Newsom’s Model Ordinance Pushes Homeless Sweeps Across California

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is urging cities and counties to adopt a newly released model ordinance aimed at banning and clearing homeless encampments.

The proposal would prohibit unhoused people from repeatedly camping in the same location, restrict encampments that block pedestrian access on sidewalks, and require authorities to provide notice and make a good-faith effort to offer shelter before destroying camps. According to the governor’s office, the model ordinance builds on an approach already used by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), which has destroyed more than 16,000 encampments since 2021.

Framing the move as an act of “compassion and care,” Newsom’s administration announced that $3.3 billion in voter-approved Proposition 1 funds — originally intended to expand behavioral health housing and treatment — would be made available statewide to incentivize cities and counties to adopt the ordinance.

As of January 2024, the state’s homeless population was estimated at 187,000 people, with roughly 123,000 people living without shelter in tents, vehicles, trailers, or makeshift structures. Many advocates for unhoused people argue that the state’s reliance on punitive measures — such as encampment sweeps and camping bans — criminalize and displace, rather than support, people without stable housing.

“[Newsom] is flouting decades of evidence on effective solutions and urging communities to merely move unhoused people out of public view rather than work to solve their homelessness,” Diane Yentel, then-president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in 2024. “Urging communities to use an ineffective, harmful, wasteful tactic to relieve political pressure on himself isn’t leadership. It’s cowardice.”

Newsom’s expanded effort for statewide encampment sweeps and camping bans follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling allowing local governments to prohibit encampments even when no alternative shelter is available. In response to the ruling, Newsom directed state agencies in July to begin clearing encampments. In August, he warned California cities and counties that failure to clear homeless encampments could result in the loss of state funding.

Local leaders have voiced concerns about Newsom’s focus on policing homelessness instead of addressing its root causes — soaring housing costs, a severe lack of affordable housing, and stagnant wages. While he has launched initiatives aimed at these structural issues, critics argue that prioritizing enforcement over long-term housing solutions ultimately deepens the crisis.

“Clearing encampments only works if we have places for people to go, and require that they use them,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement.”Without these solutions, we spend precious taxpayer dollars simply shuffling people from one jurisdiction’s land to another’s.”

Advocacy groups have similarly warned that such approaches are not only ineffective but also harmful. “The evidence is actually very clear: forced encampment evictions are ineffective, expensive, and non-strategic,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “The blanket order to clear encampments without addressing the immediate and long-term needs of their residents will displace thousands and increase their risk of harm.”

Advocates have also raised concerns about Newsom’s emphasis on mental health and substance use interventions as a response to homelessness. They warn that programs like CARE Court and expanded involuntary treatment laws risk violating civil liberties and could result in the forced institutionalization of unhoused people.

“The overall impact of this move towards forced treatment will not reduce houselessness, except to the extent it increases detention. Fear of placement in locked facilities, forced medication, unacceptable interim shelter, and loss of rights and self-determination will drive unhoused people away from needed services,” explains a 2024 Human Right Watch report. “Without permanent housing, forced treatment will not remove the underlying instability of houselessness.”