There’s no question San Diego’s camping ban has made an impact.
Its passage last summer corresponded with a drop in homelessness downtown, more people asking for shelter and an increase in riverbed encampments. Other cities have moved to follow San Diego’s lead. Some lawmakers want to take the rules statewide.
But that doesn’t mean many residents are ending up in court for living in a tent.
During the ordinance’s first six-plus months, the city attorney’s office filed charges against just two people on allegations of violating the ban, according to spokesman Andrew Sharp. An additional eight cases were under review as of early February.
Police arrested one person twice and issued 30 tickets during that period, meaning prosecutors at most had agreed to pursue less than one-tenth of available cases.
Even if the eight other cases are eventually taken up, the total would amount to about a third of what officers initially acted on since the ban took effect July 31.
Among the people who ultimately won’t be punished is a 28-year-old man who received the first camping-ban ticket in August.
“It’s not as easy as it seems when you’re trying to prove cases like this, when it’s a brand-new law,” said City Attorney Mara Elliott. “It’s taking a little time for us to roll it out into the community so that everybody’s marching to the same tune.”
The disparity does not reflect a rift with the Police Department, and the two agencies have continued to collaborate on how to improve enforcement, Elliott added.
The Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Experts said several factors might be keeping prosecution numbers low, including limited resources and the higher standard prosecutors must meet when weighing whether there’s enough evidence to win over a jury.
“You do go cautiously when you don’t know what the parameters are,” said Jan Goldsmith, a former San Diego city attorney.
Case law is limited and judges are similarly wading into new territory. “You don’t want to issue a bunch of cases that are all struck down,” Goldsmith said.
Multiple dismissals could provide ammunition to legal challenges seeking to overturn the law, officials said.
Then there’s the vulnerability that comes with homelessness.
“It’s not just a new law,” said Alfonso Esquer, a former investigator with the U.S. Department of Justice who now directs the criminal justice program at Point Loma Nazarene University. “It’s also a very delicate law that requires some sensitivity.”
Paul Pfingst, a former San Diego County district attorney, noted that prosecutors may want to give residents time to adjust.
As word spreads, however, the number of cases taken to court could rise, Pfingst said.
It’s possible San Diego’s convoluted system for tracking when shelter is available — the city and Housing Commission oversee separate networks and there has not been real-time monitoring — has affected what prosecutors think they can win.
The ordinance sometimes applies only if beds are open, and the city attorney’s initial legal analysis of the ban noted that convictions could hinge on shelter employees being able to testify that they had room at the moment someone was detained.
The legal landscape also is in flux. Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether homeless people have a right to sleep on public property when there’s nowhere else to go. San Diego signed on to an appeal asking the justices to reconsider an earlier federal court ruling that said cities generally needed to have shelter available before clearing tent camps.
“We’re all waiting to see what happens there,” Elliott said.
The absence of a camping-ban charge doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no case at all. A 58-year-old man who was arrested last year won’t go to trial for sleeping outside, but he is facing a felony allegation of selling methamphetamine, according to Sharp.
Sharp said there is no internal policy telling prosecutors not to prioritize the ban.
The city attorney’s office’s experience in court with a different ordinance used to target encampments offers further reason for caution.
San Diego’s encroachment law prohibits sidewalks from being blocked by personal property. Prosecutors pursued nearly 75 of those and other related charges in 2022, according to a statement from the office.
Yet 50 of those cases were ultimately dismissed and more than 20 people never showed up for trial, officials said. Two others sought diversion programs and a third is still being evaluated for competence to face a judge.
There’s a similarly lopsided comparison between encroachment tickets and prosecutions. Police have made much more than 100 of those citations and arrests since September, but the city attorney’s office had filed charges in only 26 cases as of early February, according to Sharp. An additional 25 were under review.
Local leaders have defended the camping ban as one of many tools to address homelessness.
“People who assumed the goal of the ordinance was to arrest people may be surprised by the low number of prosecutions,” City Councilman Stephen Whitburn said in an email. “However, its purpose was to have a clear law that encourages people to move out of encampments and into safer and healthier places.”
Hundreds of people have relocated to the city’s new designated camping areas near Balboa Park in recent months, though the region’s shelters do not have enough room for everybody asking for a spot.
In his State of the City address earlier this year, Mayor Todd Gloria praised the low levels of police enforcement as evidence that the law is “working as intended” by “clearing encampments without widespread arrests.”
When asked if the mayor is satisfied with the current number of prosecutions, spokeswoman Rachel Laing said Gloria has “no authority over the city attorney” but has “given clear direction to the Police Department to enforce this and all other laws on the books.”
At the same time, homelessness in the region continues to grow.
January was the 22nd consecutive month in which the number of people losing a place to stay for the first time (1,385) exceeded how many homeless people found housing (966), according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. ◆
