A new Supreme Court ruling stands to alter — or at least revert — how San Francisco approaches the issue of homelessness.
Grants Pass v. Johnson is based on a case in Grants Pass, Oregon and overturns a lower court injunction around the rights of individuals to sleep outside. It criminalizes the act of sleeping in public areas such as streets and parks. Violators face an escalating series of punishments, culminating in up to 30 days of imprisonment.
San Francisco city officials have shifted their homelessness policy in response to the new powers granted to them in the Supreme Court ruling. In a statement in June, Mayor London Breed said, “San Francisco has made significant investments in shelter and housing, … but too often these offers [of shelter] are rejected, and we need to be able to enforce our laws, especially to prevent long-term encampments.”
According to Breed, 60% of unhoused people who received offers for shelter from city outreach teams rejected it.
Governor Gavin Newsom supports the plan. “This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures,” he said in a statement in response to the ruling.
City officials say their efforts to clean up the streets are often stymied as unhoused people decline offers of shelter, creating encampments around San Francisco. “[The injunction] created a lot of encampments, and it also created a lot of public health hazards like needles and really unsanitary conditions,” said Ana Validzic, acting government affairs liaison at the San Francisco Department of Public Health in an interview with The Urban Legend.
Validzic offered her personal opinion on the city’s approach. “I don’t think it’s okay to do sweeps without having any options for people who are unhoused,” she said. “I also don’t think it’s okay for people to just live long-term on the street.”
Lyra Renniger ’27 shared a similar view. “It doesn’t actually address any solutions. It’s just criminalizing sleeping on the street, which does nothing to solve any problems. [It] just means you’re throwing more people into the prison system, which costs taxpayers more money than it would to just house people,” she said.
San Francisco’s unhoused feel the city should concentrate on the rehabilitative rather than the punitive. “If [the government is] gonna rehabilitate us, rehabilitate us. Don’t make stuff up,” said Bunny, an unhoused Haight Street resident since 2021.
Bunny also discussed the lack of knowledge about offered federal programs. “We don’t know that these programs exist. … In the past 16 months, I’ve been getting food stamps. [Otherwise,] I don’t know what they’re offering,” he said.
Validzic contends the city needs to focus on meeting its unhoused population where they are. “They need a lot of outreach first. We can’t compel anyone to take any treatment,” she said. “The right answer, which most of the country is struggling with, is building lots of different options for housing and more affordable housing.”
However, implementing this strategy is difficult due to building codes and the unprofitability of building affordable housing in San Francisco. Multiple initiatives have been put forward, such as the Tiny Home Village created by Tipping Point, a philanthropic organization run by Mayor-Elect Daniel Lurie.
Breed also spearheaded the Housing for All initiative, which aims to create more housing by allowing construction of apartments in areas where it was previously prohibited due to zoning laws. This would speed up the permitting process and provide funding for affordable housing initiatives.
Former Housing Rights Group faculty advisor Ben Slater ’07 wonders if building more housing will be enough on its own. “Does that even solve their problems?” he said. “Or is that just creating a place where they’re out of sight, but still suffering?”
