Homelessness is on the rise in the US, and in some locations, it’s turning into extra frequent for the police to arrest somebody for sleeping or residing in a public house.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court docket issued a ruling, Grants Cross v. Johnson, that decided it’s constitutional to challenge citations to or arrest homeless individuals, even when there isn’t any accessible shelter.
The ruling reversed earlier federal appeals courtroom rulings from 2019 and 2022 that decided cities can not implement anti-camping legal guidelines towards homeless individuals if there usually are not sufficient shelter beds accessible for them.
The Supreme Court docket’s ruling additionally decided that the Eighth Modification’s prohibition on merciless and strange punishments doesn’t shield homeless individuals from legal guidelines criminalizing resting in public locations.
As somebody who has spent greater than a decade researching homelessness and talking with unhoused communities, I’ve seen firsthand how enforcement of such legal guidelines imposes unavoidable hardships on homeless individuals and makes it tougher for them to discover a secure dwelling.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass visits the location of a city-led sweep of a homeless encampment in Van Nuys, Calif., on July 31, 2025.
David Pashaee/Center East Photographs/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
An increase in punitive motion towards homelessness
In 2024, there have been an estimated 771,480 individuals within the U.S. who skilled homelessness on a single night time, the very best quantity ever recorded.
Since June 2024, virtually 220 native measures have handed that prohibit or ban acts like sleeping, sitting or panhandling in public in cities that embrace Phoenix; Gainesville, Florida, and Reno, Nevada.
The speed of unsheltered homelessness, which means homeless people who find themselves sleeping in locations that aren’t meant for people to relaxation in, like parks or vehicles, is the very best in California.
Not each chief has embraced this strategy of what some observers name criminalizing homelessness. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, for instance, rejected criminalizing homelessness as “backwards” in June 2024.
However, many cities are implementing present and new bans on homeless encampments extra aggressively than earlier than the Supreme Court docket resolution – regardless of proof that such enforcement will not be efficient in coping with the issue of homelessness.
The impacts of aggressive enforcement
Analysis exhibits that arresting somebody with out a dwelling for sitting, resting or sleeping in a public place doesn’t scale back homelessness.
As a substitute, encampment sweeps and tenting bans usually displace individuals from one space to a different, whereas discarding or destroying their private belongings within the course of, akin to identification playing cards, medicines and sleeping gear.
This strategy additionally wastes public assets by paying teams to throw away individuals’s belongings as an alternative of investing that cash into precise housing options, like creating extra reasonably priced housing choices.
Homeless encampment sweeps by police or different authorities officers are additionally proven to make individuals residing in camps sicker, resulting in will increase in hospitalizations and even deaths amongst these depending on medication or alcohol.
A punitive shift in San Francisco
San Francisco is an instance of an American metropolis with a comparatively massive homeless inhabitants that has taken a extra aggressive strategy to implementing bans on homeless encampments over the previous 12 months.
Just a few weeks after the Supreme Court docket resolution, then-San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised to be “very aggressive” in eradicating homeless encampments. She additionally mentioned that “building more housing” wouldn’t clear up the homelessness disaster.
Metropolis information exhibits that within the 12 months because the Supreme Court docket ruling, San Francisco police had arrested greater than 1,000 homeless individuals for residing in a public house – a scale of enforcement hardly ever seen within the metropolis’s previous. Within the 12 months main as much as the ruling, 111 individuals have been arrested for unlawful lodging
San Francisco recognized roughly 8,300 homeless metropolis residents in 2024.
In June 2025, I performed a survey of 150 homeless individuals in San Francisco. About 10% of these individuals who gave a cause for a latest arrest reported being jailed for lodging with out permission. One other 6% mentioned they have been arrested for trespassing.
In the identical survey, which is a part of an ongoing venture, 54% of homeless San Francisco residents reported being compelled to maneuver from a public house no less than as soon as.
One other 8% reported being cited for an additional cause associated to trespassing.
A much less aggressive path in Portland
Different western American cities with massive homeless populations have taken barely completely different approaches to eradicating homelessness encampments since June 2024.
Portland, Oregon, for instance, started implementing a brand new daytime tenting ban in July 2024. However Portland police have solely made 11 arrests of homeless individuals for camping-related violations over the previous 12 months.
Different homeless individuals in Portland have acquired police citations for different offenses, like trespassing.
As a part of my June 2025 examine, I surveyed 150 homeless Portland residents. About 49% of respondents reported having been arrested in some unspecified time in the future of their lives. Although no respondents have been arrested for tenting in a prohibited place, 68% of individuals I spoke with reported that police or different authorities officers compelled them to depart a public house in some unspecified time in the future over the previous 12 months.
And 13% of those that gave a cause for being cited by police mentioned it was for tenting in a prohibited place. One other 11% of homeless individuals have been cited for another cause associated to residing with out shelter.
As a part of the examine, I additionally interviewed residents who had been arrested whereas residing on the road. One Portland resident I interviewed – who requested to not be named to protect their anonymity – informed me they misplaced the possibility to hire an house as a result of they have been arrested in 2023 on a preexisting, unrelated warrant after a police officer checked their ID – simply days earlier than they have been supposed to select up their keys.
“Many unhoused people have warrants simply for failing to appear after being cited for sitting or resting in public space,” they mentioned. “I was supposed to go get the keys and, bam, I got picked up. I was arrested and went to court. Just me being in jail for five, six or five days screwed it all. I didn’t show up to get the keys, and then (the landlord) couldn’t get ahold of me, and they had no idea what was going on.”
The weeklong jail keep not solely pushed this particular person again onto the road, but it surely additionally put them again onto a ready record for housing – the place they continue to be in 2025.
A volunteer helps an individual into his tent after relocating him from one park to a different in Grants Cross, Oregon, in March 2024.
AP Photograph/Jenny Kane
Wanting forward
The Supreme Court docket’s 2024 ruling didn’t mandate that cities criminalize homelessness. However it successfully gave cities the inexperienced mild to take action with out worry of violating individuals’s constitutional protections.
The consequences of this ruling shall be additional felt with President Donald Trump’s July 24, 2025, govt order that ended federal assist for approaches like Housing First, a coverage that prioritizes offering homeless individuals with housing, earlier than some other wanted assist. The order additionally requires involuntarily committing homeless individuals with psychological sickness to psychological well being establishments.
As extra cities think about harder encampment ordinances, I believe it’s price contemplating if extra punitive measures actually tackle homelessness. Many years of proof recommend they received’t.
As a substitute, arresting homeless individuals usually deepens their poverty, will increase displacement and diverts public funding away from the true answer – secure, reasonably priced housing.
