Facing a raft of public-safety threats stemming from the city’s growing homeless population, city leaders in San Diego are expected to vote Tuesday on a sweeping proposal that would ban homeless camps on any city property if there are shelter beds available.
The proposal by city councilman Stephen Whitburn and backed by mayor Todd Gloria, both Democrats, would also ban camping in several locations in the city regardless of the availability of shelter beds, including: within two blocks of K-12 schools and homeless shelters, in transits hubs, in parks, and along the banks of rivers and creeks.
City leaders believe the proposed camping ban would not run afoul of Martin v. City of Boise, a Ninth Circuit ruling that concluded that prosecuting people for sleeping or camping on public property when they have no home or shelter to go to is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
It is the latest move among West Coast cities to try to curb sprawling homeless encampments that are increasingly taking over public parks and sidewalks. The city of San Diego receives thousands of complaints from residents every month about the camps, according to a city report, which found that “the quality of life in our neighborhoods is failing to meet community expectations.”
The goal of the proposed homeless camp ban is to begin getting people in need into shelters where they can access services. Gloria has argued that is more compassionate than allowing them to remain on the streets, where violence, drug addiction, and disease are common.
San Diego has about 1,800 shelter beds, according to the city report, and is in the process of opening two “safe sleeping sites” – city-approved camps with bathroom facilities, security, and other services. The first site, which should accommodate about 130 tents, is expected to open in July, with a bigger site for about 400 tents opening in the fall. The city is spending $5 million on the sites.
The camping-ban proposal comes as homeless counts are rising sharply in and around the city. In January, a regional homelessness task force counted about 3,300 people living outdoors in the city of San Diego, up 32 percent from last year. Another count found more than 2,000 people living on sidewalks and in cars downtown, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Their camps are often littered with bags, bottles, jars, and buckets filled with human waste; bedding and food that is invested with bugs; drugs and drug paraphernalia – needles, bongs, and hookahs; and a variety of weapons – including knives and clubs, according the city report.
The report lays out the severity of the problem in San Diego: last year, the city’s Environmental Services Department collected about 3,000 pounds of debris from homeless camps each month, reaching over 6,000 pounds in peak months.
In recent years, there have been outbreaks of Hepatitis A, Tuberculosis, and shigellosis, an easily-spread bacterial infection, according to the report. Drug overdoses, driven by the fentanyl crisis, are on the rise among the city’s homeless population, with more than 300 accidental overdose deaths in 2021. Last year, two homeless people died from drug overdoses in city parks.
Between September 2021 and this past February, San Diego Unified School District police responded to more than 125 calls of homeless people camping or sleeping on K-12 campuses, and more than 100 calls of homeless people entering school buildings or wandering onto campuses. School principals and police officers reported that “students have been verbally accosted, physically accosted, and exposed to a variety of issues, including unintentional and intentional nudity, illegal drug use and paraphernalia, and public urination,” the report states.
At least eight public park employees have been attacked by homeless people since 2022, and homeless people have started at least four brush fires during that time, the report states.
In March 2021, a driver high on drugs drove up onto a city sidewalk, plowing through tents, killing three people and injuring six more.
Gloria has said city residents deserve to have clean sidewalks.
“Taxpayers in this city will be spending over $200 million on homelessness in the year ahead if the budget is passed as proposed,” he said, according to a recent Union-Tribune report. “I think in exchange for that, it is absolutely reasonable to be able to expect to walk on the sidewalk without having to go around and step in the middle of the street.”
Homeless advocates have objected to the camping-ban proposal, arguing that San Diego does not have near enough shelter beds for all of the homeless people in the region. They have protested at Gloria’s events, trying to drown out his speeches. Last month, they protested at City Hall and marched around the Civic Center, carrying tents and chanting “Shame.”
“Instead of an unenforceable yet harmful ban on survival camping, we need HOUSING NOW,” the San Diego Housing Emergency Alliance wrote recently on its Facebook page.
Aubury Zak, a 24-year-old homeless woman who camps near a transit hub, told the Union-Tribune that she didn’t know where she would sleep on nights when the shelters were full. However, looking at the tents and debris cluttering the sidewalk around her, she said, “I understand what they’re trying to do, because as you can see, people do leave quite a mess.”
The move to ban camping in San Diego comes on the heels of city leaders in Portland, Ore. approving an ordinance that prohibits homeless camps in parks, on sidewalks, and near schools. Portland leaders also recently settled a lawsuit that accused the city of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by allowing homeless camps to clog sidewalks.
In March, a judge in Arizona ordered the city of Phoenix to begin cleaning up a massive downtown homeless camp known as the Zone that had become a public nuisance. Arizona Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney also took issue with the way the city used the Martin ruling to avoid cleaning up the camp, writing that the city misinterpreted Martin’s “narrow holding as precluding the enforcement of public camping laws whenever the homeless population in Phoenix exceeded the number of available shelter beds.”