Judge questions San Francisco tactics in homeless sweeps
2 years ago

Judge questions San Francisco tactics in homeless sweeps

Associated Press  

SAN FRANCISCO — A judge in federal court Thursday questioned San Francisco’s tactics in homeless encampment cleanups, suggesting the city is not following its own policies of offering shelter beds to people being asked to leave a public area. Attorneys for San Francisco said its policies balance the rights of homeless people with a need to maintain public spaces clean and safe for everyone. “The question is how is that policy being executed.” The Coalition on Homelessness sued San Francisco in September, alleging that the city clears out encampments not to connect homeless people to services and housing as it claims, but in response to neighborhood complaints and to drive out homeless residents. The coalition in San Francisco also requested a preliminary injunction to stop city workers from seizing tents, clothing and other belongings of homeless people unless it follows its own policies of bagging and tagging items for safekeeping for up to 90 days.

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History of this topic

Opinion: On homelessness, liberal California and the ultraconservative Supreme Court largely agree
3 weeks, 5 days ago

Opinion: On homelessness, liberal California and the ultraconservative Supreme Court largely agree

LA Times  

What does a small, solidly Republican city in Oregon have in common with California’s largest liberal enclaves? California’s response to the ruling has become a vivid reminder of not just the intractability of the homelessness epidemic but also the tension between national liberal politics and local policy in Democratic-dominated states and cities. Roughly 84% of the state’s voters believe homelessness …

California sues LA suburb for temporary ban of homeless shelters
1 month, 2 weeks ago

California sues LA suburb for temporary ban of homeless shelters

The Independent  

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy California filed a lawsuit against …

State sues Southern California city that banned new homeless shelters
1 month, 2 weeks ago

State sues Southern California city that banned new homeless shelters

LA Times  

The state of California filed suit against Norwalk on Monday, alleging the southeastern Los Angeles County city’s moratorium on new homeless shelters and supportive housing violates half a dozen housing laws. Calling Norwalk’s law “beyond cruel,” Newsom had threatened litigation for months and already withdrew state approval for Norwalk’s development blueprint, making it ineligible for certain affordable housing dollars. Rob …

Humboldt officials accuse San Francisco of busing the city’s homeless problems north
4 months ago

Humboldt officials accuse San Francisco of busing the city’s homeless problems north

LA Times  

Humboldt County leaders say they’re worried that San Francisco’s aggressive efforts to relocate homeless people to other cities will simply shift the problem to other jurisdictions. During their Tuesday meeting, Humboldt County supervisors debated sending a draft letter, addressed to Breed, questioning whether San Francisco was making sure the homeless people it’s busing out actually land housing and jobs. As …

Everyone agrees there’s a homeless crisis in the US. Plans to address it vary among mayor candidates
4 months, 1 week ago

Everyone agrees there’s a homeless crisis in the US. Plans to address it vary among mayor candidates

Associated Press  

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Mayor London Breed has launched a new crackdown on people sleeping outside in a campaign to clear the sidewalks of homeless encampments that have come to define the city. “You can truly change the reputation of San Francisco from a place that today people believe they can come to our city, pitch a tent and …

Editorial: Newsom and San Francisco take a wrong turn on homelessness
4 months, 2 weeks ago

Editorial: Newsom and San Francisco take a wrong turn on homelessness

LA Times  

Homeless people collect personal items as San Francisco city workers remove an encampment in the Bayview neighborhood on Aug. 1. This ignores the fact that there are 8,300 homeless people in San Francisco, but the city’s 3,600 shelter beds are nearly at capacity. He created Project Roomkey, the program that cities and counties used to move vulnerable homeless people into …

As San Francisco cracks down on homeless encampments, a question rises: Where will people go?
4 months, 3 weeks ago

As San Francisco cracks down on homeless encampments, a question rises: Where will people go?

LA Times  

Outreach workers, backed by law enforcement officers, have fanned out across San Francisco in recent days in targeted efforts to dismantle some of the city’s most visible encampments. A week into what Mayor London Breed has called a “very aggressive” effort to clear homeless encampments across San Francisco, a key question looms: Where will the people living in those tents …

San Francisco police and street cleaners take aggressive approach to clearing homeless encampments
4 months, 3 weeks ago

San Francisco police and street cleaners take aggressive approach to clearing homeless encampments

Associated Press  

SAN FRANCISCO — Police in San Francisco will start clearing out homeless residents living in public areas under new policies announced Tuesday by the office of Mayor London Breed, who has pledged a more aggressive approach to tent encampments following a key U.S. Supreme Court decision. In a memo, Breed’s office said city workers will continue offering housing and services …

Taking cue from Supreme Court, Breed to launch aggressive homeless sweeps in San Francisco
4 months, 3 weeks ago

Taking cue from Supreme Court, Breed to launch aggressive homeless sweeps in San Francisco

LA Times  

James Reem has lived in a tent on the corner of Fell and Baker streets for more than a year. “They’re not concerned about the homeless,” James Reem said of San Francisco’s plans for encampment sweeps. “They’re concerned about getting rid of us.” His adopted neighborhood is among dozens of sites likely to be targeted as the city launches what …

Will the Grants Pass ruling on homelessness spur smaller cities to shoo people into L.A.?
5 months, 2 weeks ago

Will the Grants Pass ruling on homelessness spur smaller cities to shoo people into L.A.?

LA Times  

When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling on anti-camping laws last month, Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo was one of the local political leaders who welcomed it. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 8th Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause prohibits criminal penalties for “sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain …

How will Supreme Court ruling on homeless camps affect California? Cities across state weigh in
5 months, 3 weeks ago

How will Supreme Court ruling on homeless camps affect California? Cities across state weigh in

LA Times  

A woman gathers possessions to take with her before a homeless encampment was cleaned up in San Francisco last August. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass slammed the Supreme Court’s ruling, calling it “disappointing” and arguing that it should not be used to jail homeless residents or drive them from city to city. In a phone interview, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex …

Supreme Court rules cities may enforce laws against homeless encampments
5 months, 3 weeks ago

Supreme Court rules cities may enforce laws against homeless encampments

LA Times  

Tents that serve as shelter for homeless people line the sidewalk along Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles. In a 6-3 decision, the justices disagreed with the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco and ruled that it is not “cruel and unusual” punishment for city officials to forbid homeless people from sleeping on the streets or in parks. Gavin Newsom …

People can’t be detained just for trying to avoid police, California Supreme Court says
7 months, 3 weeks ago

People can’t be detained just for trying to avoid police, California Supreme Court says

LA Times  

Police officers cannot detain someone on the street just because that person tries to avoid contact with them, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Officers “may consider what they see in plain view” and also can “approach people in public, engage them in consensual conversation, and take note of their appearance and behavior,” Corrigan wrote, but absent probable cause “the …

Supreme Court divided on homelessness case that will affect California encampment policy
8 months ago

Supreme Court divided on homelessness case that will affect California encampment policy

LA Times  

Tents that serve as shelter for homeless people line the sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles. Los Angeles-based attorney Theane Evangelis, representing the Oregon city, said the problem of homelessness has been made worse in the West because of U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rulings that found it was unconstitutional for cities to impose fines or other punishments on homeless …

Editorial: The Supreme Court cannot allow homelessness to be a crime
8 months ago

Editorial: The Supreme Court cannot allow homelessness to be a crime

LA Times  

If you are homeless and have nowhere to go — neither a temporary shelter bed nor a permanent home — can you be fined or, worse, jailed for sleeping on a sidewalk? That’s the question that the Supreme Court wrestled with Monday when it heard oral arguments in the case of Grants Pass vs. Johnson regarding the Oregon city’s ordinance …

Editorial: L.A. officials lied to justify seizing homeless people’s belongings. That’s despicable
8 months ago

Editorial: L.A. officials lied to justify seizing homeless people’s belongings. That’s despicable

LA Times  

Ry Thounry packs up her tent on the Main Street overpass above the 101 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles while sanitation crews move in to clean the homeless encampment. Plaintiff Pete Diocson, Jr., a homeless man in Harbor City, had his dog’s wire kennel seized and discarded because sanitation workers and Los Angeles Police Department officers told him it was …

Supreme Court hears case that could upend California’s homelessness policies
8 months ago

Supreme Court hears case that could upend California’s homelessness policies

LA Times  

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday hears what could be its most important case ever on the homelessness crisis. The outcome could determine whether cities in California and the West may enforce their local laws against camping on sidewalks or other public property. Since 2007, the states with the largest increases in the number of people “experiencing chronic patterns of …

Editorial: San Francisco voters rejected the removal of two judges. It’s a win for independence in the court
9 months, 1 week ago

Editorial: San Francisco voters rejected the removal of two judges. It’s a win for independence in the court

LA Times  

Homeless activists hold a memorial outside San Francisco City Hall for the dozens of people who have died unhoused on the city’s streets, many due to fentanyl poisoning. Voters rejected a challenge to two Superior Court judges who opponents charged were too “soft on crime.” San Francisco voters made national news in the March primary election by adopting two ballot …

Opinion: In California, homelessness isn’t a crime. Is the Supreme Court about to change that?
11 months, 1 week ago

Opinion: In California, homelessness isn’t a crime. Is the Supreme Court about to change that?

LA Times  

Outreach workers check on the welfare of homeless people sleeping at the entrance of the 7th Street Metro station in 2022. A panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declared this unconstitutional, concluding that the government can’t punish people criminally or civilly for being unhoused or for having bedding materials. The court relied on …

Supreme Court to rule on clearing homeless encampments in California and the West
11 months, 1 week ago

Supreme Court to rule on clearing homeless encampments in California and the West

LA Times  

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether homeless people have a constitutional right to camp on public property when they have no other place to sleep. “The Supreme Court can now correct course and end the costly delays from lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear encampments and deliver services to those in need.” Theane Evangelis, the Los …

The little-understood reason why clearing homeless encampments became harder in California than most other states
1 year ago

The little-understood reason why clearing homeless encampments became harder in California than most other states

LA Times  

Blocks from the White House, McPherson Square is a quiet, grassy downtown park where Washingtonians lunch and pigeons perch atop a statue of a Civil War general killed fighting the Confederacy. The first 9th Circuit ruling came in 2006, when judges struck down a Los Angeles sidewalk ordinance and ruled that homeless persons could not be arrested solely because they …

Cities crack down on homeless encampments. Advocates say that’s not the answer
1 year ago

Cities crack down on homeless encampments. Advocates say that’s not the answer

LA Times  

A woman gathers possessions to take before a homeless encampment was cleaned up this summer in San Francisco. State and local laws criminalizing homelessness are on the rise, said Scout Katovich, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of sweeps and property seizures in a dozen cities, including Miami, Anchorage and …

Editorial: Asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on homeless policy invites troubles for L.A. and other cities
1 year, 2 months ago

Editorial: Asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on homeless policy invites troubles for L.A. and other cities

LA Times  

Mayor Karen Bass, right, chats in February with Jawonna Smith, 33, who lived in a tent on a sidewalk behind the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures before she was moved to a motel under the “Inside Safe” program. Nor is whining to the Supreme Court that judges won’t let cities cite or arrest homeless people. Hydee Feldstein Soto — community …

California leaders, beleaguered by homelessness crisis, want more power to clear camps
1 year, 2 months ago

California leaders, beleaguered by homelessness crisis, want more power to clear camps

LA Times  

A tense debate across the American West over whether homeless people should be allowed to sleep in public has created some strange bedfellows in California. The decision reiterated a ruling from 2018, when the 9th Circuit found that the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment “prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on …

D.A. sues Sacramento over failure to clean up homeless encampments
1 year, 3 months ago

D.A. sues Sacramento over failure to clean up homeless encampments

LA Times  

Thien Ho holds a poster collage with the words “criminal behavior” as he announces on Tuesday that his office is suing the city of Sacramento for creating a public nuisance by failing to take stronger action on homeless camps. Thien Ho announced the lawsuit Tuesday during a news conference in Sacramento, saying the city is seeing a “collapse into chaos” …

Newsom says California will intervene in court case blocking San Francisco from clearing encampments
1 year, 3 months ago

Newsom says California will intervene in court case blocking San Francisco from clearing encampments

Associated Press  

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday the state will intervene in an ongoing federal court case that’s barred San Francisco from cleaning up homeless encampments until more shelter beds are available, saying the judge has gone too far and is preventing the state from solving a critical problem. Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor, said he’s personally …

California homelessness in spotlight as Supreme Court is urged to consider the right to camp
1 year, 4 months ago

California homelessness in spotlight as Supreme Court is urged to consider the right to camp

LA Times  

The Supreme Court is being urged to consider whether homeless people have a constitutional right to sleep on public sidewalks and camp in parks. At issue is a 9th Circuit Court ruling that invoked the 8th Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” to prohibit West Coast cities from making it a crime to sleep or camp on public property. …

Watching from a wheelchair as crucial items are trashed: Unhoused people sue California cities
1 year, 4 months ago

Watching from a wheelchair as crucial items are trashed: Unhoused people sue California cities

LA Times  

Homeless people sit in the shade at Martha’s Village & Kitchen in Indio, one of the largest providers of homeless services in the Coachella Valley and Riverside County, in July 2020. She, along with a grassroots mutual aid organization and two other unhoused people with disabilities, filed a civil rights lawsuit earlier this month challenging San Bernardino’s practice of seizing …

District attorney threatens to charge officials in California’s capital over homelessness response
1 year, 4 months ago

District attorney threatens to charge officials in California’s capital over homelessness response

Associated Press  

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tensions are rising in California’s capital city as the Sacramento district attorney threatened to file charges against city officials over their handling of the homelessness crisis, saying they are too lenient in their approach and are failing to enforce the rules. District Attorney Thien Ho on Monday threatened to press criminal charges against city officials under state …

Federal judge says California’s capital city can’t clear homeless camps during extreme heat
1 year, 4 months ago

Federal judge says California’s capital city can’t clear homeless camps during extreme heat

Associated Press  

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A federal judge has temporarily banned Sacramento from clearing homeless encampments for at least 14 days, citing the extreme heat forecast this month in California’s capital city. Advocates said clearing the camps in such weather puts homeless people in “obvious danger.” Sacramento defines temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit as being “excessive heat” in its protocols, the complaint …

L.A. County asks appeals court to dismiss long-running homelessness lawsuit
1 year, 7 months ago

L.A. County asks appeals court to dismiss long-running homelessness lawsuit

LA Times  

Los Angeles County has asked a federal appeals court to put an end to a years-long lawsuit over the government response to the homelessness crisis, arguing that the judge overseeing the case abused his power and overstepped his authority. California Judge rejects L.A. County’s revamped homeless settlement For a second time, a federal judge refuses to sign off on a …

Homelessness in San Francisco: talk of frustration, survival
1 year, 11 months ago

Homelessness in San Francisco: talk of frustration, survival

Associated Press  

SAN FRANCISCO — On a frosty December morning, Victoria Solomon recounted how San Francisco police had rousted her awake hours earlier, and threatened to take her to jail if she didn’t clear out within 10 minutes. In September, the organization and seven individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless again sued San Francisco for violating the city’s …

Federal judge says San Francisco can’t clear homeless camps
1 year, 11 months ago

Federal judge says San Francisco can’t clear homeless camps

Associated Press  

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has temporarily banned San Francisco from clearing homeless encampments, saying the city violated its own policies by failing to offer other shelter. The move came in a lawsuit filed on behalf of homeless plaintiffs that sought to stop San Francisco from dismantling homeless encampments until it has thousands of additional shelter beds. Now we …

Lawsuit demands San Francisco stop homeless camp sweeps
2 years, 2 months ago

Lawsuit demands San Francisco stop homeless camp sweeps

Associated Press  

SAN FRANCISCO — Homeless people and their advocates sued the city of San Francisco on Tuesday, demanding that it stop harassing and destroying the belongings of people living on the streets with nowhere to go, and with the goal of forcing the city to spend billions of dollars on affordable homes that will keep residents housed. Not only has the …

San Francisco DA, others denounce mayor’s plan for police
3 years ago

San Francisco DA, others denounce mayor’s plan for police

Associated Press  

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco’s top prosecutor on Monday pushed back on the mayor’s call for increased policing to battle rampant drug dealing in one of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods, urging her instead to put more money into housing and treatment that get at the root causes of crime. “The reality is that our outreach teams are out there …

After a cold and wet week, federal court comes to skid row
3 years, 10 months ago

After a cold and wet week, federal court comes to skid row

LA Times  

A wet week in Los Angeles that drenched the region’s homeless population has left a federal judge outraged by the conditions people on the street face and by the city’s apparent inaction. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter spent the weekend on skid row bringing tents to people who had nowhere to shelter and now wants elected officials and attorneys …

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