How the Supreme Court ruling affects the homelessness crisis in Southern California

In Southern California, where the number of people living inside encampments on city streets far outpaces that of other parts of the country, local leaders have grappled with how to get people into housing in an effective yet compassionate way.

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Friday that cities can enforce bans on people camping, or living, outside has led to a wide range of responses — from fiery criticism by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to an expression of relief from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. It reflects a divide in opinions that goes beyond just political ideology, with Bass and Newsom both progressive Democrats.

In fact, the pair worked together earlier this year on a state-funded effort to clean up areas alongside LA freeways where encampments have been cleared. Bass's "Inside Safe" program aims to get people out of such outdoor encampments and into temporary housing like local motels. It's been both criticized and applauded by advocates of people struggling with homelessness. 

"This ruling must not be used as an excuse for cities across the country to attempt to arrest their way out of this problem or hide the homelessness crisis in neighboring cities or in jail," Bass said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Newsom joined other politicians up north including the mayor of San Francisco in supporting the high court's decision. Newsom said there's long been "legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials."

"Today's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court provides state and local officials the definitive authorities to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets," Newsom said, adding that the state will still "work with compassion" to offer people experiencing homelessness "the resources they need to better their lives."

Just a few hours after the landmark decision, Los Angeles released its annual report counting the number of people in the city and county struggling with homelessness. After rising for five years straight, that number saw a slight decline. But perhaps most notable was a larger decline in specifically the number of people living unsheltered and outside. 

There was a 10.4% decline in unsheltered people in the city of LA, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).  "This is encouraging," Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum, the agency's CEO, said Friday.

"We believe in housing and services — not arrests," Kellum said, describing the new findings as "evidence" that such an approach works.

More than 75,000 people across Los Angeles County are struggling with homelessness, according to the latest count, which LAHSA has described as a "snapshot" of the crisis since it provides a count from just one point in time in the month of January. 

Between last year and this year, the overall number of people countywide dealing with homelessness — both people living inside and outside — went down by just 0.27%

How does this affect Southern California?

While California has a little less than 12% of the country's population, more than 27% of Americans struggling with homelessness live in the state, according to a report to Congress this year from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). 

Major cities struggle most with the issue as people living in tents outside line the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco's Tenderloin district. But LA and the South Coast region had the highest share of people struggling with homelessness across California — an estimated 49.9% of the state's homeless population living in the region in 2022, according to the California Budget & Policy Center. 

As housing prices continue to rise, LA's estimated population has climbed for five years straight until finally falling slightly this year. 

And HUD's report to Congress notes that 68% of people dealing with homelessness in California are living outdoors, in tents or other makeshift shelters — the exact population of people who would be affected by the Supreme Court ruling. 

The high court's ruling said bans on outdoor sleeping do not violate the Eighth Amendment as they do not qualify as "cruel and unusual punishment." So cities can enforce such bans with punishments such as fines or a 30-day jail sentence — just as the small Oregon town involved in the case did — because the court decided these penalties "are not designed" to inflict "terror, pain, or disgrace," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion for the court.

"Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it," he wrote. 

Within the Southern California region, some local leaders have said they are still reviewing the Supreme Court decision to see how it will affect their own towns and cities. The city of Long Beach said it just gives public officials more "tools" to address the issue.

Like Newsom, some are supporting the ruling. 

"In order to truly solve homelessness, enforcement must accompany an aggressive effort to build all types of housing opportunities from permanent supportive, affordable, and workforce housing," Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, who represents a district largely composed of wealthy coastal areas such as Laguna Beach, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, other local leaders and nonprofit groups are joining Bass in their criticism. Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo D. García said it's "fundamentally wrong to punish individuals for their lack of housing."

"Criminalizing homelessness is a shameful failure to addressing the underlying issues that led to this crisis," he said in a statement.

Others have also said that arrests and jailing people fails to address broader issues. The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment blasted the court's ruling and said "allowing jurisdictions to enforce laws that punish people for simply not having a home to live in is unconscionable. 

"In California, thousands of people are facing eviction with few to no other options for shelter because they can't afford to live in the richest state in the richest country in the world," the nonprofit, which advocates for social and economic justice, said in a statement.

Los Angeles sees a small change with its own approach

For the first time in six years, the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority reported a decline in the number of people experiencing homelessness in both the city and county of LA. 

Those changes, though, were quite small. 

Across the city, there was a 2.2% decrease from last year to 45,252 people this year. For the county, that number was just about 0.3%, declining very slightly to an estimated 75,312 people.

But LAHSA, which collected the findings alongside researchers from the University of Southern California, said that the real change was in the number of people living outside and unsheltered. According to the latest count, there's less people dealing with that issue and more people who are struggling with homelessness but living indoors, in places like motels.

Kellum, CEO of the agency, said that means things are "shifting in the direction that we want to see."

In the county, there was 5.1% less people living outside and a 12.7% increase in the number of sheltered people. As for the city of LA, there was a 10.4% decline in the number of people outside and unsheltered, and a 17.7% increase in people living indoors.

It's important to note that these findings are collected from just one point in time.

"The homeless count is best thought of as a regional snapshot of people experiencing homelessness at a particular point in time," said Paul Rubenstein, deputy chief of external relations for LAHSA.

Mayor Bass's approach to tackling the homelessness crisis has been to clear people from encampments and take them into temporary housing through the city's "Inside Safe" program. It has been condemned by some advocates who says it fails to offer long-term solutions and only shifts people out of tents temporarily before they are living on the street again. 

Supporters say it's a compassionate approach that works and is the reason there's been some change in the homeless population numbers this year.

"We do not agree with criminalizing homelessness," Kellum said. "We believe in housing and services – not arrests."

"We've been waiting for something to feel more hopeful about," she said. "And we're in this moment."