LOS ANGELES >> Gov. Gavin Newsom escalated California’s push to eradicate homeless encampments Monday, calling on hundreds of cities, towns and counties to effectively ban tent camps on sidewalks, bike paths, parklands and other types of public property.

Newsom’s administration has raised and spent tens of billions of dollars on programs to bring homeless people into housing and to emphasize treatment. But his move Monday marks a tougher approach to one of the more visible aspects of the homelessness crisis. The governor has created a template for a local ordinance that municipalities can adopt to outlaw encampments and clear existing ones.

California is home to about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population, a visible byproduct of the temperate climate and the state’s brutal housing crisis. Last year, a record 187,000 people were homeless in the state, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Two-thirds were living unsheltered in tents, cars or outdoors.

Newsom cannot force cities to pass his model ban, but its issuance coincides with the release of more than $3 billion in state-controlled housing funds that local officials can use to put his template in place. And though it’s not a mandate, the call to outlaw encampments statewide by one of the best-known Democrats in the country suggests a shift in the party’s approach to homelessness.

Once a combative champion of liberal policies and a vocal Trump administration critic, Newsom has been stress-testing his party’s positions, to the point of elevating the ideas of Trump supporters on his podcast. The liberal approach to encampments has traditionally emphasized government-funded housing and treatment, and frowned on what some call criminalizing homelessness.

The model ordinance Newsom wants local officials to adopt does not specify criminal penalties, but outlawing homeless encampments on public property makes them a crime by definition. Cities would decide on their own how tough the penalties should be, including arrests or citations to those who violate the ban. The template’s state-issued guidance says no one “should face criminal punishment for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.”

Frustration with the persistence of homelessness has been rising, both within the Newsom administration and among many Californians.

Although California’s homeless population — like its overall population — remains the nation’s largest, federal data released in January showed an increase in 2024 of 3% in the state’s homeless numbers, compared with a rise of more than 18% across the United States. And the number of homeless veterans and chronically homeless people declined.

But encampments, which proliferated during the coronavirus pandemic as social distancing emptied public spaces, have remained a widespread problem in Southern California, the Central Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento region. And an apparent disconnect has emerged between many of California’s elected officials and the state’s fed-up residents.

Nearly 40% of the state’s Democrat-dominated electorate said they were so weary of squalid settlements overtaking parks and blocking sidewalks that they supported the arrest of homeless campers if they refused shelter, according to a poll last month by Politico and the Jack Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of California, Berkeley. At the same time, a companion survey in the Democrat-led state showed that nearly half of California’s policy leaders and elected officials opposed addressing encampments with law enforcement.

Previously, federal courts had ruled that punishing people for sleeping on public property was “cruel and unusual,” and therefore unconstitutional. That legal landscape changed last year after a Supreme Court decision empowered governments to penalize people for sleeping in parks, on sidewalks and in other public areas.

The Newsom administration seized on the Supreme Court ruling swiftly, ordering state agencies to begin humanely clearing encampments from state parks and freeway underpasses, and urging cities to do the same in local jurisdictions.

Some did, addressing encampments with varying degrees of compassion and aggression.

The state funding the governor has released along with his initiative amounts to $3.3 billion in state-controlled money to expand local housing and treatment for homeless people with serious mental and behavioral health problems. The money, from a $6.4 billion state bond, was approved by voters last year.

“There are no more excuses,” Newsom said in a statement accompanying the ordinance. “Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered. Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing and care.”

Advocates for homeless people denounced the initiative.

“Sadly, Newsom and Trump are using the same failed playbook,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, a spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center. “We won’t be duped by this backwards approach, and we will continue to push for real solutions to homelessness, like housing and services.”

Local officials were skeptical, accusing Newsom of exaggerating the state’s funding of programs to address homelessness.

“More than half of it went to housing, not homelessness,” Jeff Griffiths, an Inyo County official who’s president of the California State Association of Counties, said of the estimated $27 billion the Newsom administration has said it has spent on the homelessness issue. “How much of that housing has actually been built?”

The governor’s municipal template is based on the state’s protocol for deterring homeless encampments on state land and roadways. It would explicitly make it illegal “to construct, place or maintain on public property any semi-permanent structure.”

It also would outlaw camping on public property for more than three consecutive days or nights within 200 feet of a single location. And it would make it illegal “to sit, sleep, lie or camp on any public street, road or bike path, or on any sidewalk in a manner that impedes passage.”

The model ordinance requires cities to “make every reasonable effort” to offer shelter or housing and give homeless people at least 48 hours’ notice before clearing an encampment and to properly store any belongings that are moved.