Los Angeles County says ‘care first, jails last’ to Newsom’s homeless encampment order

(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles County is choosing to continue with the “care first, jails last” approach when addressing the more than 75,000 individuals experiencing homelessness in the county, despite recent pressure from California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“We can’t arrest our way out of what’s going on in the streets,” said L.A. Board Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who is one of five board members who unanimously voted this week against Newsom’s executive order on dismantling homeless encampments across the state.

In his executive order on July 25, Newsom announced $24 billion in funding given to local governments across the state to address widespread homeless encampments, saying in a statement there are “simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part.”

The governor’s order follows the Supreme Court’s landmark City of Grants Pass, Oregon, v. Johnson decision in June that gave localities the justification to fine and arrest people for sleeping outdoors on public property.

Barger maintained that she’s not at odds with Newsom’s order but rather supporting the ongoing work the board and its partners have been doing to solve the homelessness crisis in the county.

“The concern we have is if we’re not all on the same page, as it relates to how the Grants Pass decision impacts the ability to clean up encampments, we are going to be just moving people from one city to another,” Barger said of the 88 municipalities within Los Angeles County.

Showing a united front with the board of supervisors, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said during the meeting Tuesday, “Being homeless is not a crime, and we will maintain our focus on criminal behavior rather than an individual’s status.”

Barger believes the pathway to permanent results for the county’s unhoused population is paved with outreach, mental health services and job training, which she says “gets lost” in the conversation.

The “Care First, Jails Last” investment is the Measure J ballot initiative approved by voters in 2020 to set aside at least 10% of existing locally controlled, unrestricted revenues to be directed to community investment and alternatives to incarceration.

Within the measure is the Care First Community Investment (CFCI), which has received $88.3 million in annual allocation from the Board of Supervisors.

Additionally, the Sheriff’s Department’s Homeless Outreach Services Team (HOST) is a group of law enforcement officers who work with homeless services agencies to help people experiencing homelessness.

Supervisor Hilda Solis told ABC News the law enforcement partnership “has been an integral partner in our Care First approach.”

“Since their establishment, HOST has never resorted to arrests to address encampments in the public’s right of way or that pose a public health concern,” Solis said.

Despite pressure at the state level, Los Angeles City has in fact seen fewer people living on the streets in the last year.

The L.A. City Controller’s office confirmed to ABC News the city saw a 10,000-person decrease in the unhoused population between 2023 and 2024.

This month, the nonprofit policy organization RAND released a 2023 study that showed that in areas with frequent encampment clearings, those encampments returned within two to three months.

After mass clearings of the homeless encampments in the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles, the share of unhoused people jumped from 20% to 46%, according to the study.

In a report released in June 2024, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) found that LA Municipal Code 41.18, which allows for encampment removal in certain areas, isn’t effective at reducing encampments or helping to house people — while costing over $3 million in two years, not including enforcement costs.

“I’ve never seen incarceration work to end homelessness, I’ve only seen that extend homelessness,” Downtown Women’s Center CEO Amy Turk told ABC News.

The Downtown Women’s Center (DWC) is a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles focused on serving women and gender-diverse individuals experiencing homelessness.

Turk has worked directly with the unhoused population in Los Angeles for two decades, providing trauma-informed outreach, shelter and helping people towards permanent housing.

“When I’ve seen people move toward criminalization, dismantling an encampment and offering no place for people to go, then what you see is people move from one plot of land to another plot of land, and you’re not solving anything.”

However, others say the county and local organizations’ efforts to keep people off the streets are not noticeable on the ground floor, where encampments, they say, continue to impede the lives of other residents.

“I think it’s very clear that the programs and policies both at the city level and the county level, have failed to reduce the number of people on the streets in a significant and sustainable way,” Paul Webster, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights (LAAHR), told ABC News.

“Residents, business owners and even people experiencing homelessness themselves, have for years have been told that things are improving and that the city and the county have enacted programs that would end homelessness in Los Angeles, and for years, that has not come to pass,” Webster added.

In 2020, LAAHR sued the City and County of Los Angeles, claiming that the city’s leaders were not doing enough to address the homelessness crisis.

Webster said the lawsuit demanded an increased number of shelter beds, increased access to mental health and drug abuse treatment and a return to the intended uses of public rights of way and public spaces.

In 2022, the lawsuit was settled with the county agreeing to pay $236 million to fund increased services, outreach, and interim housing.

“We’ve seen some progress,” Webster said two years after the suit, adding, “We’re still working to actively monitor and actively hold the city and the county accountable for these commitments.”