Gov. Gavin Newsom’s has issued another decree that cities and counties need to ban and remove homeless encampments from sidewalks, bike paths, highway underpasses and other public property.

On Monday, Newsom released a model ordinance that cities and counties can adopt to prohibit and clear homeless camps. While jurisdictions aren’t required to approve the measure, it’s the latest move by the governor to place responsibility for alleviating the crisis on local officials after the state has spent billions of dollars in recent years to move people off the street.

The ordinance would include a ban on “persistent camping in one location” for more than three days, a prohibition on encampments that block sidewalks and passageways, and a requirement that local officials “make every reasonable effort” to offer homeless people shelter before clearing camps.

The ordinance also states that no one should face “criminal punishment for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.”

Newsom’s announcement comes almost a year after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling granted officials broad authority to enforce strict camping bans and clear encampments even when beds aren’t available in homeless shelters.

Newsom this week correspondingly released $3.3 billion in voter-approved bond money for housing and treatment of the mentally ill and homeless populations.

Is this just another political move toward the center that will play well with voters outside California should the governor, as widely expected, run for president in 2028? CalMatters columnist Dan Walters wrote this week that it’s “difficult to discern the differences between Trump’s demands on states and Newsom’s on cities and counties.”

And cities and counties have consistently said that without enough money to make a difference, these demands are just another example of whack-a-mole where homeless encampments reappear after local governments clean them up. Homeless advocates and service providers, meanwhile, say that dismantling encampments can traumatize homeless people, who often lose their belongings in sweeps. They say closing camps, especially without providing shelter, often achieves little except pushing unhoused people from one neighborhood to another.

Since Newsom took office in 2019, some $27 billion in state funding has been funneled to local programs to solve the homeless crisis across the state, including $750 million to clear homeless encampments. Nonetheless, the number of unhoused people ballooned 24% during that time to 187,000 statewide. Since 2019, Santa Cruz County has received more than $24 million from the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention fund.

While encampments have become a face of daily public life in California cities, in Santa Cruz County the largest camps have been cleaned up in recent years, while offering shelter for those displaced.

Still, reports continue of problems:

• Visitors to Costco in Santa Cruz see smaller encampments spilling out onto sidewalks from Coral Street centers that offer services for homeless individuals.

• Last month, a law enforcement operation in Live Oak recovered a warehouse’s worth of missing goods, along with extensive drug paraphernalia at an encampment. The stolen items included dozens of high-end electric bicycles worth more than $30,000.

• In April, firefighters contained a fire at a homeless encampment on a hillside above Highway 9 between Rincon Crossing and Paradise Park.

• In San Jose, officials are now considering a controversial proposal by Mayor Matt Mahan to cite and arrest homeless residents who turn down multiple shelter offers.

• And, earlier this year, a new study found that well under half of unhoused people in California are regular drug users.

Still for Santa Cruz County, state data shows some progress, with 1,850 people counted as homeless, up 2.5% from the previous year in the annual Point in Time count, with the biggest jump in Watsonville, where the estimated homeless population soared by 60% to 673 individuals. Santa Cruz’s homeless population count decreased by nearly 36% in 2024 to 659.