New homelessness reduction efforts predicted to harm South L.A.’s unhoused population

Since October 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has funneled over $700 million towards clearing homeless encampments across the state, championing a program he touted as funding “resolutions” to California’s homelessness crisis – the largest of any state in the country.

Now, the governor claims his hands are tied in tackling the issue, and is calling on the Supreme Court to take action.

In response to statewide demands for more sweeping action on homelessness, California officials are pushing to overturn the decision in Martin v. Boise, a five-year precedent that prohibits the criminalization of camping on public property when no other sleeping locations are available. Accompanying this move is the recent introduction of bipartisan California Senate Bill 1011, which aims to ban homeless encampments within 500 feet of “sensitive community areas” such as schools and transit stops.

State leaders are drafting new legislation and urging the high court to relax regulations that prevent them from clearing encampments across California. However, these measures would yield significant repercussions for South L.A. – situated in the county’s supervisorial district with the largest homeless population – potentially criminalizing thousands of homeless Angelenos with nowhere else to turn.

While homelessness is a “visually striking issue” across the city according to Ben Henwood, director of USC’s Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research, areas like South L.A., where many residents suffer disproportionately from factors such as income inequality and soaring housing costs, tend to experience higher concentrations of encampments.

“Fundamentally, what you’re seeing is the most extreme form of housing insecurity that people across California feel,” Henwood said.

In recent years, government officials have launched a variety of city and state-level initiatives to address the ongoing encampment crisis, including Gov. Newsom’s Encampment Resolution Funding Program and Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe campaign, which together have received over $1 billion in allocated funding.

However, Henwood pointed out that despite the potential effectiveness of these “very important programs,” relocations can tend to target wealthier neighborhoods with more frequent complaints about homeless residents, neglecting the fundamental issue of housing accessibility in areas with higher concentrations of encampments.

In South L.A. communities like Florence-Firestone, the number of encampments appears to be on the rise, despite noticeable clearings in other areas, according to Jonathan Pacheco Bell, vice president of the Florence-Firestone Community Organization and former embedded planner for the L.A. Department of Regional Planning.

While Bell said encampments have been an “ongoing issue” in Florence-Firestone – home to the highest density unsheltered population in South L.A. – he explained that many residents could experience more significant disruptions if these state and national measures are approved.

“Simply restricting an unhoused person in public is like putting a bandaid on a severe wound,” Bell said. “This is not a solution.”

With California Senate Bill 1011 posing limits to where homeless individuals can reside, and the potential reversal of the Martin v. Boise ruling endorsed by Gov. Newsom threatening to ban camping altogether, criminalization and dehumanization of those without permanent shelter could escalate significantly according to Director of Policy Advocacy for the Western Center on Law and Poverty Brandon Greene.

“We know that unhoused people are not responsible for even a low percentage of violent acts or any other sort of public safety issue that happens in our communities each day, but it’s easy to villainize them,” Greene said. “If we were actually interested in the public safety aspects […] we would do a far better job of actually listening to the experiences of unhoused people.”

In order to begin alleviating the city’s homelessness crisis, Greene said that leaders must focus on boosting housing availability and accessibility – both of which California has historically lacked, he explained.

“If we were actually thinking about how we can rectify the expanding issue of unaffordability in California that is an on-ramp to houselessness, then we’d be making very different investments,” Greene said. “And so if tomorrow the Supreme Court was to say that you could sweep more people, that’s not going to get people into housing.”

Without increased investment towards generating “creative housing solutions,” Greene explained, sweeping measures at the state and national levels will pose significant disruptions for Los Angeles’ nearly 75,000 homeless residents. With lingering questions about future accommodations for homeless Angelenos, Henwood said that support for these measures from state leaders including Newsom “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“At the end of the day, if there isn’t a place for a person to go, how can you criminalize being out there on the streets? There’s literally no other option,” Henwood said. “I think that the obvious next question is, well, where do you want people to go?”