Newsom calls for cities, counties to adopt policies eradicating homeless encampments
Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling on California cities and counties to crack down on homeless encampments, calling them “unhealthy and dangerous.”
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson that cities could ban people from camping in public even if there are no shelter beds available. Newsom applauded it at the time as “common sense,” and made headlines by joining CalTrans officials carrying out his order to clear encampments from state property.
On Monday, Newsom said local governments should go further and adopt a model ordinance rolled out by his office that calls upon them to ban “persistent” encampments and those that block sidewalks, and require local officials to make “every reasonable effort” to offer shelter and identify resources for homeless people before clearing encampments.
“There’s parts of the state that, frankly, aren’t even participating,” Newsom said, referring to communities like Turlock, which may lose state homeless funds after its city council refused to spend a symbolic $1 to support a shelter there.
“I’m not interested anymore, period, full stop, in funding failure,” the governor said during a news conference on Monday afternoon.
“It is time to take back the streets. It’s time to take back the sidewalks. It’s time to take these encampments and provide alternatives, and the state is giving you more resources than ever, and it’s time, I think, to just end the excuses and call the questions about accountability.”
Since last year’s ruling, Newsom has clashed with local officials he blames for not doing enough to address homelessness in their cities. California is home to about 187,000 homeless people, two-thirds of whom live outdoors in makeshift shelters, accounting for about half the nation’s unhoused population.
Critics have said anti-camping ordinances do nothing to address the root causes of homelessness, like tackling California’s persistent housing shortage, while criminalizing homeless people for lacking permanent shelter.
“This is not a solution. Housing is a solution,” Sacramento Homeless Union president Crystal Sanchez said in response to Newsom’s announcement.
She pointed out that nationally, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is undergoing cuts while states like California face their own funding shortfalls.
“Services are being cut. More people are going to be on the streets,” she said.”And now we have Gavin Newsom coming after our encampments.”
An audit last year found that the state had spent $24 billion over five years on homelessness, but did not track how those dollars were spent.
Homelessness has dogged Newsom since he was mayor of San Francisco and now governor, a visible crisis that Republicans and other opponents will surely seize upon if he runs for national office as expected in 2028.
“Only in politics can you do a poor job and blame someone else,” said Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, referring to the state audit that came out last year.
A handful of cities like San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco have taken a hard-line stance in the year since the Grants Pass decision by cracking down on encampments and fining or jailing those who resist services. Some 150 cities in 32 states have banned camping in public even when there is no available indoor shelter.
In an interview, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat who has broken with Newsom on public safety and mental health, said he welcomed the governor’s urgency, calling it the “end of the era of encampments.”
At the same time, Mahan said the state had given local cities “mixed signals for years.” He asked the governor to do more to promote policies that emphasize adding shelter beds and mental health treatment over building housing, which can take years to come to fruition.
Newsom’s announcement was paired with Monday’s release of $3.3 billion in Proposition 1 funding. Narrowly approved by voters in March 2024, the state bond measure is intended to help cities expand behavioral health housing and treatment services for Californians experiencing homelessness or severe mental illness.
The funds are not contingent on cities enacting encampment bans, but Newsom told reporters he wanted to “communicate” that it was communities’ responsibility to enact policies that made it easier to eradicate homelessness, like approving more shelter beds.
Prop. 1 is part of Newsom’s broader effort to overhaul California’s mental health care system. It ties closely to other initiatives, including CARE Court and Senate Bill 43, both of which aim to compel treatment for people with debilitating psychiatric or substance use conditions.
Oversight of the institutions that provide such services has been lax, allowing for abuse against patients and staff to persist, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, and many of the residential treatment facilities Newsom touted Monday are years away from opening.
Counties have said they need more treatment beds to meet the requirements of those laws — needs that Prop. 1 funding is expected to help address on top of the $27 billion the state already gave to local governments in October to help prevent and end homelessness.
This story was originally published May 12, 2025 at 8:50 AM.
