A homeless encampment along the sidewalk on X Street under State Route 99 in Sacramento, on Oct. 25, 2024. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters
Homeless residents of some of California’s biggest cities increasingly are facing criminal penalties for the actions they take to survive on the street, according to a first-of-its-kind CalMatters analysis of data throughout the state.
Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which upended California’s homelessness strategy by allowing cities to enforce blanket bans on camping — even if no shelter beds are available. Immediately after the decision, unhoused Californians and the people who help them reported seeing an increase in enforcement. But CalMatters’ reporting, gleaned from more than 100 public records requests, appears to be the first statewide effort to quantify that increase.
CalMatters analyzed data on arrests and citations for camping and other homelessness-related offenses for 2024, comparing the six months before the June 28 Supreme Court decision to the six months after. We found increases in cities throughout the state, even in those where local leaders said they didn’t change their policy as a result of Grants Pass.
Here are some of the places with the most significant increases, according to police data:
In San Francisco, then-mayor London Breed promised to be “very aggressive” in moving encampments following the Grants Pass decision. She delivered: Arrests and citations for illegal lodging increased from 71 in the six months before the ruling to 427 in the six months after — a 500% increase.
Even though Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke out against the Grants Pass decision, calling it “disappointing” and vowing to lead with housing instead of enforcement, homelessness-related arrests increased 68% after the ruling.
Citations and arrests doubled in San Diego, which also doubled the size of its police teams that respond to homelessness.
In Sacramento, the number of citations and arrests nearly tripled – from 96 in the six months before Grants Pass, to 283 in the six months after. From January through May 2025, Sacramento police had already issued 844 citations and arrests, suggesting enforcement continues to trend upward.
Stockton issued just 14 homelessness-related citations in the six months before the Grants Pass decision. In the six months after the ruling came out, that number jumped to 213.
It wasn’t just big cities that saw more enforcement: Citations and arrests increased by more than two-thirds in Ukiah, on the North Coast, and more than doubled in Merced, in the San Joaquin Valley.
The ruling, which found that the city of Grants Pass, Oregon did not violate the constitution by banning encampments throughout the city when no shelter was available, accelerated a shift toward a pro-enforcement approach to homelessness. Buoyed by voters fed up with large encampments near their homes, Gov. Gavin Newsom used the opportunity to urge cities to ramp up enforcement and pass anti-camping ordinances.
The people making the case for enforcement argue it’s a type of “tough love” that’s sometimes necessary to get people off the street. If someone refuses multiple offers of help, the threat of arrest might make them finally say yes, said San Diego Police Department Capt. Steve Shebloski.
“I hope nobody has to go to jail, and I hope everybody takes services,” he said. “I just dont think that’s the reality of where we’re at with certain individuals.”
The type of help police can offer varies widely by city and situation. In San Diego, the Homeless Outreach Team, which includes police officers as well as social workers and mental health professionals, is supposed to offer shelter before issuing citations or making arrests. Between May 2024 and May 2025, that team made 357 placements into housing or shelter, Shebloski said. People refused help 2,471 times, he said. And they accepted another form of services 3,578 times, from a referral to a treatment program, to a ride to an appointment, to a new toothbrush. The department does not track how many people wanted shelter but couldn’t get it.
In Stockton, police take a more hands-off approach: They hand out flyers with six phone numbers people can call to reach homeless shelters and other organizations.
But shelter beds aren’t always available. Last year, California had more than 187,000 unhoused residents, and fewer than 76,000 year-round shelter and transitional housing beds, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Doctors, academics and social workers who work with people on the street often say arrests make it harder for unhoused people to get back on their feet. When someone living outside gets a citation, they often miss their court date — they might lose the ticket or simply forget the date amidst the chaos of life on the street — which leads the court to issue a warrant for their arrest. People with active warrants can’t qualify for many housing and treatment programs.
“They don’t understand. It’s not camping. It’s surviving.”
Beverly Harding, 58, Sacramento
In many situations, people cited or arrested for homelessness-related crimes are never charged, or the charges are quickly dismissed. But the threat of an arrest can be just as disruptive as the arrest itself. People leave their campsites to avoid getting taken to jail, and in so doing, lose touch with the outreach workers trying to connect them with housing and other services.
“In a weird way, it undermines the housing process to such an extent that you end up working for homelessness and against the people who are experiencing homelessness,” said Brett Feldman, director of street medicine at USC.
Some leaders are pushing back against the enforcement mindset. This week, two Democratic Congress members introduced the “Housing Not Handcuffs Act,” which would prohibit federal agencies from punishing people for living outside if they have no other option.
Grants Pass made no difference, say cities where arrests and citations spiked
In the year since the Grants Pass decision, at least 50 cities and three counties in California passed new ordinances targeting homeless encampments, according to a recent analysis by UC Berkeley Law students and faculty. Some ban camping only in specific areas, such as near schools, waterways or levees, while others ban camping throughout the entire city. Some cities, such as Fresno, made camping a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Even cities that didn’t pass ordinances started cracking down on encampments with new vigor, using old rules.
To quantify that crackdown, CalMatters filed more than 100 public records requests to police departments, sheriff’s offices, prosecutors and city and county governments for data on arrests, citations, charges filed and encampment removals. Those requests span a sample of about 35 large and small cities and counties throughout California. When requesting law enforcement data, CalMatters asked each agency to provide a list of the ordinances it uses to address homeless camps. In some cities that included ordinances that specifically prohibit encampments, but it could also include rules that ban sitting or lying on the sidewalk, impeding the right of way, storing belongings on public property and violating city park rules.
Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman said she was surprised to see the data showing arrests related to homelessness increased 68% in her city, jumping from 920 in the six months before Grants Pass, to 1,549 in the six months after. Not all of those arrests led to someone being taken to jail. Some were what is called “noncustodial arrests,” where the person is released on site.
There were no policy changes in how the city dealt with encampments after the Supreme Court ruling, Raman said. But the city continues to expand its list of “sensitive locations,” such as near schools, where it bans encampments, she said.
“One of the city’s top priorities is to reduce unsheltered homelessness and bring people indoors and off the streets,” Raman said. “Our urgency to do that did not come from the Grants Pass decision in any way, shape or form. We were already focused on that.”
Mayor Bass’ office did not respond to requests for comment.
But Feldman, who provides medical care in encampments on the streets of Los Angeles, said he saw a noticeable change after the Supreme Court ruling. Suddenly, the areas where his team used to regularly find people were empty. That was a problem, because only about 5% of the team’s patients have reliable cell phones. If medics can’t find their patients, they can’t give them important follow-up care — such as their monthly antipsychotic injection or medicine to treat opioid addiction. As a result, their patients get sicker.
“It was really tough for a few months,” Feldman said, though he believes enforcement has gone back down to pre-Grants Pass levels in recent months. That’s because most people have moved out of the heavily enforced areas (such as around schools) and re-settled in places that escape police notice, he said.
The data CalMatters obtained from the Los Angeles Police Department does not include 2025 information.
San Diego similarly did not pass a new camping ban after Grants Pass. Its “unsafe camping” ordinance passed in 2023, and police also enforce older rules that prohibit encroaching on the public right of way. Shebloski says Grants Pass hasn’t changed anything in San Diego, despite the correlated increase in enforcement — 524 arrests and citations in the six months before Grants Pass, and 1,045 in the six months after. That’s because the police department added officers to its Neighborhood Police Division and Homeless Outreach Team, under the direction of its new police chief — which coincidentally lined up with Grants Pass, he said.
“I can tell you there’s absolutely zero operational direction that, ‘Grants Pass is now passed, go out there and write tickets,’” he said.
Outreach workers struggle to find clients
Beverly Harding, 58, has been on the streets for about 10 years. For the last year of that time, she was sleeping in a makeshift tent she pitched in various places along X Street in Sacramento, by attaching tarps to the shopping cart that held her food.
She still cries sometimes when recounting her run-ins with police, who she says have confiscated treasured items, including a necklace that held her mother’s ashes. An arrest last fall was particularly traumatic. A friend’s dog had bitten her wrist a few days before, and she’d gone to the hospital for treatment, she said. When the officers grabbed her injured wrist and handcuffed her, Harding said she almost passed out from the pain. She said she still gets shooting pains through her damaged wrist.
“They don’t understand,” Harding said. “It’s not camping. It’s surviving. And if you don’t have a home, where else are you going to try to survive? Anywhere you can.”
These days, the authorities are moving unhoused people around Sacramento on a daily basis, said Joe Smith. He’s the director of residential services for homeless services nonprofit Hope Cooperative and board chair for the county’s continuum of care, which coordinates the area’s response to homelessness. Because of that movement, Smith said, people are seeking out hidden spots to sleep, away from the gaze of law enforcement.
That’s making it harder for outreach workers, who have housing and other services to offer, to find their homeless clients. Smith saw that first-hand last fall. An unhoused man finally got a spot in Smith’s Hope Landing housing program after years of trying to get off the streets, but no one could find him. The program pushed his move-in date back three times, in hopes that someone would be able to track him down.
The client eventually resurfaced and Smith was able to get him into housing earlier this month. It was just in time: A few more days, and the client would have lost the spot and had to start the entire process over. Even so, the delay meant he needlessly spent about six extra months on the street.
Smith, who was homeless himself between 2005 and 2011, said he’s “deeply concerned” the increase in enforcement is making other people lose out on housing opportunities.
“How devastating is that?” he asked. “Surviving outside becomes a lifestyle for you, and your ticket out comes up and nobody can find you. What a shame that is.”
A missing tent doesn’t mean someone has found housing
Shortly after the Grants Pass decision, then-Mayor Breed vowed to crack down on homeless encampments. What difference did the 500% increase in arrests and citations make in the city?
The number of tents and structures on San Francisco’s streets dipped to 222 in March — the lowest it’s been since the city began counting regularly in April 2019. That’s down from 360 in April 2024.
But just because someone has ditched their tent doesn’t mean they are off the street.
“Most people are just sleeping on cardboard or on the street and moving every night,” said Chris Herring, a UCLA professor of sociology who researches homelessness in San Francisco and beyond.
In Stockton, the city launched a “take back our parks” campaign to crack down on encampments after Grants Pass. Around the same time, the police department was recovering from a COVID-19 pandemic-era staffing shortage and increased its staffing in the departments that typically respond to homeless encampments.
Police issued hardly any citations for violating park rules (including camping, drinking and lighting fires in a public park) or obstructing sidewalks in the six months before the Grants Pass ruling. In the six months after, police cited people for those offenses 213 times.
Police give a 72-hour warning before they clear an encampment, said Officer David Scott, public information officer for the Stockton Police Department. If people don’t move after those 72 hours are up, officers may cite them. In rare cases, if someone is being combative, police may make an arrest instead, he said.
Police also hand out flyers with phone numbers people can call for housing, shelter beds, showers, meals and other resources.
“We’re always going to be out there,” Scott said. “We want to provide those resources and help to those individuals that are vulnerable. And we’re going to continue the efforts in that area. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to make sure that our city is safe and as clean as we can get it.”
The flyers list numbers for six service providers (including one that’s listed twice). But there’s no guarantee any will be able to help with whatever the homeless person calling needs. St. Mary’s Community Services, one of the providers listed, had two-dozen beds available across its men’s, women’s and recuperative care programs as of June 25. A week before, it had just 11. None were available for families.
Police have no way of tracking whether anyone calling St. Mary’s or the other providers gets help, or whether they just move a few blocks down the road and start the cycle over again.
And for some people, police interactions don’t stop just because they’ve moved indoors.
After living on the streets for about a decade, Harding recently moved into a community of tiny homes for homeless residents in Sacramento, where case workers are supposed to help her find permanent housing.
Shortly after, Harding and her boyfriend were hanging out in front of a nearby laundromat, using the Wi-Fi. She was downloading music onto her phone, and he was downloading games. Harding said they had a thin blanket over them, because it was cold.
An officer showed up and told them camping wasn’t allowed there, and they had to move, Harding said.
“I said, ‘Excuse me. I’m not camping. I live next door.’”
Aaron Schrank and Lisa Halverstadt contributed to this story.
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John Ford (left) and Steve Madrone (right) at last night’s MMAC meeting. By Dezmond Remington.
County Supervisor Steve Madrone and Humboldt County’s Planning and Building Director John Ford addressed concerns and refuted misinformation about the McKinleyville Town Center Project at a standing-room-only meeting of the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee (MMAC) last night.
The Town Center Project is a proposed development project that would add blocks of pedestrian and cyclist-focused retail and housing space to McKinleyville, as well as a park and other outdoor amenities, as a way to add a central hub to a sprawling, suburban town.
The MMAC didn’t end up voting on approving a draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) or the draft ordinance at this meeting, instead kicking it to the next meeting on July 30.
It’s contentious. The draft EIR runs over 1,000 pages, giving both detractors and advocates plenty of material to complain about. Ford and Madrone talked for hours about the community’s concerns, and even distributed a six-page leaflet created by the building department addressing many of them.
Wetlands are one of the community’s main concerns, taking up about one page out of 12 on a letter addressed to Ford penned by a group of concerned citizens.
Defining what, exactly, constitutes a wetland is almost straightforward. There are what are called three-parameter wetlands (basically: the land is water-logged, supports wetland vegetation, and is composed of soils unique to wetlands), and there are single-parameter wetlands that only need the wetland soils to count as a wetland. Different agencies use different standards. The Town Center Ordinance uses the three-parameter standard.
According to Ford, they found about 0.64 acres of single-parameter wetland on the property spread out over four chunks on the western side. It’s currently being grazed by animals and maintained by lawnmowers. Fourteen acres of that has been set aside to make a park that would also include a grove of spruce trees.
By law, any wetlands developers fill in must be replaced at a ratio of 1.5 to 1; if one square foot of wetlands is filled in, it’ll be replaced by a foot and a half. Madrone said the best sections of wetlands would be preserved and linked together to form one “high-value” wetland, with a stream.
A map of the 134-acre McKinleyville Town Center site.
Commenters at the meeting and online also demanded that there be an affordable housing requirement if developers want to build on the property. So far, the only planned development on the parcel is a senior citizen community called Life Plan Humboldt, but its zoning requirements could total over 2,500 housing units and 900,000 square feet of retail and office space.
In an interview with the Outpost today, Ford said the planning department would likely take the step of including some affordability requirements in the zoning laws, which he said was a little unusual but made sense to do if people wanted it.
The McKinleyville Town Center project has been on McKinleyville’s Community Plan since 2002, but community members and government officials didn’t start drafting an ordinance that would shape how it looks and operates until 2019. The project site is mostly located west of Central Avenue on 134 acres (owned by Anne Pierson, descendant of Pierson’s Building Supply founder and totem pole constructor Ernest Pierson) behind the McKinleyville Shopping Center, though a small chunk extends east across Central and envelops Pierson Park.
It’s a big space, and those 2,500-something housing units could fit over 6,000 people. It would be a huge increase for McKinleyville (population 16,000), and the 36% increase was bandied about a few times.
Some commenters also didn’t like the idea that the Town Center could be made up of four-story buildings, which they thought was too high. Others, such as the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities’ president Colin Fiske, said they were disappointed buildings wouldn’t be built to the full 75 foot height its zoning allows.
Madrone reminded people that any increase would happen gradually over the course of several decades, and that Humboldt County was still dealing with a housing crisis and affordability issues.
“This is not easy stuff, right?” Madrone said. “Nobody’s, like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s just grow the town by 36%.’ A lot of people [think] we already grew too fast. A lot of housing has been put into the community, but it’s been single family housing that’s spread out. We have a little bit of land left; we’re going to keep doing that? Are we going to do a little bit of stuff [vertically] up and create a vibrant town center?”
Ford said he was grateful for the comments and looked forward to developing the ordinance further.
“No process is perfect,” Ford said. “No ordinance will ever be perfect, but this has been an intentional desire to engage the community in a discussion about what’s important in the town center. There are people whose fingerprints are on it — even some people who feel like they haven’t been heard.”
We commend Supervisor Arroyo for taking a lead role in heightening attention to the health care crisis facing many of our residents, and the Board of Supervisors for paying early attention.
Each of you represents a district within a county that is among the most geographically isolated in the State of California. All districts represent a county with the 52nd lowest per capita income of the State of California!
This County is critically underserved on many levels when it comes to adequate health care. There is a crisis unfolding before our very eyes, a crisis that we must confront sooner rather than later. Health care is a human right in a civilized society, yet the health care crisis Humboldt County is experiencing disproportionately places at risk, at times with devastating consequences, low-income individuals and families just above the medicare income cap, fragile elders, those without adequate social support systems and those with private or no insurance who cannot access medical care locally.
Your Human Rights Commission urges action immediately to address the decreasing number of doctors and healthcare services within our area. Experts have noted that since 2005, [there has been] a 28% reduction in primary care physicians and a more than 33% loss of surgical and medical specialists. Our population is aging, continues to be low in income, and is far removed from population centers where these needs could be better met.
The Human Rights Commission urges the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, as leaders with the interest of the entire county as your portfolio, to join with interested institutions such as Cal Poly Humboldt, College of the Redwoods, our chambers of commerce and others in convening a public process to identify public solutions and generate action to confront the crisis. Such action is not to criticize or doubt our health care institutions, but to recognize that the public interest is larger, is not exactly the same, and may likely have other assets available to complement their activity.
This isn’t so much a matter of throwing money at a problem as it is thinking “outside the box.”
Our economic, educational, and health futures depend on decisive steps being taken. Recent conferences such as Supporting Healthy Aging and Surveying our Medical Landscape have drawn a bleak picture of a critical component of our infrastructure if we do not begin taking action now.
The Human Rights Commission stands ready to assist in whatever way is useful. We are not health experts either, but we recognize the future of our county is dependent as much on healthy communities as it is on prosperous ones.
Respectfully,
Jim Glover, Chair Humboldt County Human Rights Commission
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
On June 25, 2025, at about 9:30 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the 100 block of Hookton Cemetery Road in Loleta for a report of a gunshot victim. Initial reports indicated that a 27-year-old male suspect arrived at his father’s residence and caused a disturbance outside. The suspect then fired shots from outside into the residence, then forced his way inside, where a shooting occurred.
Deputies arrived on scene and located a 52-year-old male victim with three gunshot wounds. The victim was alert and transported to a local hospital for medical treatment. The suspect was not located at the scene.
At approximately 9:46 p.m., the suspect was reported [located] at a local hospital seeking medical care for gun shot wounds. Deputies responded to the hospital and confirmed the individual’s involvement in the incident. Due to the suspect’s ongoing medical treatment, further information will be released at a later time, pending medical clearance and investigative procedures.
This incident remains under investigation. Additional information will be released as it becomes available.
Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the HCSO Major Crimes Division at (707) 268-2539.
The long-vacant Jacobs Middle School campus at 674 Allard Avenue. | File photo.
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After more than six years of public pressure, political scandals and backroom negotiations over a convoluted land swap deal that went up in flames, the fate of Eureka City Schools’s vacant Jacobs Middle School campus finally appears clear — though, as this saga has shown, appearances can prove deceptive.
Last night, the district’s Board of Trustees approved a two-year irrevocable option agreement giving the State of California the exclusive right to purchase the property for $4 million. The sale, if consummated, would allow the California Highway Patrol to build a new area headquarters on the property, located at 674 Allard Avenue.
Per the terms of the deal, the state will make up to two annual, nonrefundable payments to Eureka City Schools of $253,100 (for a total of $506,200) while conducting the environmental and feasibility studies necessary for the CHP project.
Eureka City Schools Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Paul Ziegler said the state’s willingness to make those cash payments suggests that the CHP is serious about the deal, which could take 18 to 24 months to finalize, according to a story by Times-Standard reporter Sage Alexander.
The vacant school site has alternately been proposed as good spot for affordable housing development, and Alexander reports that some public speakers, including members of a local tenants union, spoke at last night’s meeting, urging the board to reject the state’s offer in favor of using low-income housing tax credits to build rentals for district employees.
But a shorthanded board — with trustees Lisa Ollivier and Rebecca Pardoe absent — voted 3-0 to approve the agreement with the State of California.
The CHP’s current patrol area office, at 255 East Samoa Boulevard in Arcata, sits in a tsunami hazard zone, hence the desire to relocate.
On June 26, 2025, at 4:30am, the Arcata Police Department responded to a burglary in-progress, at an unoccupied residence, in the 400 block of Shirley Boulevard.
Upon their arrival, officers engaged in a foot pursuit with a female suspect acting as a look-out, outside of the home, while two male suspects rummaged inside. The female was taken into custody at the scene and was identified as 41-year-old Eureka resident Melissa Dale Parker. Parker was booked and lodged at the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on felony burglary and misdemeanor resistance charges, as well as an active warrant for felony assault.
The two male suspects, described only as tall and white, fled the residence on foot and remain outstanding. Arcata Police Detectives are working to identify the outstanding suspects.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Arcata Police Department’s Investigations Unit at 707-822-2424, or the Anonymous Crime Tipline, at 707-825-2588.
On June 25, 2025 at 0800 hours, the Eureka Police Department in collaboration with Humboldt County
Sheriff Search and Rescue team, CARDA (California Rescue Dog Association) and WOOF (Wilderness
Finders Search Teams) conducted a third search for missing person Michael Arthur Bounds who was
reported last seen 11/27/24.
This search was conducted in a green belt between the location that the subjects’ vehicle was found
and apartments that he frequented. The search area was a total of 31 acres. There were five volunteer
search teams deployed with a total of six canines. The teams consisted of certified K-9 handlers from
counties throughout the state.
The search concluded at approximately 4PM and resulted in no findings. The Eureka Police
Department would like to thank the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and their Search and Rescue Unit
along with the numerous volunteers that assisted in the operation.
This remains an active missing persons investigation and If you have any information, please contacted
EPD’s Criminal Investigation Unit at 707-441-4300.
