Elijah Biddle was asleep in his tent a few nights ago when he heard the first beep.
The 26-year-old awoke with a start. More beeps followed, the sounds of a truck backing up. It must be a cleanup crew, Biddle thought. Someone nearby said the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, was headed to their encampment under a freeway overpass.
Biddle had lost belongings during previous sweeps, and a bike, a partially assembled generator and an urn holding his brother’s ashes were all in the area. What could he grab quickly?
As time passed, no crew appeared. The beeps had come from some other vehicle. Still, Biddle spent the rest of the night awake.
The growing number of people on local streets know they’re lying on unstable ground, an awareness heightened late last month when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order telling California agencies to clear encampments on state property and asking municipal governments to do the same. On Thursday, Newsom increased the pressure, vowing to take away funding from cities and counties not clearing encampments. The initial directive followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that officials may push people off public land regardless of whether shelter is available.
“It’s time to move with urgency,” the governor said in an accompanying video. “There are no longer any excuses.”
Yet it’s not clear that San Diego will quickly see fewer tents.
While California has previously made millions of dollars available for homeless outreach, the executive order doesn’t detail any new funding. Representatives for Caltrans and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which have jurisdiction over parts of the county, did not answer questions about what resources they would need to boost encampment sweeps.
When Sarah Jarman, head of San Diego’s homelessness department, was publicly asked by a council member if the directive changed the city’s approach, she simply said, “We are holding course.”
Other offices may increase enforcement. Soon after the order was released, the Port of San Diego issued a notice threatening anyone camping by the waterfront with a ticket or arrest.
The directive says homeless people should generally be warned in writing at least two days before a sweep and seized personal belongings are to be labeled and stored for 60 days — time-consuming efforts for public agencies that can come on top of paying outreach workers and cleanup crews.
Those costs were alluded to Tuesday in a joint statement from mayors around California, including proponents of the governor’s directive such as San Diego’s Todd Gloria, and those who’ve been more critical, like Karen Bass in Los Angeles.
We “need continued resources from our federal and state partners” to “make large scale impact,” the leaders said. “The only way we’ll end homelessness is if all levels of government work together in lockstep.”
The governor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
One of the main agencies affected by the order is Caltrans.
The department is generally in charge of land around highway on- and off-ramps as well as spaces beneath freeways, all of which can be popular places to camp since they’re outside the jurisdiction of local police.In recent years sweeps have unquestionably increased.
In 2023, Caltrans cleared 2,700-plus encampments in San Diego and Imperial counties, more than three times the total from two years ago, according to data provided by spokesperson Edward Barrera. (There’s not an easy way to examine just San Diego’s numbers, although there are significantly fewer homeless people further east.)
The amount of debris collected has similarly risen, and the department reported carting off nearly 30,600 cubic yards worth of belongings during the same three-year period.
Those increases may largely reflect the simultaneous rise in homelessness. Six individuals living in encampments beneath local freeways recently said that it had been weeks since they’d seen anyone from Caltrans, and one man described a tacit agreement he had with a cleanup crew to be left alone as long as tents stayed out of sight.
Caltrans said in a statement that it would “continue to follow its guidelines and the Governor’s Office directives regarding encampment removals on the state right-of-way.”
In addition, not all land around highways belongs to California.
Removing one large encampment beneath Interstate 5, a little ways from Sea World Drive, appears to be on San Diego. “There may be some confusion about this” since “the City map may not reflect this area,” a Caltrans director wrote in an email last month to a San Diego official. Regardless, “This island area under I-5 is city’s responsibility.”
A $17 million state grant is still being used to fund outreach efforts to get people from that site into shelters or housing. “We just want to see everybody there connected to something more safe,” said Sarah Hutmacher, chief operating officer for the San Diego River Park Foundation.
The number of encampments by waterways increased in the months after San Diego passed its camping ban, and Hutmacher noted that another state office, the fish and wildlife department, has helped with the resulting cleanups.
Yet an agency spokesperson declined to say how many sweeps it has participated in or whether the newest directive changed its strategy. A statement sent by Tim Daly said fish and wildlife “stands ready to support the state’s efforts to address homelessness.”
“The Governor’s Executive Order complements the department’s experience working with unhoused populations on state ecological reserves and wildlife areas,” the email added, and the agency remains “committed to addressing unhoused encampments with compassion, respect, dignity, and a sense of urgency.”
A records request for their cleanup data is now pending.
The issue has long required leaders to navigate competing values.
Belongings left outside may be fire hazards or pollute waterways, and living in encampments has always come with the risk of violence. Many homeless residents counter that the region’s shelter shortage and sky-high housing costs offer few alternatives, and one group in East County recently filed a lawsuit against several government agencies, including Caltrans, alleging that personal property was being illegally trashed.
Biddle, the man who’d awoken to beeping, said he’s returned to campsites only to discover that sweeps had happened in his absence and everything he owned was gone.
Those days brought him an odd sense of relief.
Years ago, he and his brother moved from Arizona to California with hopes of landing their own apartment. Instead, records from the county medical examiner show that the younger man was hit on a highway in early 2022. He died later at a hospital.
In the aftermath, Biddle found that having to suddenly replace clothes and food and bedding came as a welcome distraction.
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