SEATTLE (AP) — A U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to enforce bans on outdoor sleeping in public spaces will allow San Francisco to begin cleaning up the homeless encampments plaguing the city, the mayor said on Friday while applauding the decision.
The case is the most significant on the issue to come before the high court in decades and comes as cities across the country grapple with the politically fraught question of how to deal with a growing number of people without a permanent place to live and with public frustration. on issues related to health and safety.
“We will continue to lead with services, but we also cannot continue to allow people to do whatever they want on the streets of San Francisco, especially when we have somewhere to go,” San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed, a Democrat, said after the 6-3 decision.
Breed said she will review the decision with the City Attorney’s Office before implementing any new policy, and the city will provide training for those who clean up the fields.
But the decision has not been well received everywhere and some cities, like Seattle, have said their approach to encampments will not change. A spokesperson for the Portland, Oregon, mayor’s office said it was prevented by state law from making major changes based on the court ruling.
Cody Bowman, spokesman for Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat who saw his two terms in office affected by discontent over the city’s homelessness crisis, said he hopes the decision will prompt the state Legislature to address the issue and “ see this opportunity to consider the tools cities really need to manage public encampments, provide sufficient shelter, and keep our streets safe and clean.”
Boise, Idaho’s mayor, a Democrat, also said the city would not change its approach to those sleeping in public spaces, which includes case management and supportive housing.
“In Boise, we take care of people. Criminalizing homelessness has never and will never solve the problems associated with homelessness,” said Mayor Lauren McLean. “We must address the root causes with proven strategies, like permanent supportive housing, that empower our residents to remain housed and thrive in their community.”
Governor of California Gavin Newsomwho is expected to sign a state budget in the coming days that includes another $250 million in grants for local governments to clean up homeless encampments, said the decision gives state and local officials “the ultimate authority” to implement policies that clean up unwanted camps.
“This decision eliminates the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local authorities for years and limited their ability to implement commonsense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities,” Newsom said in a statement following the decision, which came the same day in Los Angeles released an annual count of the homeless population.
Sara Rankin, a law professor at Seattle University who runs the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, said the ruling will likely result in a kind of free-for-all for cities, banning people from sleeping on the streets. But she said state constitutional provisions and other federal constitutional provisions could then be invoked.
“I think a lot of cities are going to misinterpret this as a green light for homeless open season,” she said. “But when they do, they will do so at their own risk, because I think the lawyers will counterattack them based on other theories that are still available to them, that were left untouched by today’s decision.”
The case came from the rural town of Grants Pass, Oregon, which appealed a ruling that overturned local laws that fined people $295 for sleeping outdoors after tents began filling public parks. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over the nine Western states, has held since 2018 that such bans violate the Eighth Amendment in areas where there are not sufficient shelters.
Jesse Rabinowitz, communications and campaign director for the National Homeless Law Center, said he fears this decision will empower cities to focus even more on arresting people sleeping outdoors instead of focusing on proven solutions.
“There are camps in California, in D.C. and in New York, not because there aren’t laws to punish people, but because there isn’t enough housing to meet everyone’s needs,” he said. “And this case will make it harder to focus on true solutions.”
