Depending on whom you asked, Newsom was either finally “saving California” by clearing all of its dangerous encampments, or inhumanely “criminalizing” its most vulnerable population and throwing away their belongings.
National media outlets weighed in, taking for granted a narrative that drastic, imminent change had arrived, thanks to Newsom’s “sweeping” proclamation.
But in reality, the order itself may change little on the ground, while leaving questions about how state policy might intersect with local protocols.
In a video released with the announcement, Newsom told local governments they’d run out of excuses after the state has invested more than $1 billion in encampment resolution grants to both clear such areas and address underlying issues.
“We’re done,” the governor said. “It’s time to move with urgency at the local level to clean up these sites with a focus on public health and a focus on public safety. There are no longer any excuses.”
Newsom said directing state agencies to pick up the pace while “respecting the dignity and safety” of the state’s homeless population is about “pushing that paradigm further and getting a sense of urgency that’s required of local governments to do their job.”
The order urges governments to adopt policies modeled on the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), which prioritizes clearing encampments that “pose a threat to the life, health and safety of the community,” while providing 48 hours notice, working with local service providers, and storing encampment residents’ items for 60 days.
According to the state, the agency has resolved more than 11,000 encampments and removed more than 248,275 cubic yards of debris along the state right of way since July 2021.
But the order only directs agencies and departments over which the governor has authority—while agencies and departments not under his authority are “requested,” and local governments are “encouraged” to adopt policy guidelines.
A spokesperson for the governor’s office clarified that all state departments except those under a constitutional officer, like the California Department of Justice, are subject to the governor’s authority.
However, only certain ones are expected to be relevant—among them the Department of Governmental Services and others that own property throughout the state, as well as the Parks Department, which has jurisdiction over state parks and beaches, and the California Highway Patrol (CHP), which already partners with Caltrans on all encampment resolutions.
Local Reaction
In the wake of Newsom’s announcement, elected officials and community organizations took to social media to condemn the directive as cruel and inhumane.“Gavin Newsom is ordering officials to sweep the poorest people out of sight, to destroy their belongings, and to sever their community bonds and ties to resources,” The L.A. Tenants Union, which organizes tenants across the city, wrote in a statement on X.
California Assemblyman Alex Lee, a San Jose Democrat, called the practice of sweeping encampments ineffective, “morally wrong,” and a waste of public spending.
Lee criticized the recent Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which determined municipalities can enforce local laws restricting camping on public property without violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Some county leaders, like Orange County Board of Supervisors Vice Chair Doug Chaffee, said their administrations were already bound to existing legal settlements that determine how, when, and where officials can clear encampments.
“Gov. Newsom’s executive order only applies to State Departments and Agencies. The county remains bound by the Catholic Worker settlement agreement regarding shelters and the enforcement of non-camping ordinances,” Chaffee wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
Others, like San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, pushed back against Newsom’s claim that it is local governments that have failed to step up.
“For several years, we have been trying to address the homeless issue, but state laws and the governor have tied our hands, preventing us from moving people if they refuse services. Now, suddenly, the governor wants us to clean up the mess,” Desmond said in a statement posted to social media.
While depopulating state jails and hospitals, Desmond said, Newsom has meanwhile not given local governments the money, resources, or facilities to address the escalating emergency.
“Governor, thank you for finally acknowledging the need to clean up these encampments. But give us the resources and the tools to do it. Don’t blame us—it’s your mess,” Desmond said.
Despite such efforts, the state’s homeless population has continued to soar, increasing more than 50 percent over the past decade, to more than 180,000.
California’s Association of Counties said in a statement that counties can clear encampments, “but we need every level of government to meaningfully address the unhoused crisis,” including more transitional and permanent housing from cities, safety net services from counties, and the state committing to “ongoing flexible funding.”
Many mayors and city officials up and down the state issued statements welcoming the order, but few offered a clear indication they would follow suit.
Bill Wells, mayor of El Cajon in San Diego County, told a local media outlet the order sounds good on the surface but amounts to “a lot of smoke and mirrors.”
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who was in Paris as part of First Lady Jill Biden’s official delegation to the Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics, offered a lukewarm acknowledgment, indicating she doesn’t intend to change the city’s approach to the crisis.
“For the first time in years, unsheltered homelessness has decreased in Los Angeles because of a comprehensive approach that leads with housing and services, not criminalization,” Bass said in a statement.
“Strategies that just move people along from one neighborhood to the next or give citations instead of housing do not work. We thank the governor for his partnership thus far and hope that he will continue collaboration on strategies that work.”
L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia this week reiterated in a social media post that the city has around 45,000 homeless people and only 16,000 shelter beds. “Clearing homeless encampments does not reduce homelessness,” he wrote, adding that even if a bed is empty, “it’s nearly impossible to find” within the city and county’s shared database system.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has indicated in a series of recent statements that the city will begin accelerating encampment removals in August, and while continuing to “lead with services,” will not allow those who refuse services or already have shelter to camp on city streets.
“It’s not healthy, safe, or compassionate for people on the street and it’s not acceptable for our neighborhoods,” Breed said.
Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris said the order will have zero impact on local enforcement. “We do our own thing,” he told The Epoch Times.
Lancaster contracts with the L.A. County sheriff to provide law enforcement services, and Sheriff Robert Luna has confirmed his department would adhere to existing protocol, which includes a period of extended outreach, as well as service and housing placement.
LA County’s ‘Service-Based’ Approach
The governor’s executive order won’t change how L.A. County approaches homeless encampments, but raises some questions.“We take a service-led approach. We have for years,” Luna told the board, describing the sustained outreach and comprehensive assessments that must occur before any resolution occurs.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Capt. Geoffrey Deedrick, who oversees outreach for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD), explained the agency’s policies are already consistent with recent judicial decisions and the current regulatory environment.
The LASD’s Homeless Outreach Services Team (HOST) follows a multi-step protocol that pairs deputies with civilian outreach workers to help house people and connect them with services.
“As we address homeless encampments, we’ll be following that protocol to the letter,” Mr. Deedrick said.
In other words, LASD isn’t about to start ticketing and citing people without extended outreach and offers of services and shelter.
Both Luna and Deedrick stressed that the HOST program is humanitarian in focus and origin: Since 2015, Luna said, there have been no citations, no arrests, and no use of force under its operations.
“Gov. Newsom’s executive order,” Luna said, “will not alter the way our department approaches or manages the unhoused population.” But he added, it will increase the need for communication with the CHP and other partners, including the 42 cities with which LASD contracts to provide law enforcement services.
Similarly, a representative for the Los Angeles Police Department said its policies and municipal codes were already aligned with lower court rulings preceding Grants Pass.
“At this point, nothing changes in Los Angeles as our municipal codes were changed to align with the previous court rulings. So unless the City Council wants to change things back or pass new ordinances, nothing changes on our end,” they said.
Supervisors said they intend to continue with the County’s Pathway Home program, which, like the city’s Inside Safe, clears encampments by placing people into motels and connecting them with services.
Cheri Todoroff, executive director of the County’s Homeless Initiative, explained that the revamped program, which also partners with cities, will add new teams to expedite and increase the number of cleanups happening in and around encampments. It will be rolling out in August and continuing to scale up through the fall, she said.
The county will use the funding to resolve encampments as well as clean and maintain them while outreach is conducted and until permanent housing can be secured for residents.
Master leases with motels would typically span several years, allowing the county to use such sites for multiple encampment resolutions. But, Todoroff added, “our ability to increase the number of encampment resolutions is tied to our ability to move people into permanent housing.”
At the meeting, Supervisor Janice Hahn asked county staff if that $51.5 million grant would be affected.
“[Newsom’s] executive order is really pushing everybody to act faster. Do we feel like there’s progress that needs to happen? Is that grant in jeopardy if we don’t move quickly enough?”
Todoroff said grants that have been doled out to the county, cities, and the Los Angeles Homelessness Authority wouldn’t be imperiled by the order.
“We are not concerned about the rollout, and the execution of our deliverables under those grants,” she said. “I can assure you, we are using those dollars very effectively—we have housed thousands of people.”
Local authorities are still attempting to clarify what happens when their jurisdictions intersect with the state’s.
Supervisor Hilda Solis expressed concern that the county would be forced to prioritize state efforts over their own, or find that their policies conflict. For example, the state model, based on Caltrans, gives residents 48-hour notice, whereas the county offers two weeks’ notice before clearing an encampment.
A representative for the governor’s office said there shouldn’t be an issue if local governments offer a bigger window, or otherwise employ policies that suit their requirements; the impetus for the order was primarily to guide local governments who had expressed uncertainty in the wake of the Grants Pass ruling.
But Todoroff said the order might indirectly impact local operations.
“For the state to embark on an increased round of encampment resolution with such short notice will strain all of our existing resources because it does not come with new resources,” she said.
After years of unregulated and often dangerous encampments, local leaders and law enforcement acknowledged pressures from constituents to act—“encampment fatigue,” as Hahn put it.
Solis worried some cities have interpreted the order as a green light to enforce local camping bans without the cushion of services and housing.
Mental Health and Addiction
But the divisive question of how to reach and help people who are sick—either mentally ill, or addicted to drugs such as methamphetamines and fentanyl—remained unanswered.In a letter to California’s 58 county boards over the weekend, Newsom admonished leaders for not moving sooner to implement recent legislation that updates the state’s conservatorship laws by expanding the definition of “gravely disabled” to include people incapacitated by substance abuse disorder and serious mental illness.
“While county mental health departments have until January 2026 to implement the changes made by SB43, I am disappointed that only two counties in California have implemented this critical, lifesaving work to date and only a few others have plans to implement it in 2025,” Newsom wrote.
Newsom said he has provided “significant assistance” to help counties implement the changes, and pointed to his administration’s larger effort to overhaul services for people with serious mental illness and substance abuse disorders.
“Despite having unprecedented tools at your disposal to start helping our state’s most vulnerable people right now, you are still waiting to implement this element of the work to improve our conservatorship system until the absolute deadline,” Newsom wrote.
The broader overhaul includes Proposition 1, the $6.4 billion Behavioral Health Bond for treatment facilities; reform of the Behavioral Health Services Act to prioritize people with the most serious needs; as well as California’s CARE Court program; and $900 million for county behavioral health agencies under a bridge housing program.
“I think the frustration when I saw the governor’s letter challenging us was, it’s not just money, it’s capacity,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said at a recent meeting.
“We have begun a process of putting into play the structures and resources that are going to be needed to make it work,” she said, of implementing both changes to the state’s conservatorship law and its Care Courts.
Meanwhile, political support for involuntary treatment remains choppy in California.
County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board, “We’ve always relied on people being willing participants in their substance abuse treatment,” and suggested that the focus “really needs to be on doing harm-reduction work.”
In Orange County, Supervisor Katrina Foley took a different stance, pointing to bureaucratic delays as a reason for increasing death and despair throughout the state.
“Orange County remains in a chronic homeless and severe substance abuse crisis. People dying on our streets do not have another year and a half to wait for bureaucratic delays, and as local officials, we cannot continue enabling their deaths,” Foley wrote in a statement following the governor’s order.
Foley said she cast a sole dissenting vote against delayed implementation of SB 43 in her county.
“The cost of waiting is too high for residents, local businesses, first responders, families, and the gravely disabled who face the ultimate price: their lives.”
