{"id":24684,"date":"2023-01-09T11:40:22","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T19:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=24684"},"modified":"2023-01-09T11:40:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T19:40:24","slug":"san-francisco-asks-judge-to-define-involuntarily-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/01\/09\/san-francisco-asks-judge-to-define-involuntarily-homeless\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco asks judge to define &#8216;involuntarily homeless&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/users\/profile\/Adam%20Shanks\">By Adam Shanks | Examiner staff writer<\/a><\/li><li>Jan 4, 2023\u00a0(SFExaminer.com)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/sfexaminer.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/4\/dd\/4dd90eae-87f0-11ed-a2f8-8f478f3a518d\/63ae582b09181.image.jpg?resize=400%2C267\" alt=\"Homeless tent encampment on Erie Street on Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022.\"\/><figcaption>A homeless tent encampment lines Erie Street in the Mission district on Dec. 29.Craig Lee\/The Examiner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The City has asked a judge to clarify her ruling that places constraints on sweeps of homeless encampments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A federal court ruling issued last month sparked questions about exactly what San Francisco must offer the homeless before citing them for behaviors like camping on a city sidewalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a motion filed Tuesday, The City asked U.S. District Court Judge Donna Ryu to define what makes a person \u201cinvoluntarily homeless,\u201d and thus protected from enforcement of laws targeting encampments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What did you miss during work?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Sign up for The San Francisco Examiner&#8217;s free afternoon newsletterEmail<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: San Francisco Examiner, 465 California Street, San Francisco, CA, 94104, US, https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe\u00ae link, found at the bottom of every email.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.constantcontact.com\/legal\/service-provider\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Emails are serviced by Constant Contact.<\/a>Sign up!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/why-and-how-an-idaho-city-impacts-sfs-homeless-policies\/article_03814b38-87e0-11ed-8e59-cfe083b2c8f3.html\">How Boise impacts S.F&#8217;s homeless policies<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2018, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a pivotal ruling that established protections for people experiencing homelessness<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The City also argued that it is now torn between two federal court rulings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first demands that it enforce laws against homeless encampments outside UC Hastings (now the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second ruling, issued by Ryu in December, prohibits The City from conducting sweeps of homeless encampments unless it offers people experiencing homelessness an alternative place to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWithout clarification, the court\u2019s order puts San Francisco in an impossible situation, practically and legally,\u201d City Attorney David Chiu wrote in a statement on Tuesday. \u201cI am concerned that this order, if interpreted broadly, will lead to more people suffering on our City streets.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The City was concerned that Ryu\u2019s ruling required it to not only offer a bed to a specific person being removed from an encampment, but that it have enough available shelter beds to accommodate every single person experiencing homelessness in The City before conducting sweeps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such a requirement would be functionally impossible to fulfill for The City, which has about 3,050 shelter beds, the vast majority of which are occupied. As of the most recent census, The City has an unsheltered homeless population of 4,397.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The legal questions were raised thanks to a lawsuit filed last year by several homeless advocacy organizations and people who have experienced homelessness in The City. They claimed that The City\u2019s enforcement against encampments \u2014 and failure to collect and label the possessions of people it removes from them \u2014 violates the constitutional rights of the unhoused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Basically what The City is doing is trying to get another bite at the apple because they lost,&#8221; said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, which is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/the-city\/how-a-judges-ruling-could-impact-sfs-homeless-sweeps\/article_57764b0e-86d6-11ed-8dde-176835999e6f.html\">How a judge&#8217;s ruling is \u2014 and isn&#8217;t \u2014 impacting S.F.&#8217;s homeless sweeps<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the confusion sparked by a judge\u2019s ruling last week, The City can \u2014 and has already continued to \u2014 conduct sweeps of homeless encampments<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The City\u2019s response to encampments is led by the Healthy Streets Operations Center, which melds the resources of multiple departments with a role to play in addressing street conditions and homelessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the wake of the ruling, HSOC has continued to respond to homeless encampments, but questions persisted about exactly what laws they could enforce and under what conditions they could do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In her ruling, Ryu stressed that she did not intend to prevent San Francisco from addressing public health issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe relief sought by plaintiffs will not bar defendants\u2019 efforts to \u2018keep public spaces clean and sanitary\u2019 or \u2018allow safe access\u2019 to sidewalks and rights-of-way since plaintiffs do not ask the court to enjoin any ordinances targeting public health nuisances or willfully obstructing streets, sidewalks, or other passageways,\u201c Ryu wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But she also stressed how practically implausible it is for a homeless person to obtain shelter on their own in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In justifying the ruling, Ryu leaned heavily on the logic contained in Martin v. Boise, a landmark Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that prohibited cities from enforcing laws like sleeping outside unless they first offer adequate shelter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn Martin, the Ninth Circuit held that \u2018so long as there is a greater number of homeless individuals in (a jurisdiction) than the number of available beds (in shelters), the jurisdiction cannot prosecute homeless individuals for involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public,\u2019\u201d Ryu noted in the ruling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/politics\/breaking-another-145-billion-to-end-unsheltered-homelessness-in-sf\/article_5e0afdce-8885-11ed-adb7-6ff053921e94.html\">Another $1.45 billion to end unsheltered homelessness in S.F.?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Ending unsheltered homelessness in San Francisco would cost The City billions of dollars over the next three years, according to a new report<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The City is now asking Ryu to clarify the definition of \u201cinvoluntarily homeless,\u201d to whom the order applies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It wants Ryu to stipulate \u201cthat a particular individual is not \u2018involuntarily homeless\u2019 where San Francisco has offered that individual adequate temporary shelter,\u2019\u201d regardless of whether or not there is a shelter bed available to every unsheltered homeless person in The City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Ryu means that The City needs to rapidly expand shelter in order to enforce laws against encampments, The City worries it could run afoul of a separate court order issued in June 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that case, UC Hastings sued The City for failing to clear the streets around its campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The injunction issued in that case states \u201cThe City is hopeful that most people offered an alternative location will be willing to accept it, but if necessary to comply with this stipulated injunction The City will employ enforcement measures for those who do not accept an offer of shelter or safe sleeping sites to prevent re-encampment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But The Hastings lawsuit never gave The City a green light to violate peoples&#8217; constitutional rights, Friedenbach said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The question of whether or not The City has to have enough beds for its entire homeless population in order to enforce certain laws is, to some extent, irrelevant to Friedenbach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The City is not offering shelter to the vast majority of people in any one encampment,&#8221; Friedenbach said. &#8220;We&#8217;re not really asking for anything more than the city to follow the law and have an effective and humane response out on the streets.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"mailto:ashanks@sfexaminer.com\">ashanks@sfexaminer.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/users\/profile\/Adam%20Shanks\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/sfexaminer.com\/content\/tncms\/avatars\/7\/0e\/fc3\/70efc372-d70d-11ec-981c-577dc43f214f.9cd60a12d877dd1bb0b7132c1d69ee33.png?_dc=1654126500\" alt=\"Adam Shanks\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/users\/profile\/Adam%20Shanks\">Adam Shanks<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adam Shanks | Examiner staff writer Jan 4, 2023\u00a0(SFExaminer.com) The City has asked a judge to clarify her ruling that places constraints on sweeps of homeless encampments. A federal court ruling issued last month sparked questions about exactly what San Francisco must offer the homeless before citing them for&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/01\/09\/san-francisco-asks-judge-to-define-involuntarily-homeless\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24688,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24684\/revisions\/24688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}