Unhoused Oakland Residents Win Order Delaying Eviction in Early Test of Supreme Court Ruling

Updated 1:24 p.m. Thursday

Residents of an Oakland encampment won a temporary restraining order staving off their eviction in a federal court case that represents one of the first local tests of cities’ ability to police homelessness since a major Supreme Court ruling last month.

Senior District Judge Susan Illston granted the order Wednesday night, barring the city from removing the residents’ dwellings and other property until 5 p.m. on July 18. The order allows officials to keep clearing trash and abandoned cars.

The city had given roughly a dozen residents living on a beach alongside Interstate 80 at the foot of the Bay Bridge until Tuesday to leave, citing a notice from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) that threatened daily fines over environmental and public access concerns.

Residents argued at a hearing Tuesday that the city hadn’t offered them a feasible alternative to the camp before moving ahead with the eviction.

“These are the most vulnerable that you’re evicting,” said attorney Andrea Henson, a longtime homeless advocate who appeared in court on behalf of the plaintiffs. “There’s nowhere for them to go.”

Unhoused people and their allies have used similar arguments in recent years to successfully delay encampment sweeps around the Bay Area and beyond. But those claims relied on a key legal precedent that fining or jailing people for public camping when there isn’t enough shelter available amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited under the Eighth Amendment. With the precedent now overturned by the Supreme Court, giving cities expanded authority to police encampments, the viability of that approach is in question.

The temporary restraining order in the Oakland case came after Illson found status reports she had requested from the unhoused plaintiffs and city outreach workers on shelter options “difficult to reconcile.”

In the reports, plaintiffs said they hadn’t been offered shelter, but the city described limited offers that were largely declined. In one case, the city said staff tried to connect a resident with a housing program for people living with AIDS, “but he wants to keep his pets (dogs), which present an obstacle (not allowed),” according to the report.

In other cases, the city said residents were willing to consider a spot at a tiny home emergency shelter site, but not at the Mandela Parkway-Beach Street location on offer, or not if their pets couldn’t join. Other residents asked for motel rooms, which aren’t an option, according to the report, and one refused services because he plans to relocate in one of his vehicles.

The only relatively consistent account describes a tiny home offer made to Ronnie Simpson and his father, who also lives at the camp and has dementia. In that case, the pair declined the offer because the father’s condition makes it untenable.

Fallout from Supreme Court decision

Without using the Eighth Amendment argument that encampment sweeps amount to cruel and unusual punishment if shelter isn’t available, homeless advocates must turn to other legal strategies.

“We’ve lost a really important tool in our toolbox,” said Brigitte Nicoletti, a staff attorney with the East Bay Community Law Center, who’s worked on encampment litigation. “You’re also seeing the fact that advocates are not going to stop advocating. You may have lost one tool, but we have a lot more.”

Nicoletti isn’t involved in the Oakland case but has followed it closely in light of the Supreme Court decision. Before that ruling, she said, attorneys would likely have relied at least in part on an Eighth Amendment claim in fighting an eviction like this one.

The plaintiffs in this case instead argue the eviction will expose them to state-created danger, a violation of the 14th Amendment, and allege the city is violating their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The plaintiffs also argue the city is violating the terms of a settlement agreement that prohibits sweeps during extreme weather. There is a heat advisory in place for the Bay Area until Friday.

“Failing to provide shelter options to unhoused people that meet their disability-related needs … means that shelter is functionally unavailable to them,” the complaint reads.

The eviction follows a two-year campaign by the San Francisco Boardsailing Association to get the camp cleared. On its website, the organization said the camp has “created an epicenter for car break-ins while increased trash and direct sewage runoff have been flowing directly into the waters there.”

Henson believes that effort may have spurred BCDC’s letter threatening fines to the city. The agency did not respond to questions about the role of those complaints in its actions.

While less tested, the ADA claim may prove to be a powerful tool to block encampment evictions, Nicoletti noted, although it doesn’t provide blanket protection applicable to a whole community the way the Eighth Amendment protections did. Instead, she said courts require detailed analysis of each person’s disabilities and whether or not the city is accommodating them.

Both Nicoletti and homeless advocate Robbie Powelson, who’s been involved in several lawsuits over encampment sweeps in the Bay Area, have found success stalling sweeps using state-created harm arguments in the past.

“Cities are going to perceive that they have a blank check to steamroll people’s rights,” Powelson said. “There’s many rights that still exist and are enforceable.”

In San Francisco, the Supreme Court ruling has already affected an ongoing lawsuit filed by unhoused residents over the city’s homelessness policies. The Eighth Amendment claims in the suit no longer hold water, but the suit will move forward based on its other 13 claims. Earlier this week, a temporary injunction barring the city from enforcing laws against public camping without first offering a shelter bed was vacated.

“If the city follows its own policies, we should continue to see offers of shelter prior to any kind of enforcement,” said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco, who represents the plaintiffs. “Now, our clients brought this lawsuit because there was a gap between what the city said it was doing and what it actually was doing.”

Other cities, including Oakland, have policies requiring officials to make shelter offers before clearing camps, but Nicoletti said the Supreme Court’s ruling makes it challenging to enforce those.

“It’s harder and sometimes slower to hold the city accountable for following its own policies when there’s no teeth behind it,” she said.

In Berkeley, city leaders are considering a resolution reaffirming the city will not take additional steps to criminalize unhoused people in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.

At Tuesday’s hearing in the Oakland case, Illston asked whether the city had offered residents shelter, to which Deputy City Attorney Jamilah Jefferson responded, “Everyone has been offered shelter. Whether or not they have accepted is a different story.” She noted camp residents were first given notice in May that they’d have to move.

Harold Duffey, assistant city administrator and acting homeless administrator, emphasized that the shelter being offered was only a temporary entry point to a service system that would eventually secure residents permanent housing.

Henson said that assessment missed the point.

“The issue here is not about whether they offered an option, it’s about whether that option is reasonably accessible,” she said, calling the city’s offer of group shelter a “death sentence” for the medically fragile residents.

“The city is under no obligation to fundamentally alter its programs to address the needs of all individuals,” Jefferson later said.

The judge ultimately ordered the residents to discuss their needs with outreach workers, and outreach workers to make accommodations where feasible, and to report their progress to the court by Wednesday evening.

Finding little common ground in the reports, Ilson issued the temporary restraining order.