Judge temporarily blocks homeless encampment cleanup in San Francisco amid lawsuit

A federal judge has issued a temporary ban on San Francisco clearing most homeless encampments amid an ongoing lawsuit against the city filed by advocacy groups seeking to stop police sweeps of homeless encampments.

Last week, Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu in the U.S. District Court in Oakland questioned the tactics used by the city of San Francisco in its homeless encampment cleanups, suggesting that the city is not adhering to its own policies of providing shelter beds to individuals who are being asked to vacate a public area.

In her decision, Ryu stated that the city did not offer shelter to homeless individuals before clearing encampments and confiscating their property.

The judge also found the city’s justification for taking enforcement actions to be “wholly unconvincing,” stating that the defendants did not adequately dispute that they cleared people without first providing shelter.

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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.

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“The policy isn’t the problem,” Ryu said during the virtual hearing. “The question is how is that policy being executed.”

Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Ryu’s injunction impinges on her ability to address the city’s homelessness crisis, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

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.”

“Mayors cannot run cities this way,” she said. “We already have too few tools to deal with the mental illness we see on our streets. Now we are being told not to use another tool that helps bring people indoors and keeps our neighborhoods safe and clean for our residents.”

Ryu’s injunction will stay in effect “as long as there are more homeless individuals in San Francisco than there are shelter beds available.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.