A federal judge has prohibited San Francisco from clearing most homeless encampments temporarily amid a lawsuit against the city brought by groups seeking to stop police sweeps.
Homeless people consume illegal drugs in an encampment along Willow Street in the Tenderloin district of downtown San Francisco on Feb. 24, 2022.
Attorneys representing San Francisco argued that the city's policies balance the rights of homeless individuals with the need to keep public spaces clean and safe for everyone, according to court documents. They stated that homeless individuals are given ample notice of upcoming cleanings, are offered help and are only asked to leave an encampment after declining an offer to stay elsewhere.
The judge wrote that the defense relied on the declarations of city employees who"generally walk through how the city typically conducts encampment closures, without discussing any specific closures or providing supporting data or analysis of the same." Ryu also pinpointed evidence from the Coalition on Homelessness and seven plaintiffs, including academic analysis and detailed eyewitness accounts of numerous sweeps conducted over the past three years, which showed that homeless individuals were forcibly removed from their encampments with nowhere to go and were deprived of their personal belongings such as tents, cell phones, medication, identification and prosthetic limbs.
Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Ryu's injunction impinges on her ability to address the city's homelessness crisis,Breed said a"large majority" of the homeless cleared by city workers"are refusing services or are already housed." She also said some are using the encampments for"drug dealing, human trafficking and other illegal activities."
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