Homeless Encampment Voices

By Staff Writers Tushara Devapatla, Vikram Mahajan & Cham Yu

“In my retired capacity, I have worked as a consultant for other lawyers in federal sentencing matters, and I am a volunteer with the League of Women Voters, the Youth Voter Movement, and Fremont for Everyone. I [also] belong to a Unitarian universalist congregation in Fremont, which just signed on as a plaintiff with the California union of the homeless in a complaint to enjoin the city of Fremont from enforcing the recently passed ordinance known as the camping ban.

 

What we’ve seen throughout California and in the Bay Area –– and locally here in Fremont –– is that the resources for the unhoused do not match the number of unhoused individuals. 
Fremont adopted a homeless response plan in May of 2024 and set out a multi-step plan to provide resources to be able to find housing for the unhoused or services which would bring them into a situation where they could find housing. That plan was finalized in May of 2024. What happened nationally in July of 2024 is … that a case out of … Grants Pass, Oregon went to the Supreme Court … The Supreme Court said on the basis of the theory that was presented in that case, which was an Eighth Amendment, cruel and unusual punishment theory, that Grants Pass could proceed with that ordinance. The court also said there may be other grounds in which that type of enforcement would not be allowed, but on the basis of the lawsuit brought at Grants Pass, cities were not required to provide alternate services, alternate housing for someone who was unhoused. So that was a watershed moment in the discussion about the unhoused population; it was a big turning point. 

 

The difference between some of the folks who are upset about this is that some people just don’t want to see it and don’t want it in their neighborhood, and some people want to see solutions provided that will get people out of those circumstances. And those are expensive and cities and counties have created plans and are struggling with it … Our economy for the last 25 years has become increasingly divided between people who have huge amounts of resources and wealth and people who don’t. 
The traditional ‘blue-collar working class’ in the US used to be able to pay their bills and even own a home on the salary that you could earn in those kinds of jobs. That’s not the case anymore. You can work a blue-collar job and you still can’t buy a house, certainly not in this area, but even in other locations across the country, especially since the housing crisis of 2008.

 

There are other locations which have enacted bands that prevent being in public and being unhoused. What is unique about Fremont’s ordinance is that the ordinance included in its enforcement provision that anyone ‘aiding’ or ‘abetting’ or assisting someone who is [camping] and has camping paraphernalia, could also be prosecuted. Essentially, that means you are criminalizing anyone who is working with the unhoused, who meets that definition of camping or possessing camping paraphernalia … That means that the service agencies, the faith communities, the nonprofit groups that work with the unhoused are at risk of being criminalized for these activities. That is not a standard provision in most of the anti-camping bans, or the camping ban ordinances. But Fremont has these specific details that are going after the charity workers, or go after these groups, that make it a little bit unique from the other ones. 

 

What I would like to see happen is that we create a place where someone who is financially struggling and finds themselves unhoused can be safe … We had a plan in place to create facilities for that, and that plan has not come to fruition … and it’s on the city website … First, what we have to do is we have to have a safe place for people to go and … coordinate with services to be able to work with people to get them financially back on their seats, so they aren’t unhoused if that’s possible. In the meantime, [we] still maintain a location that provides safety, sanitation and services for people without a home. 

 

There’s probably going to be litigation [against the ordinance] … You can bring litigation under an Eighth Amendment or Fourth Amendment issue. 
You can’t also bring a First Amendment theory of harm in a case like this because of the type of organizations who are working with the unhoused to try and create solutions … it’s a faith community, and part of the faith says that you will serve your community … [prohibiting that would go] against the free exercise clause.
The gurdwara offers free meals, and if they go off that, that could be a First Amendment violation. In Fremont, there’s a wide swath of faith groups who provide services. There’s the Hindu community. There’s the Muslim community. There’s the Buddhist community. There’s the Christian community. There’s the Unitarians. I mean, almost everybody is involved in providing services, and so anybody can get arrested for carrying out your faith. 

 

[The ordinance] would deflect public resources from general community needs. At the December 17 City Council meeting when this was originally presented to the City Council, a staffer made a report to the City Council, at which time they indicated there are no funds in the police department. If their law enforcement duties now involve doing sweeps of encampments, then they’re not able to answer service calls for law enforcement purposes. The police chief said it would impact his budget. The fire department said, ‘Well, we go out on calls anyway, so it might just incur more calls for us’ … I would hope that people that sit on the City Council would understand that there is a cost involved, certainly, and that any city budget that has been created [should be done] perspectively and … with assumptions of provision of services and circumstances. If this comes in the middle of the budget year and there is no money anticipated to this, it’s got to come from someplace else. 

 

What I would hope is that there would be coalitions of city services, of community organizations, of faith communities, come together, use the plans that the city has been working on in previous years up to May of 2024 … that a coalition would work on using our resources in the community to provide a location for the unhoused with safety, sanitation, and services where we can begin to work on solutions to eliminate an unhoused population as much as possible … I hope all the people who came together either to support … and the people who came opposing the ordinance, that we all come together and we work with the city and we create a resource that works, not that we push something out of sight. 
It doesn’t go away.” — League of Women Voters Volunteer and Activist Valerie Stewart

 

“There’s really two ways you can ‘solve’ a problem like homelessness. One way is by allocating resources in order to make homelessness better. The other way is to push people who are homeless out. Fremont’s really unique because we’re doing both of them, which is rather an interesting position. We’re creating more resources and homeless shelters. They’re not as good or as many as we need, the bills, but [they are a] step in the right direction. But in the other direction, we’re also pushing this the wrong way. The city camping ban that we’re talking about. That’s just the wrong way to do so. The first method which Fremont has been doing has been very effective; from a 2023 point in time to 2024, we had a 16% reduction in homelessness. It went from around 800 to 600. That shows you’re on the right track … Something like [the encampment ban] is just not the method to be used.

 

You see these people who speak in City Council, they advocate this ban, and they have real problems that they want to solve, but you don’t solve a complex problem like homelessness with a butchering knife.  

 

The biggest issue [with the camping ban] is that what the camping ban does is it makes camping illegal. The [police] force isn’t there to enforce [a ban on] camping on everything. If you imagine the police force right now, there’s people who are calling the police because they have genuine concerns, and the police aren’t able to come there … All the camping ban does is it makes actions like this ‘more illegal.’ But you can’t make something more illegal; it’s either illegal or it’s not illegal. It doesn’t change anything beyond it being mostly performative, as well as just [having]  … too many places it applies where obviously it should not … If I’m chilling in my car sleeping, that’s technically illegal as for this ban, and it’s kind of wild.

 

The way this ban was presented inside City Council was not reflective of the text of this ban. The way it’s being presented right now in both the City Council meetings, and pretty much every meeting I’ve gone to, people are trying to paint this as a solution to homelessness that doesn’t have any loopholes whatsoever. They’re trying to paint this as a tool in the toolkit of the police department. There’s two issues with this. First of all, if there aren’t enough police, it doesn’t matter how many tools you give them. Secondly, … it’s just a wrong tool for the job and I believe it’s too vague … The reason why people voted for this is because of [vagueness]. They say we’ll only use it when we think it’s correct … That’s a basic problem with any law: if it’s too vague, it can get misused. It doesn’t matter how you want to use it, how you intend to use it … The authority to decide whether this is used or not comes to the city manager, so it’s easy to misuse. 

 

It gets in a tit for tat situation, because if one state, one city does it, then the people who are homeless just go to other cities … and that causes all these other cities to do it as well. It’s an epidemic — it’s a rat race to the bottom. 

 

Although we already have alternative policies that work — they’re making more housing, they’re building more shelters, they’re doing all of these things — they should also expand a safe parking program. … There’s no place you can park RVs in Fremont that’s legal. So if you have something like that, that would be great, more mental health facilities, … more homeless facilities. 

 

You have one option of just coming [to a City Council meeting] directly and talking; your other option is, you can just send an email to City Council. You can just write them a letter saying, ‘Hey, I oppose this.’ And they usually go through all those letters, which is very useful. If not, just raise advocacy, just talk to more people about this, make sure it’s known … The actual text of the law is not what people are saying out there. It goes much further. Read through the actual ban and make your own decisions. If you’re stuck between what I’m saying, or [what] other people are saying, read the ban. You’ll figure it out for yourself.” — MSJ Poverty Patch Up Co-Activities Coordinator and Fremont for Everyone Volunteer Arsh Shah, 11

“I have not been personally exposed to this issue but I’ve heard about it from friends. From what I’ve been told, public perception isn’t that great because this is one of the newer policies that are being implemented with new leaders in office and is drawing a bit of controversial attention. I don’t have much of an opinion about the initial aiding and abetting section of the ordinance. While I’ve not been following the politics of public camping. I can see how it can be perceived as government overreach. Again, with new leaders in office it’s natural that new policies are being implemented to address ongoing issues that weren’t prioritized as much in the past.” — Sophia Doan, 9