California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered state officials to dismantle thousands of homeless encampments across the state. The decision comes just weeks after the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allows states to limit the rights of homeless people.
The case, Grants Pass v. Johnson, focused on Grants Pass, Oregon, where the city fined homeless people for sleeping on public land even as it failed to provide shelter beds. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the move violated the Eighth Amendment as a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
But the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Grants Pass, giving cities and states the green light to fine, ticket, or arrest homeless people without any obligation to support them or address the underlying conditions that made them homeless. This ruling will only exacerbate a crisis that city governments and residents are desperate to solve.
City governments tend to think of homelessness as a problem to be solved by law enforcement. A survey of mayors of the 100 largest U.S. cities found that it is more common for police departments to influence homelessness policy than it is for housing authorities or health agencies to do so. And in more than half of cities with homeless outreach teams, the team is housed in the police department. It’s no surprise that they prioritize punitive measures.
Criminalizing homelessness doesn’t help solve it. It’s been tried over and over. Currently, all but two states have anti-homeless laws of one kind or another. Some ban sleeping anywhere in public, while others prohibit loitering, vagrancy, or sleeping in vehicles. In 2022, Tennessee became the first state to make sleeping in a tent on public property a felony crime, punishable by imprisonment.
We shouldn’t be surprised that these laws aren’t working. Penalizing people who are sleeping outside because they have nowhere to go leaves them, still, with nowhere to go and worse off than before.
Criminalizing homelessness makes it harder for individuals to access shelter and essential services. A 2024 survey found that after cities cleared encampments or issued tickets, 76% of homeless people lost ID cards or birth certificates, while 83% of community leaders surveyed said sweeps caused people to end up with criminal records. Lacking ID can make it difficult to access counseling or medical help, while criminal charges make it harder to get housing or a job.
In addition, forcing homeless people into the criminal justice system is counterproductive, since homelessness is often a result of poor re-entry infrastructure for the previously incarcerated. Data shows that a significant portion of the homeless population lives with a criminal record. In California, more than 80% of unsheltered homeless people report spending at least one night in jail over the last 6 months, and average a staggering 42 contacts with police each year.
Communities that want to minimize homelessness should focus on improving re-entry infrastructure, rather than repeatedly putting at-risk individuals back in the situations that helped make them homeless in the first place.
Making homelessness a crime is also needlessly expensive, because it costs more than providing housing. One report found that counties in central Florida shelled out $31,065 per homeless person per year to arrest, incarcerate, or hospitalize them. That’s three times more than it would have cost to provide those same individuals with supportive housing for the year. For taxpayers frustrated by homelessness in their cities, providing shelter would be a much better use of public funds.
Our current approach simply isn’t working. Nationwide, homelessness increased by 12% from 2022 to 2023, to the highest rate on record.
Yet it isn’t increasing everywhere. In some places, it’s declined nearly to the point of eradication. These communities are tackling homelessness the right way.
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In Sacramento County, officials work to collect data on every unsheltered person that includes their name, age, health problems, and history with homelessness. Keeping the data updated monthly will allow all the organizations involved to track changes in the homeless population, match people with housing and support services based on their needs, and make sure no one falls through the cracks.
The approach is already making a difference. According to the county’s Point-in-Time count, there were 29% fewer people experiencing homelessness in 2024 compared to 2022.
To solve homelessness, we need to go further. One thing law enforcement can’t do is build houses. Cities and states need to roll back the expensive and ineffective laws that turn our neighbors into criminals for having no place to sleep, and instead, invest in housing and infrastructure that provides immediate and long-term support to people experiencing homelessness.
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, we can expect more officials to follow in Gov. Newsom’s footsteps. Instead, cities and communities must avoid perpetuating homelessness by criminalizing and over-policing people who need support the most.
Tinisch Hollins is the executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice.
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