problem in California. While some major counties like Los Angeles, Alameda (Oakland) and Sacramento have seen recent slight or significant decreases in their unhoused populations, others—like San Diego, San Francisco, Orange and San Joaquin—have seen increases. Homelessness almost doubled (92.8 percent increase) from 2023-24 in San Joaquin County, home to the city of Stockton in the Central Valley. Unsheltered homelessness there increased by 156 percent.
“This is happening across the country—a massive movement of people with higher incomes … has increased [housing] unaffordability, and numbers of homeless people.”
California remains an outlier by other measures. It has nearly half (44 percent) of the nation’s “chronically” unhoused people, and about two thirds of its unhoused population is unsheltered—the highest proportion in the US. This means that more than in any other state, homelessness is a visible presence in housed residents’ lives—a situation with clear political impacts.
“In the case of Alameda County, the decrease in unsheltered is because they placed people in hotels through the Homekey program [with COVID-19 relief funding],” Guzman said of her home county. “In the case of cities like Fresno and Modesto, there has been a migration of people from the most expensive cities like LA and San Francisco to Fresno, which has hiked up the rental market. This is happening across the country—a massive movement of people with higher incomes … has increased the unaffordability, and numbers of homeless people.”
The issue of homelessness has become central in statewide politics, intersecting with public concerns about drug use and overdose. In 2024, California voters approved several relevant measures—including Proposition F in San Francisco, which drug-tests people on public benefits; Proposition 1, which aims to address the shortage of behavioral health housing and treatment beds; and Proposition 36, which brought back harsher felony penalties for drug possession and forced treatment for people convicted.
Politicians have taken advantage of public fears of these issues to pursue harsher crackdowns and pass laws criminalizing people living on the streets—most notably in San Francisco.
The relationship between homelessness and drug use is more complicated than news headlines suggest. A 2025 study of unhoused adults by the University of California-San Francisco, the largest in nearly 30 years, found that less than half of subjects (37 percent) reported using any illicit drugs in the past six months. A quarter of people surveyed said they had never used drugs, while 65 percent reported having used drugs at least three times a week at some point in their lives. The study authors concluded that while substance use can be a risk factor in people becoming unhoused, homelessness itself also pushes people towards drug use.
Meanwhile, as many people camp near highways and bridges, cities and counties have been butting heads with the CalTrans, the state agency that has become its chief homelessness enforcer. According to a report in CalMatters, local officials are frustrated—feeling that CalTrans takes too long to respond to complaints about encampments, or that the state agency doesn’t allow city workers to enter its properties, or that it doesn’t reimburse cities for the costs of removing encampments.
Lawmakers are proposing a bill to compel the department to collaborate closely with cities when it tries to clear encampments. SB 569 would require CalTrans to establish a “dedicated liaison” to facilitate communication between all governments, and put in place “delegated maintenance agreements” to work together to remove encampments. CalTrans could issue a “single general entry permit,” to allow local officials to enter state properties.
Photograph of encampment in El Monte, California, by Person-with-No Name via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0