Homeless-related arrests, citations soared in these cities after Supreme Court case

A homeless tent near a freeway File photo by Chris Stone Times of San Diego Homeless residents of a few of California s biggest cities increasingly are facing criminal penalties for the actions they take to survive on the street according to a first-of-its-kind CalMatters analysis of content throughout the state Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the U S Supreme Court s decision in Grants Pass v Johnson which upended California s homelessness strategy by allowing cities to enforce blanket bans on camping even if no shelter beds are available Instantly after the decision unhoused Californians and the people who help them disclosed seeing an increase in enforcement But CalMatters reporting gleaned from more than residents records requests appears to be the first statewide effort to quantify that increase CalMatters analyzed material on arrests and citations for camping and other homelessness-related offenses for comparing the six months before the June Supreme Court decision to the six months after We unveiled increases in cities throughout the state even in those where local leaders announced they didn t change their framework as a product of Grants Pass Here are particular of the places with the majority of substantial increases according to police figures In San Francisco then-mayor London Breed promised to be very aggressive in moving encampments following the Grants Pass decision She delivered Arrests and citations for illegal lodging increased from in the six months before the ruling to in the six months after a increase Even though Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke out against the Grants Pass decision calling it disappointing and vowing to lead with housing instead of enforcement homelessness-related arrests increased after the ruling Citations and arrests doubled in San Diego which also doubled the size of its police teams that respond to homelessness In Sacramento the number of citations and arrests nearly tripled from in the six months before Grants Pass to in the six months after From January through May Sacramento police had already issued citations and arrests suggesting enforcement continues to trend upward Stockton issued just homelessness-related citations in the six months before the Grants Pass decision In the six months after the ruling came out that number jumped to It wasn t just big cities that saw more enforcement Citations and arrests increased by more than two-thirds in Ukiah on the North Coast and more than doubled in Merced in the San Joaquin Valley The ruling which uncovered that the city of Grants Pass Oregon did not violate the constitution by banning encampments throughout the city when no shelter was available accelerated a shift toward a pro-enforcement approach to homelessness Buoyed by voters fed up with large encampments near their homes Gov Gavin Newsom used the opportunity to urge cities to ramp up enforcement and pass anti-camping ordinances The people making the event for enforcement argue it s a type of tough love that s sometimes necessary to get people off the street If someone refuses multiple offers of help the threat of arrest might make them ultimately say yes explained San Diego Police Department Capt Steve Shebloski I hope nobody has to go to jail and I hope everybody takes services he stated I just dont think that s the reality of where we re at with certain individuals The type of help police can offer varies widely by city and situation In San Diego the Homeless Outreach Band which includes police officers as well as social workers and mental physical condition professionals is supposed to offer shelter before issuing citations or making arrests Between May and May that crew made placements into housing or shelter Shebloski commented People refused help times he revealed And they accepted another form of services times from a referral to a healing venture to a ride to an appointment to a new toothbrush The department does not track how a large number of people wished shelter but couldn t get it In Stockton police take a more hands-off approach They hand out flyers with six phone numbers people can call to reach homeless shelters and other organizations But shelter beds aren t unfailingly available Last year California had more than unhoused residents and fewer than year-round shelter and transitional housing beds according to information compiled by the U S Department of Housing and Urban Progress Doctors academics and social workers who work with people on the street often say arrests make it harder for unhoused people to get back on their feet When someone living outside gets a citation they often miss their court date they might lose the ticket or just forget the date amidst the chaos of life on the street which leads the court to issue a warrant for their arrest People with proceeding warrants can t qualify for multiple housing and recovery programs In plenty of situations people cited or arrested for homelessness-related crimes are never charged or the charges are hurriedly dismissed But the threat of an arrest can be just as disruptive as the arrest itself People leave their campsites to avoid getting taken to jail and in so doing lose touch with the outreach workers trying to connect them with housing and other services In a weird way it undermines the housing process to such an extent that you end up working for homelessness and against the people who are experiencing homelessness noted Brett Feldman director of street medicine at USC Specific leaders are pushing back against the enforcement mindset This week two Democratic Congress members introduced the Housing Not Handcuffs Act which would prohibit federal agencies from punishing people for living outside if they have no other option Grants Pass made no difference say cities where arrests and citations spiked In the year since the Grants Pass decision at least cities and three counties in California passed new ordinances targeting homeless encampments according to a up-to-date analysis by UC Berkeley Law students and faculty Selected ban camping only in specific areas such as near schools waterways or levees while others ban camping throughout the entire city A few cities such as Fresno made camping a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and in fines Even cities that didn t pass ordinances started cracking down on encampments with new vigor using old rules To quantify that crackdown CalMatters filed more than general records requests to police departments sheriff s offices prosecutors and city and county governments for information on arrests citations charges filed and encampment removals Those requests span a sample of about large and small cities and counties throughout California When requesting law enforcement input CalMatters required each agency to provide a list of the ordinances it uses to address homeless camps In a few cities that included ordinances that specifically prohibit encampments but it could also include rules that ban sitting or lying on the sidewalk impeding the right of way storing belongings on citizens property and violating city park rules Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman noted she was surprised to see the evidence showing arrests related to homelessness increased in her city jumping from in the six months before Grants Pass to in the six months after Not all of those arrests led to someone being taken to jail Selected were what is called noncustodial arrests where the person is published on site There were no procedures changes in how the city dealt with encampments after the Supreme Court ruling Raman noted But the city continues to expand its list of sensitive locations such as near schools where it bans encampments she explained One of the city s top priorities is to reduce unsheltered homelessness and bring people indoors and off the streets Raman mentioned Our urgency to do that did not come from the Grants Pass decision in any way shape or form We were already focused on that Mayor Bass office did not respond to requests for comment But Feldman who provides healthcare care in encampments on the streets of Los Angeles commented he saw a noticeable change after the Supreme Court ruling Suddenly the areas where his organization used to regularly find people were empty That was a trouble because only about of the band s patients have reliable cell phones If medics can t find their patients they can t give them significant follow-up care such as their monthly antipsychotic injection or medicine to treat opioid addiction As a product their patients get sicker It was really tough for a minimal months Feldman commented though he believes enforcement has gone back down to pre-Grants Pass levels in current months That s because the bulk people have moved out of the heavily enforced areas such as around schools and re-settled in places that escape police notice he noted The details CalMatters obtained from the Los Angeles Police Department does not include information San Diego similarly did not pass a new camping ban after Grants Pass Its unsafe camping ordinance passed in and police also enforce older rules that prohibit encroaching on the society right of way Shebloski says Grants Pass hasn t changed anything in San Diego despite the correlated increase in enforcement arrests and citations in the six months before Grants Pass and in the six months after That s because the police department added officers to its Neighborhood Police Division and Homeless Outreach Crew under the direction of its new police chief which coincidentally lined up with Grants Pass he reported I can tell you there s absolutely zero operational direction that Grants Pass is now passed go out there and write tickets he announced Outreach workers struggle to find clients Beverly Harding has been on the streets for about years For the last year of that time she was sleeping in a makeshift tent she pitched in various places along X Street in Sacramento by attaching tarps to the shopping cart that held her food She still cries sometimes when recounting her run-ins with police who she says have confiscated treasured items including a necklace that held her mother s ashes An arrest last fall was particularly traumatic A friend s dog had bitten her wrist a scarce days before and she d gone to the hospital for rehabilitation she reported When the officers grabbed her injured wrist and handcuffed her Harding explained she almost passed out from the pain She commented she still gets shooting pains through her damaged wrist They don t understand Harding announced It s not camping It s surviving And if you don t have a home where else are you going to try to survive Anywhere you can These days the officers are moving unhoused people around Sacramento on a daily basis stated Joe Smith He s the director of residential services for homeless services nonprofit Hope Cooperative and board chair for the county s continuum of care which coordinates the area s response to homelessness Because of that movement Smith announced people are seeking out hidden spots to sleep away from the gaze of law enforcement That s making it harder for outreach workers who have housing and other services to offer to find their homeless clients Smith saw that first-hand last fall An unhoused man definitively got a spot in Smith s Hope Landing housing project after years of trying to get off the streets but no one could find him The scheme pushed his move-in date back three times in hopes that someone would be able to track him down The client eventually resurfaced and Smith was able to get him into housing earlier this month It was just in time A meager more days and the client would have lost the spot and had to start the entire process over Even so the delay meant he needlessly spent about six extra months on the street Smith who was homeless himself between and mentioned he s deeply concerned the increase in enforcement is making other people lose out on housing opportunities How devastating is that he urged Surviving outside becomes a lifestyle for you and your ticket out comes up and nobody can find you What a shame that is A missing tent doesn t mean someone has detected housing Shortly after the Grants Pass decision then-Mayor Breed vowed to crack down on homeless encampments What difference did the increase in arrests and citations make in the city The number of tents and structures on San Francisco s streets dipped to in March the lowest it s been since the city began counting regularly in April That s down from in April But just because someone has ditched their tent doesn t mean they are off the street Largest part people are just sleeping on cardboard or on the street and moving every night declared Chris Herring a UCLA professor of sociology who researches homelessness in San Francisco and beyond In Stockton the city launched a take back our parks campaign to crack down on encampments after Grants Pass Around the same time the police department was recovering from a COVID- pandemic-era staffing shortage and increased its staffing in the departments that typically respond to homeless encampments Police issued hardly any citations for violating park rules including camping drinking and lighting fires in a general park or obstructing sidewalks in the six months before the Grants Pass ruling In the six months after police cited people for those offenses times Police give a -hour warning before they clear an encampment noted Officer David Scott constituents information officer for the Stockton Police Department If people don t move after those hours are up officers may cite them In rare cases if someone is being combative police may make an arrest instead he noted Police also hand out flyers with phone numbers people can call for housing shelter beds showers meals and other information We re invariably going to be out there Scott explained We want to provide those guidance and help to those individuals that are vulnerable And we re going to continue the efforts in that area But at the end of the day we ve got to make sure that our city is safe and as clean as we can get it The flyers list numbers for six arrangement providers including one that s listed twice But there s no guarantee any will be able to help with whatever the homeless person calling necessities St Mary s Society Services one of the providers listed had two-dozen beds available across its men s women s and recuperative care programs as of June A week before it had just None were available for families Police have no way of tracking whether anyone calling St Mary s or the other providers gets help or whether they just move a limited blocks down the road and start the cycle over again And for specific people police interactions don t stop just because they ve moved indoors After living on the streets for about a decade Harding in recent weeks moved into a society of tiny homes for homeless residents in Sacramento where scenario workers are supposed to help her find permanent housing Shortly after Harding and her boyfriend were hanging out in front of a nearby laundromat using the Wi-Fi She was downloading music onto her phone and he was downloading games Harding stated they had a thin blanket over them because it was cold An officer indicated up and advised them camping wasn t allowed there and they had to move Harding declared I declared Excuse me I m not camping I live next door Aaron Schrank and Lisa Halverstadt contributed to this story CalMatters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable