WASHINGTON — In the six months since the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for cities to crack down on homelessness, more than a hundred places around the country have banned people from sleeping outside even if they have nowhere else to go.
The spike reflects widespread frustration over record-high rates of homelessness, along with drug use and mental breakdowns in public spaces. But advocates for the unhoused warn that more fines and jail time will only make the problem worse.
The new laws are in rural, urban and suburban towns and cities — both Republican-led and Democratic — and span every region, including in places not known for homelessness, like West Virginia, New Hampshire and Wyoming. Many of the bans are in California, home to about half of the nation's quarter of a million people who live outside.
"Letting them stay in place is cruel. We want to prompt them to come to a better place," says Tom Patti, a San Joaquin County supervisor in California's Central Valley.
He spearheaded an ordinance to make it "uncomfortable" for people to camp outside. It bans sleeping in cars and requires people living outside to move at least 300 feet every hour. Patti says the county's approach will no longer be reaching out to people for weeks or months to offer blankets and build trust.
"We've now shifted to a 'Hello? Where are you from? Where is your support network? Let's help get you back to home,'" he says.
San Joaquin County's law also calls for creating safe camping spaces, though Patti says that will take time to coordinate with cities. Violators of the new ban face a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in jail, but Patti says enforcement is discretionary.
"We're not hardcore," he says. "But we do know that if a person's trying to build a pallet palace with their blue tarps and tents, we say, 'No, no, no, you're not allowed to do this, you are trespassing.'"
Critics say camping bans do nothing to fix the problems driving homelessness
In 2018, a federal appeals court ruled that cities could not punish people for sleeping outside, because it would amount to cruel and unusual punishment if they had nowhere else to go. The Supreme Court declined to take up the case. That left nine Western states unable to clear out encampments unless they offered people a place to stay. Some larger cities responded by beefing up their supply of shelter beds and investing significant money to build affordable housing.
But the homeless population in California and elsewhere rose relentlessly. Economists say a key factor has been a massive housing shortage that's pushed up rents and home prices faster than wages, a trend made worse by pandemic price spikes and inflation. A large body of research has found that high housing costs drive up homelessness.
By the time a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court took up camping bans this year, politicians of both parties were pushing for more flexibility to manage what they considered a public health and safety crisis.
So far, in the months since the ruling, some places with aggressive new camping bans have ramped up fines and arrests. Backers say the aim is to push people into drug treatment or other help that can get them off the streets. Advocates for the unhoused believe the ruling has also emboldened enforcement in states outside the West who'd passed their own camping bans.
But other cities have been slow to apply their harsher new laws.
"Law enforcement in a lot of these communities actually don't want to be the first line of services for people who are experiencing homelessness," says Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. "And it's a drain on their resources."
She and other advocates also say saddling someone with fines or an arrest record only makes it harder for them to get housing or find a job. Plus, treatment programs and shelter beds are in short supply. "No community in the country has enough resources to serve everybody who's experiencing homelessness," Oliva says.
Some cities have held firm against the Supreme Court ruling. The most prominent is Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass has pushed to move people temporarily into motels and touted success after the number of people living on the streets dropped 10% this year.
Still, Jesse Rabinowitz, with the National Homelessness Law Center, says the list of new camping bans keeps growing. And he worries this focus on clearing out encampments will distract from the real problem.
"It's time for our elected officials to recognize that half of this country struggles to pay rent, and we need to address the affordable housing crisis," he says. "That is the only way we're going to see fewer people sleeping outside."
The struggle to clear out parks and get people into long-term housing
Supervisor Patti says San Joaquin County has been adding more affordable housing and shelter space for years. So has Long Beach, Calif., says Paul Duncan, who manages that city's Homeless Services. But there's still not nearly enough, he says, and Long Beach has faced some of the steepest rent hikes in the country over the past decade. Duncan admits that simply forcing unhoused people to move around is not a long-term solution.
"What tends to happen is that encampment will ultimately return to that location," he says.
But this summer, after the Supreme Court ruling, Long Beach decided to step up enforcement of its longtime camping ban. It began by targeting four public parks that had become hard for the general public to use. The most challenging one was downtown next to a library.
"We had a significant number of people living in the park area, in the middle of the soccer field, you know, right next to the restroom in the walkways of the park," Duncan says.
Despite intensive outreach, many continued to rebuff offers of a shelter bed and services. The number of citations for camping or loitering after hours spiked, with 265 issued between late June and late October, according to the Long Beach Police Department. A diversion program can keep those misdemeanors off someone's record if they're working with a case manager to find housing and support.
These days, Duncan says the downtown park is mostly clear, although some people still sleep there overnight. Dozens of people are now living temporarily in motels, but it's taking longer than expected to get them into permanent housing.
One of those in a motel is 45-year-old Rasheena McCord, a mother of four. Her financial troubles came after she split from an abusive boyfriend and then had her work hours cut. She lived in her car for a time, but it broke down and there was no public transport to get her to her 5 a.m. shift at FedEx.
"And then I ended up not only not having a car anymore, I ended up sleeping in the parks. And I lost my job," she says.
McCord's oldest child is in the military. She sent her youngest to live with her father and placed two young adult children in the Long Beach Rescue Mission. But McCord did not want to go to a shelter herself. She says the idea of sharing a room with strangers felt distressing and unsafe. So she spent two long years in the downtown park.
"My belongings were getting stolen," she says. "I would wake up and all my stuff would be gone. I got 13 stitches in my face because someone hit me with a bottle. It was terrible."
Despite such desperate conditions, she knows people who insist on continuing to live outside and says she understands why.
"At some point, you're out there for so long and it seems like there's no help. And then when something comes along, it's like, 'Do I really believe it? Should I try it out?'" she says.
McCord thinks it's "totally wrong" that cities can now ban people from sleeping outside. But she's grateful she was offered temporary housing. She's now taking classes to become a registered nurse and hopes to get a permanent housing voucher before her allotted time in the motel runs out in May.
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