How state and local efforts to forcibly remove encampments and enforce Proposition 36 fail our unhoused communities
By TARA ROMERO— tcrome@ucdavis.edu
On July 26, 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom enacted Executive Order N-1-24, which allows and encourages local law enforcement to forcibly evict unhoused people from their encampments.
“It is imperative to act with urgency to address dangerous encampments, which subject unsheltered individuals living in them to extreme weather, fires, predatory and criminal activity, and widespread substance use, harming their health, safety, and well-being,” the executive order reads.
Newsom is quick to blame the “dangerous encampments.” Yet, all of the problems that he lists are not limited solely to encampments. As a result of limited resources and government aid, unhoused people are more vulnerable to extreme weather, fires, sexual and physical violence and the effects of addiction. Encampments are not to blame for California’s continuous neglect of unhoused people’s basic needs and human rights: What is to blame is state and local governments’ failure to properly allocate funding and resources to provide adequate food and shelter to our most vulnerable population.
Encampments can actually be a place for community among unhoused people who don’t have access to shelters. While homeless shelters do put in a lot of work to provide temporary housing to the unhoused community, many shelters have limited beds along with restrictions against people who have been incarcerated or those who use drugs.
In spite of this, Newsom is cracking down on encampments. In opposition to Newsom’s order, Ann Oliva, chief executive officer of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, responded with her own statement:
“The evidence is actually very clear: forced encampment evictions are ineffective, expensive, and non-strategic,” Olivia said in a press release.
A Research and Development (RAND) study in 2023 also revealed how encampment removal temporarily lowers the unhoused population in a given area for roughly two to three months but has no long-term effects. In August, The Associated Press released a video of Newsom himself cleaning up a Los Angeles encampment.
“I want to see results,” Newsom said in the video. “I don’t want to read about them. I don’t want to see the data. I want to see [change].”
Newsom claims he wants to see results, but the truth is that he simply does not want to see unhoused people. The act of removing encampments does not actually solve the problem, it only moves unhoused people out of the public sight. In other words, Newsom does not care whether unhoused people actually get off the streets — he cares that it looks as if they did.
On Feb. 24, 2025, Newsom announced that he would begin holding local governments accountable for their use of state funding for the homeless — by threatening to withhold funding to increase pressure on local officials to remove encampments.
Now, mayors across the state, from San José to Los Angeles, are pushing back against Newsom’s encampment enforcements. Matt Mahan, the mayor of San José, argued that “clearing encampments only works if we have places for people to go” and said that “every city must have equal resolve in expanding shelter and in-patient treatment beds.”
As of late, the city of Davis has been fairly quiet about their stance on Newsom’s orders. However, Davis’ official protocol is to first send the city’s Homeless Outreach Team to engage with an encampment in order to offer services, then to partner with Davis Police for crisis assessment and lastly to have the Davis Police “maintain public order and enforce the law” — meaning the forced removal of an encampment.
Despite being labelled as a “progressive college town,” there is a lot of local anti-homeless sentiment among the Davis Police Department and certain small business owners in the Downtown Davis Business Association (DDBA).
In a February 2025 article from the The Davis Enterprise, Davis Police Chief Todd Henry provided a statement.
“There’s this general sense of it not being safe, especially during nighttime hours,” Henry said. “If they qualify for [Proposition] 36, we’re definitely using the law.”
Here, Henry points to unhoused people as the reason for this unsafe atmosphere.
Prop. 36 was passed this last election cycle, turning petty theft and drug usage back into a felony. These two statements imply that the Davis police are intentionally targeting unhoused people with their enforcement of this law.
DDBA President Kevin Wan explained how the DDBA wants to “[tackle] the challenges of crime and homelessness” because “our very livelihoods depend on an attractive and safe downtown.”
“Downtown safety and cleanliness are two of the biggest priorities for me and the DDBA in general,” DDBA Executive Director Brett Lee said.
Both of these appear to be unassuming statements at first glance, but it’s important to remember whose “safety and cleanliness” they are talking about. When they say “safety,” they mean the average Davis resident; They do not mean the unhoused population who are more vulnerable to violence, weather and displacement than anyone else in town.
Similarly to Newsom, Wan and Lee’s priorities are not to actually provide support to our most vulnerable population. They would rather the town appear “attractive and safe” than encourage the local government to make it safe for unhoused people.
Davis’ use of law enforcement against the unhoused population, alongside Newsom’s push to evict encampments, violates our most vulnerable community’s basic human rights.
Genuinely, I believe Newsom is a lost cause. No matter how many experts tell him that removing encampments is not the solution, he will stand firm. This is why I encourage you all to speak up to our local government in solidarity with our unhoused community in Davis. Tearing apart encampments and criminalizing homelessness is not the solution. I encourage Mayor Bapu Vaitla to stand with the San José and Los Angeles mayors against Newsom’s N-1-24 ordinance and to prioritize providing every unhoused person, including those who have been previously incarcerated and are current drug users, with shelter. We cannot let our own Davis community members be removed or incarcerated just to make the town “look good.”
Written by: Tara Romero— tcrome@ucdavis.edu
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