San Francisco Workers Clearing Homeless Encampments Need Better Training, Judge Rules

As San Francisco officials vow to ramp up sweeps of homeless encampments, a federal judge is requiring the city to better train its workers on what to do with people’s belongings.

The case filed by a group of unhoused residents in 2022 centered on arguments that the city routinely disregarded its own policy by destroying property during sweeps and that workers were violating residents’ Fourth Amendment rights, protecting them from unreasonable seizures by the government.

U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu ruled Monday that the city must work with the plaintiffs on a new policy training city staff on how to properly handle and store property, but Ryu denied the plaintiffs’ request to have someone oversee the city’s implementation of the policy.

The ruling comes as Mayor London Breed has promised, beginning this month, a “very aggressive” crackdown on encampments. According to the mayor’s office, the city last week engaged with 235 people. Of those, 24 accepted offers of shelter, seven received shelter, and one person was placed on a mental health hold. The vast majority — 195 people — declined offers or provided no information to city workers.

Nisha Kashyap, an attorney for the plaintiffs with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, called the ruling “incredibly important.”

“We have said for a very long time — plaintiffs have said, our clients have said — that they have real concerns about the city’s compliance with its ‘bag and tag’ policy, and that was the impetus of bringing this claim in the first place,” she said.

That policy prohibits workers from throwing away people’s belongings, with the exception of hazardous or perishable materials. It also requires them to distinguish between abandoned property and property that has been left unattended temporarily.

“They’re not allowed to throw away people’s property, and they’re doing that,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, which brought the suit. “If it’s unattended property, they’re supposed to bag and tag it.”

In her ruling, Ryu agreed with the unhoused residents that there was sufficient evidence the city was not consistently following its own policy and said its training program “raises more questions than answers.” However, Ryu also decided that it would be unnecessary to require the city to provide regular and detailed reports regarding the property it collects.

Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office, said in a statement that the city appreciated the judge’s decision to deny part of the plaintiffs’ request.

“But we are disappointed the court found the amount of training to be inadequate,” she wrote. “We are evaluating any appropriate next steps.”

The expansive case — which initially contained 13 claims — had been placed on hold in February, pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which took up the question of whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to fine or jail someone for sleeping on public property if there are no alternative shelter spaces available. After the high court determined cities could enforce anti-camping bans, the Ninth Circuit vacated part of Ryu’s injunction on related claims.

It left alive a preliminary injunction related to the unhoused residents’ Fourth Amendment claims. Kashyap said other claims in the case will now be considered, including whether the city’s practices violate the rights of people who have disabilities and whether the city’s action constitutes a “state-created danger” — essentially, whether the city’s sweeps place people in even more danger than they would be if they had simply been out on the street.

Kashyap pointed to multiple research studies showing that clearing encampments without providing appropriate housing or services often leads to more harm, by disrupting people’s connections to service providers, as well as the direct loss of survival gear, medication and legal documents.

“[Sweeps] don’t help individuals exit homelessness. They are counterproductive and expensive. And, it is political theater to act otherwise,” she said. “The sooner our local officials make the choice to invest in true solutions to homelessness — which are prevention, affordable housing, and, in the short term, temporary shelter — the sooner we will see real progress on this issue.”

Kashyap said she expects a trial on the lawsuit’s remaining claims next spring.