Sacramento County appears poised to grant law enforcement more authority to clear homeless encampments — marking the latest urban homelessness landscape change since the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that enforcing public camping bans, even in the absence of available shelter beds, is constitutional. 

An ordinance to expand law enforcement’s authority, which is slated for the County Board of Supervisors’ November 5 agenda, has the backing of business groups and environmental advocates who point to the debris from the encampments, such as mattresses, tents, litter, and tarps, that can create blockages and flooding in waterways. 

While Sacramento’s most recent data indicates a significant drop in the homeless population — which surged to nearly 10,000 people during the pandemic — it remains a major issue in the area, with business owners expressing frustration about the vandalism, crime, and littering that can accompany the camps. 

The county aims to allow law enforcement to prioritize “encampments that are particularly problematic,” a county board member, Rich Desmond, said at a meeting introducing the ordinance last week. He said that the Ninth Circuit Court’s 2018 ruling in Martin v. Boise, which held that it was cruel and unusual punishment to prevent homeless people from sleeping on public land, had “created some difficulties” for law enforcement in knowing how to comply with the law.

The Supreme Court’s ruling this summer in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which overturned the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and sent homeless policy back into the hands of localities, rather than the courts, has empowered numerous cities and counties to revisit the issue of how to handle homeless encampments, including San Francisco, as the Sun has reported. 

“Last year, the county spent over $180 million in programs and services to address the unhoused crisis,” the Sacramento County district attorney, Thien Ho, said of the ordinance last week, noting that the Grants Pass ruling has changed how localities can approach homelessness and that now Sacramento County will be brought into “consistency with many other jurisdictions.”

“This is something that is needed,” he said, noting that it is a “humanitarian crisis” as well as an “environmental crisis.”

Mr. Ho last year filed a lawsuit against the city of Sacramento for failing to enforce its own public ordinances and allowing overflowing litter, indecent exposure, and public defecation to overtake parts of the city. The lawsuit, which is now on pause, was believed to be a first-or-its-kind effort by a county district attorney who was frustrated by the city’s lack of enforcement. At the time of the filing, as the Sun reported, Mr. Ho said that the homeless population had “exploded” and that the encampment conditions were “typical of Third World countries.”