California's governor issues executive order for cities to clear homeless encampments

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

At the end of the Supreme Court's term, the justices made it easier for authorities to clear homeless encampments. And now California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order aimed at doing just that. The order requires state agencies to remove camps on their grounds and urges cities and counties to do the same. Reporter Anna Scott covers housing and homelessness from her base in Los Angeles. Hi there.

ANNA SCOTT, BYLINE: Hey.

SHAPIRO: Tell us more about what Governor Newsom's order today says.

SCOTT: Yeah. Well, you can think of it as a sort of two-part order. So the first part says agencies that report to the governor - state agencies - have to come up with protocols for clearing homeless encampments. Right now, the California Department of Transportation is probably the agency that deals with homelessness the most because they have jurisdiction in many areas adjacent to freeways, where people camp. So they already do carry out regular sweeps of those areas.

And actually, in this order, the governor points to them as a model for other agencies to follow. But it isn't entirely clear at this point what other state agencies this could have a big effect on, possibly the Department of Parks and Recreation. But here in LA, at least, while there are some state parks that are in urban parts of the city - there's one near downtown, for example - they're not generally big camp sites, so that part remains to be seen. The second part of the order is about local governments. So it says they are encouraged to clear more encampments as well, just like state agencies.

SHAPIRO: Encouraged but not required.

SCOTT: Yes, that's right. The governor can't force cities or counties to change policies or adopt new ones. He's not sending in teams of state workers to carry out encampment cleanups with this order or even offering up new resources like shelter beds or housing to people. He's basically saying to cities, do more. But here in LA, for example, city officials have added thousands of shelter beds in recent years, some of them funded by the state, but it's still just a fraction compared to the number of people living on the streets.

This morning, the mayor of LA, Karen Bass, sent me a statement today about this order saying that the city already has a comprehensive approach to cleaning street encampments. And she said it leads with housing and services. And at least here in LA, she says that is helping, that street homelessness decreased this year for the first time in a while. But she says focusing on just moving people from one place to another or just writing tickets really doesn't work.

SHAPIRO: Is she right?

SCOTT: Yeah, there's a lot of research on this. In fact, there's a new study that just came out this week from the Rand Corporation here in Southern California that looked at three areas in LA where there have been big unsheltered populations, and they found that after large encampment removals, unhoused people tend to come back and congregate in the cleared areas within a couple months. I've seen this myself, even with Caltrans cleanups. People will sometimes just move from one side of the street over to the other onto municipal property when the cleanup comes through. So overall, experts will tell you the thing that really will solve this problem at its root is housing. Newsom's order does say cities should point people to whatever housing resources are available, but at this point, there's just not enough.

SHAPIRO: Anna Scott, thank you for your reporting.

SCOTT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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