In a 3-0 vote, a Senate budget committee found Newsom’s package was too complex for last-minute consideration under legislative deadlines. The cutoff for bills to pass out of their house of origin is June 2, just two weeks after the governor rolled out his proposal to adjust the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.

The 10 bills include measures to streamline water, transportation and clean energy projects with an eye toward helping the state meet its climate goals. The proposals also took aim at an environmental law commonly referred to by the acronym CEQA that critics have long decried as a tool to bog down housing and other projects.

The committee members – two Democrats and one Republican – said no, for now, even as they expressed support for Newsom’s overarching goal.

“The overwhelming agreement is that we need to build clean faster and cut green tape,” said Committee Chair Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat from San Mateo. “That’s been a legislative priority for me and will continue to be a legislative priority. Although today we are rejecting the governor’s trailer bill proposals based on process, as seven days is insufficient to vet the hundreds of pages of policy nuance in these proposals, we look forward to working with the administration on all of these critical issues.”

Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat from Santa Rosa, and Sen. Brian Dahle, a Republican from Redding, also voted no.

That setback, served to Newsom by two Democratic allies, came just hours after the governor expressed confidence his package would prevail.

“I am proud of the Legislature on what we have achieved. I am confident that they will deliver on this,” he said, speaking during an event in Richmond today intended to highlight the state’s renewable energy achievements.

That vote doesn’t mean Newsom’s infrastructure proposal is dead. His bills could return to Senate or Assembly committees in budget negotiations over the next few weeks. Or Newsom could instead re-introduce them through the Legislature’s policy committees, where they would go through a lengthier process of public comments, discussion and votes.

“The governor is committed to getting this proposal passed so California can maximize its share of federal infrastructure dollars and fast-track clean energy, transportation and water projects that deliver results for all Californians,” Daniel Villaseñor, deputy press secretary for the governor’s office, said in an emailed statement.

Gavin Newsom’s pitch for building big things

Newsom spoke plenty about his infrastructure legislation earlier in the day in Richmond, during an event that quickly morphed into an exhortation about the urgency of passing his proposal.

“Enough. We need to build, we need to get things done,” Newsom said. “This is not an ideological exercise. We don’t have time. We gotta go.”

Newsom said that streamlining legal review of clean energy projects is imperative if the state expects to reach its ambitious climate goals. Newsom cited a solar project that has taken 13 years to work its way through agency bureaucracy, a timeframe he called “absurd.”

His legislation proposed a fixed 270-day permitting process for some projects and 270 days for judicial reviews.

“If we don’t build, democracy is crushed,” Newsom said. “They say we can’t get things done anymore. We need to get moving and get ourselves out of the way.”

His package of bills would shorten the amount of time certain projects – namely water, transportation, clean energy and semiconductor or microelectronic projects – could spend in court. It also would have limited the amount of records parties involved in CEQA litigation would have to produce. Typically, preparing the required records for such lawsuits takes between four and 17 months, according to a document published with the bill.

Environmental groups against fast CEQA changes

But Newsom’s ideas to water down the state’s landmark environmental law immediately drew criticism from some environmental groups, including Sierra Club California and Restore the Delta.

Several groups also called into today’s hearing to express their concerns.

“This is moving in the wrong direction for protections for the environment,” said Deirdre Des Jardins, director of California Water Research. “We urge the Senate to completely reject the governor’s proposed trailer bill language. Frankly, there was no reason to spring it on the legislature or the public so suddenly and at the end of the legislative session.”

In voting down Newsom’s infrastructure package, Becker made it clear that he was not against the governor’s goals. But he and the other committee members determined the bills should face additional review instead of speeding through the budget committee.

“I’ve been a long-time supporter of building clean faster, which not only means land siting and other permitting reform, but also supporting supply chains and costs for climate projects,” Becker said. “I agree with some of the proposals that have been outlined in the governor’s infrastructure package.”

More than 69,000 homeless residents live in Los Angeles County, for instance, but that county has just over 21,000 beds in shelters and temporary housing programs.

It’s a similar story in Sacramento County, which counted nearly 9,300 unhoused residents in its last census, but has just over 3,000 shelter and temporary housing beds.

Those massive gaps – which ensure thousands of people remain homeless – are visible in cities throughout California. But despite constant reassurances from Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers that getting people off the street is a top priority, there’s no state requirement for cities and counties to make sure they have enough shelters or housing for homeless residents.

A bill working its way through the Legislature could change that, and potentially lead to sanctions against local governments that fail to plan for the needs of homeless Californians.

Senate Bill 7 would — for the first time — require cities and counties to plan enough beds for everyone living without a place to call home. It would go beyond just temporary shelter, also including permanent housing placements.

Its author, Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, called it a “transformational idea” that could help move the needle on homelessness where other attempts have failed.

“Everything we’re doing currently, it will result in homelessness growing,” Blakespear said in an interview. “It will not result in homelessness going down.”

California cities’ housing goals

Currently, the state makes sure every city and county plans for new housing through a process known as the regional housing needs allocation. In all, the state requires cities and counties to plan for 2.5 million new homes over the next eight years — about 25% of which must be affordable for very low-income occupants.

But this method doesn’t require cities and counties to plan any housing that is specifically for homeless residents.

If the bill passes, local officials would have to include homeless housing in their plans. How much is yet to be determined, but it would be based on each city’s point-in-time census count of its homeless population. Ideally, Blakespear said, the plans would require a unit for every single person counted.

The idea comes at a time when the state is forcing local governments to take more responsibility for providing housing.

Newsom’s administration sued the Orange County coastal enclave of Huntington Beach earlier this year for failing to adopt a housing plan. And cities that flout state housing law also are subject to the “builder’s remedy,” which allows developers to bypass local zoning laws for certain projects.

Blakespear’s bill has gained some early support from housing activists, and recently passed out of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee by a 6-2 vote. While some local leaders are sure to chafe under yet another state-imposed housing requirement, several big-city mayors are tentatively supportive.

“The final details in the bill matter,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said in an emailed statement, “but any bill that moves the state and cities closer to making housing and services for the homeless a mandatory obligation for government is a step in the right direction.”

Data collected by Sacramento County’s homeless services agencies shows the county has 3,080 beds in its year-round shelters and transitional housing programs — 6,198 fewer than its estimated total number of unhoused residents.

Los Angeles County has 21,100 placements in its temporary housing, safe parking and motel programs, according to a county dashboard — not enough to accommodate even a third of its unhoused population.

Advocates want more money for homeless housing

At a recent hearing, some bill critics wondered where the money would come from to build all this extra housing.

“The funding’s going to be incredibly critical,” said Jason Rhine, assistant director of legislative affairs for the League of California Cities. “If we do not have the money, we will not be able to house individuals.”

The league hasn’t officially opposed the bill, but says it has concerns.

Blakespear wants to pair her bill with a new state fund, which would help cities, counties and nonprofits build housing for people who are homeless or at risk of losing their homes. But it remains to be seen how much — if any — money the Legislature allocates, as the state faces a budget deficit of at least $22.5 billion this year.

Some aspects of the legislation are still up for negotiation. It’s unclear what type of homeless housing cities and counties could use to fulfill the new requirements. Blakespear envisions it would include both permanent and temporary — meaning apartments, but also shelters, RV sites, single-room-occupancy hotels, and more.

It’s also unclear exactly what each city and county would be on the hook for under the new bill, and what the penalties would be for noncompliance. The state’s current process requires cities to plan for housing, including zoning for it and removing roadblocks from its construction, but doesn’t require them to get it built.

Much of the housing cities plan for during that state-mandated process never gets constructed. And low-income housing fares the worst. In the last eight-year planning cycle, just 20% of the very-low-income units needed statewide were permitted.

The California Building Industry Association opposes Blakespear’s bill, worrying money to fund it would come from raising taxes and fees paid by homebuilders. Furthermore, existing law already requires cities and counties to assess their need for emergency shelter, said Cornelious Burke, the association’s vice president of legislative affairs.

Blakespear said she has no intention of using construction fees to cover the cost of her bill. And she disagreed the state’s existing shelter-assessment requirement renders her bill unnecessary.

“Those are just words,” she said. “That is not an actual obligation to provide anything for people who are unhoused.”

Ray Bramson of Destination: Home, a nonprofit that helps spearhead the homelessness response in Santa Clara County, said the bill could help get more homeless housing built. But it depends on how the details of the bill shake out, he said. For one thing, the bill should focus on permanent housing that comes with supportive services like mental health care – not on temporary shelter, Bramson said.

And, the bill must come with funding.

“If not,” he said, “then it’s just another goal that we’re going to struggle to meet collectively.”

The tents, tarps and associated debris — clothing, a discarded crib, boxes of rotting food — are blocking the sidewalk in violation of a new city ordinance. Located on a major thoroughfare and across the street from a neighborhood of houses, the camp is one of the most complained about in the city, said Hezekiah Allen with Sacramento’s Department of Community Response.

But on a recent Tuesday morning, his team wasn’t out there threatening to arrest people, or even telling them to move. Instead, city outreach worker Jawid Sharifi was greeting encampment residents, whom he knew by name, with fist bumps. Gently, he inquired whether they’d given any more thought to moving into a city-run trailer park for unhoused residents.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Sharifi told a man in a black hoodie who emerged from a tent. “We’ll come back here in the afternoon also to talk to you guys.”

As in many California cities, Sacramento’s shortage of affordable housing and shelter options makes it difficult to enforce anti-camping laws. But despite obvious challenges, local ordinances designed to crack down on encampments are becoming increasingly common.

Liberal leaders in cities and counties throughout California, pushed to their wits’ end by massive encampments and irate voters, are taking steps to ban camps. Cities including Los Angeles, Sacramento, Elk Grove, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Milpitas — all run by Democrats — passed ordinances in the past three years to target behavior such as setting up tents near schools and other buildings, blocking sidewalks or even camping at all when shelter is available. Officials in San Jose and San Diego are considering similar measures.

“It’s a reflection of where we’ve gotten to as a society on this issue,” said Democratic political strategist Daniel Conway, who led support for a 2022 Sacramento ballot measure that will make large encampments illegal if shelter is available. “Because I think there’s a recognition that the kind of status quo of having over 100,000 people in California living and dying on the streets, it’s terrible for those people…And at the same time there’s this increased sense that people don’t feel safe in their own neighborhoods and their own communities anymore.”

So far, state lawmakers have been reluctant to follow with new anti-camping laws. Two bills backed by Republican legislators would take the unprecedented step of making it illegal for unhoused people to camp in certain areas — including near schools — throughout the entire state. To date, the state’s involvement in encampment management mostly has been restricted to agencies such as Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol clearing camps from state land.

Broader anti-camping measures can be politically and morally fraught, as well as logistically complicated. Activists argue displacing unhoused people from their camps is traumatizing and dangerous to their health.

And such laws run the risk, particularly for liberal lawmakers, of appearing to criminalize homelessness — so far, Democratic legislators by and large have been unwilling to sign on in support.

The new local ordinances, which come with penalties that can include fines or even arrest, have become a flashpoint in a heated debate. Advocates for the rights of unhoused people argue they’re cruel and unconstitutional, while some housed neighbors – sick of seeing human waste, trash and discarded needles in the street – say they don’t go far enough. Enforcement of the new ordinances, which largely is driven by complaints, has been uneven, and most cities don’t have the resources to respond to every encampment.

And then there’s the state’s legendary affordable housing shortage. Sky-high rental prices have forced multitudes of Californians onto the street, where they’re confronted with a dearth of shelter beds, addiction treatment and mental health help. Though anti-camping laws may score political points for officials under immense pressure to clean up their city’s streets, without places for unhoused people to go, they continue to move block by block around our cities.

For example, Sacramento County, which counted more than 9,000 unhoused residents in its 2022 homeless census, has about 2,400 shelter beds.

“The overarching issue is if you don’t have actually acceptable places for people to go, then people can be forced to leave but then they’ll just go somewhere else,” said Jennifer Wolch, a professor emerita at UC Berkeley who specializes in issues surrounding homelessness. “And it will become a problem for another neighborhood.”

Should the state decide where encampments can be?

Despite what’s going on at the local level — and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s repeated insistence that clearing California homeless camps is a top priority — Democrats in the Legislature have been reluctant to jump on board.

Senate Bill 31, which would make it illegal to sit, lie or sleep within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare, park or library, failed to make it out of the Senate Public Safety Committee and is awaiting reconsideration. The bill, introduced by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego County and backed by seven other Republicans, has just one Democratic co-author – Sen. Bill Dodd of Napa. Representatives from 15 different organizations across the state spoke out against the bill during its committee hearing last month, calling it “misguided” and accusing supporters of prioritizing criminalization instead of health and safety.

Assembly Bill 257, another GOP bill that would make it illegal to camp within 500 feet of a school or daycare center, also was voted down in committee. Author Josh Hoover, a Folsom Republican, tried to assuage critics by narrowing its focus — it no longer applies to parks or libraries and now prohibits “camping” instead of “sitting” or “lying” — but to no avail. Even so, it’s not dead yet. The bill was granted reconsideration and Hoover remains hopeful.

“I personally have found needles in the park where my kids play, and I think this is something that most of the public finds unacceptable,” he said in an interview. “It needs to be addressed immediately statewide.”

At least two newly elected Democratic lawmakers voted for local anti-camping ordinances while serving on city councils last year, Sen. Angelique Ashby of Sacramento and Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen of Elk Grove. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re sold on a statewide ban.

“I believe that addressing these concerns at a local level rather than a statewide level is the best approach,” Nguyen said in an emailed statement.

Ashby refused an interview request and her office wouldn’t say whether the senator supported the statewide efforts.

City leaders also don’t necessarily want the state to step in.

“When it comes to where do you enforce a no-encampment zone, I feel like that should be a city decision,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

San Jose City Council voted in 2021 to target homeless encampments near schools for removal, and since then has cleared 42 school-zone camps. Mahan said the experiment has been successful, as people have agreed to move from the school zones without creating “a huge tax on city resources or a big controversy.”

But Shaunn Cartwright, a local advocate for the rights of unhoused people, said many of those displaced from school zones just move their camps to other locations in the city.

“All it does is stigmatize unhoused people as these are people we can’t trust around children,” she said of the city’s policy. “And it’s ridiculous because many unhoused people obviously are parents.”

Mahan is considering eventually implementing broader no-camping zones in places like key business districts, but only after his city increases its temporary housing capacity.

Brigitte Nicoletti with the East Bay Community Law Center said in addition to being a “really cruel and shortsighted way of addressing homelessness,” ordinances that ban camping when there’s not enough shelter may violate unhoused people’s constitutional rights. Another problem: When clearing encampments, many cities will offer shelter not everyone can accept – whether it’s because of mental or physical health conditions, or because it would force them to leave behind beloved pets or important possessions.

“It’s really just pandering to people who are freaked out by health and public safety issues,” she said of the uptick in no-camping ordinances, “but it does nothing to address people’s actual needs.”

Democratic leaders want more California homeless shelters

Several factors led to the growth of massive homeless encampments throughout the state and prompted the recent spate of anti-camping ordinances. In addition to an overall increase in the state’s homeless population – it’s estimated more than 170,000 unhoused people lived in the state last year, compared to just over 150,000 in 2019 – many cities stopped clearing homeless camps during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing them to grow and become more entrenched.

A 2018 ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also changed the game. In Martin vs. Boise, the court ruled cities cannot penalize someone for sleeping on public property if no other options exist – which many cities have interpreted to mean they can’t clear an encampment unless they have enough shelter beds for the displaced residents.

Cities’ new anti-camping ordinances take advantage of a loophole in that ruling – even if they have no space in their shelters, they still can make it illegal to sleep outside in certain places or at certain times.

But no liberal California leader wants to be accused of “criminalizing” homelessness. So most are pairing anti-camping ordinances with a push for resources. Mahan of San Jose wants to build 1,000 new temporary housing units this year before he expands no-camping zones. Santa Cruz’s no camping ordinance has yet to take effect, and won’t do so until the city can create 150 new shelter beds and establish a place for unhoused people to store their belongings.

Sacramento’s Measure O, passed by voters in November, includes a requirement to set up more shelter beds before cracking down further on camps – something city leaders plan to achieve via a new partnership with the county.

“It’s first up to the society through its government to provide safe dignified alternatives to people,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who has become one of the state’s most high-profile examples of a progressive politician caught between the pressures to clear camps and to respond to homelessness with compassion. “And if that test is met…to say people cannot choose to live out on the streets.”

Uneven enforcement

Enforcement of these ordinances presents a tricky question: How do cities get unhoused people to comply without punishing them for having no home? Approaches vary widely throughout the state – and even within cities.

• In Elk Grove, the city can confiscate homeless people’s belongings if they violate the city’s new anti-camping ordinance, but can’t fine or arrest them. The Sacramento suburb has not yet seized anyone’s belongings.
• San Diego, on the other hand, after issuing warnings and offering people shelter and other help, wrote 925 citations and made 513 arrests last year for violations of laws aimed at homeless camps, according to Voice of San Diego.

San Diego is trying to do even more. Last year, Mayor Todd Gloria directed police to target anyone who had a tent up during daytime hours. But follow-through was “somewhat uneven,” Gloria admitted in an interview, due to police understaffing and COVID-related issues. Now he’s backing a proposal that would prohibit all encampments on public property when shelter is available, and bar camps near schools and shelters even when it’s not.

“The city is providing more solutions than it ever has,” Gloria said. “And I think as a result the taxpayers helping to fund this should have a right to expect safe and hygienic public spaces.”

• Oakland passed a controversial encampment management policy in 2020 that prioritizes clearing camps near schools, homes and businesses, but doesn’t give authorities the ability to cite or arrest people for camping. The city cleared encampments in 226 locations over the past year.

• Sacramento in 2020 passed an ordinance making it illegal to camp within 25 feet of “critical infrastructure” such as government buildings, bridges and electrical wires. In August, the City Council passed a measure banning homeless encampments that block sidewalks, and in October they expanded the critical infrastructure ordinance to ban camping within 500 feet of schools.

The Sacramento ordinances are enforced selectively, generally based on complaints made by residents calling 311. The city has about 20 outreach workers, like Sharifi, who try to connect people to shelters and warn occupants of problem camps that they need to move. If they refuse, police or code enforcement may take over.

The intention isn’t to be punitive, said Assistant City Manager Mario Lara.

“We’ve responded to thousands of calls,” he said. “We’ve not issued any citations or any arrests.”

Camps on route to Sacramento school

Though encampments still dot the city, some Sacramento residents say they’ve seen a little improvement. Last year, the route Amy Gardner’s 8th-grade daughter walked to Sutter Middle School got so bad that she and other parent and community volunteers formed a group to escort kids past an environment she characterized as rife with snarling dogs, human waste, broken glass, needles and people in the throes of mental health crises.

It took months, but the city finally cleared the main camp on the route, under an Interstate 80 overpass, Gardner said. The kids now feel safe walking to school.

But the problem didn’t go away.

“The camps have shifted and moved,” she said. “It’s not that everyone got shelter.”

Some people from under the overpass relocated about eight blocks over, where more than a dozen tents recently lined 29th Street. Damian Newton, who has been homeless for a dozen years, was one of them. The city told him and his neighbors the bridge they slept under is off-limits because it’s “critical infrastructure,” Newton said.

“They just didn’t want us in sight,” 38-year-old Newton said. “What damage have we really done to schools? What damage have we really done to bridges?”

Soon, he’ll have to move again. As he talked to a reporter on a recent Thursday, while sitting on a bare mattress in the doorway of his tent, Newton said the California Highway Patrol had been by that morning to tell him and other camp residents they had to leave their new home within four days.

Newton said he’s been offered a shelter bed before, but after seeing friends accept and then end up back on the street, he doesn’t see the point. Activists and those who have lived in shelters throughout California say residents sometimes chafe under a shelter’s strict rules, feel uncomfortable or unsafe there or get frustrated by the lack of options to transition from there into permanent housing.

So where will Newton go next? He’s not sure. Maybe across the street, until someone complains and he has to pack up again.

“Not many places that’s left to go, really,” he said.

Or is there?

Amid the heartbreaking conditions of the Bay Area’s homeless encampments, those with little recourse are fighting their despair by creating works of art. The results can be uplifting — like the celebratory murals painted to cheer up residents of tent clusters and cars turned into homes. Other times — like a recent play that dramatized Caltrans workers kicking unhoused residents out of a camp — they’re gut-wrenching.

With more than 30,000 unhoused residents in the Bay Area and little visible progress toward stemming the homelessness crisis, those who live or have lived in encampments, and those who work with people who do, describe this artistic expression as vital. For some, it provides a way to heal from the trauma of life on the streets. For others, it’s an opportunity to tell their stories and teach the world what it’s like to live in their shoes.

“Art has a way of involving people and engaging people and educating people in ways that other ways can’t,” said Anita De Asis Miralle of Cardboard and Concrete, an Oakland collective of homeless artists. Miralle, who goes by “Needa Bee,” hosts block parties at encampments with music, free food and mural painting as a way to get housed and unhoused neighbors together, and to share information about the rights of those without homes.

Poor Magazine, a local grassroots arts and media organization, recently put on “Crushing Wheelchairs,” a new play. The two performances in Oakland and San Francisco, which followed the lives of several characters as they became homeless and fought for survival on the street, were written and acted exclusively by homeless and formerly homeless people. At the Oakland show, a sold-out house of about 80 people watched actors portraying Caltrans workers grab a wheelchair from an encampment and throw it into a dumpster while its distraught owner — a disabled woman named Reggi — screamed “can’t you see I can’t walk?” The scene then flashed forward to a younger, ambulatory Reggi coming home from her shift as a construction worker to find the locks changed on her apartment. Evicted without notice, she became increasingly, painfully upset until finally the police came. The scene ended with the police pulling a gun on her.

“Aunti” Frances Moore, who played Reggi, was once homeless herself and now helps feed Oaklanders in need. To her, the play was cathartic.

“It’s medicine,” she said. “Art is medicine.”

Poor Magazine has additional performances planned in Vallejo and Los Angeles. They hope to turn the show into a film.

The experiences of unhoused residents even have made it as far as San Francisco’s prestigious Davies Symphony Hall, where the San Francisco Symphony recently performed a piece titled “Emergency Shelter Intake Form.” The program by composer Gabriel Kahane, which is being performed all over the country, was inspired by the cold and complex bureaucracy of the shelter and affordable housing system. Vocalists sing questions straight from a real shelter intake form, interspersed with scathing, poetic critiques of the system. Kahane includes people who have been homeless in each production, including the two San Francisco performances last month.

The chaotic nature of life on the street can make any attempt at artistic expression fleeting. Miralle and her fellow unhoused activists have built several clandestine tiny home villages and covered them with murals, but the art was always destroyed when the structures were inevitably torn down. So they started painting on tarps and canvases that could be moved whenever a camp was cleared. In early 2022, they started hosting the block parties.

Then, in November, several of Cardboard and Concrete’s vehicles — including the RV where Miralle slept and a box truck they used as a studio — were destroyed in a fire. The parties, and the art, stopped. But Miralle hopes to restart the project within the next few months.

In West Oakland, residents of a large homeless encampment on Wood Street are filming a web series, “The Lowdown on Wood Street” — essentially their take on the nightly news. Anchors sit behind a hand-made desk and share news from the camp, while correspondents give viewers a tour of the encampment and talk about how devastating it is when the city clears a camp and scatters its residents. They produced their first episode this year with help from Journalism + Design, a media program at The New School, but recent rains — and threats of an upcoming eviction by the city — stalled Episode Two.

“It’s a thriving community with a lot of things that we want to do,” he said. “We want to make sure that the positive narrative is put out there.”

Unhoused residents in the Bay Area recently got a chance to tell their stories in a slightly different form through the screening of the documentary “We R Here.” Filmmaker Kyung Lee gave Android phones to three people and asked them to film their day-to-day lives. She then edited the footage, without inserting her own commentary, and the result is an unusually personal account. Viewers follow James “DJ Nyce” Goodwin, who lives out of his car in San Leandro, as he stops by his aunt’s home for a shower, admires a sunset over San Francisco Bay and argues with a city worker threatening to trash his belongings. They watch Billy Pearce and his wife lose their dogs and their RV, and end up in a tent.

“I wanted people to see exactly what we go through,” Pearce said in an interview. “That it’s not easy to be outside.”

To help speed along their efforts, Newsom also unveiled a new statewide strategy aimed at moving people out of the massive homeless encampments that have become common sights in many California cities. His office will deploy 1,200 “small homes” as temporary homeless housing throughout the state — including 200 in San Jose.

Los Angeles will receive 500 of Newsom’s small homes, San Diego County will receive 150 and Sacramento will receive 250. None will go to San Francisco or Oakland, both of which are grappling with large homeless populations.

The state will cover the full cost of the homes — including installation — and the National Guard will help deliver them. But local governments will be responsible for providing the services people living in those units will need, such as meals, counseling and help finding long-term housing.

Newsom’s office hopes to have the units installed by the fall.

“In California, we are using every tool in our toolbox – including the largest-ever deployment of small homes in the state – to move people out of encampments and into housing,” Newsom said in a news release. “The crisis of homelessness will never be solved without first solving the crisis of housing – the two issues are inextricably linked. We are tackling this issue at the root of the problem by addressing the need to create more housing, faster in California.”

Newsom’s office didn’t release details regarding what the small homes will look like and what kind of amenities they will have. But small, one or two-room dwellings — often known as tiny homes — have become a popular strategy in the Bay Area and beyond as officials try to mitigate the homelessness crisis. They range in size and quality, from rudimentary shed-like dwellings in Oakland that lack running water, to larger units in San Jose with en suite bathrooms. Proponents say they are safer and more dignified than traditional homeless shelters where dozens of people sleep on cots in a single room. And they can be set up quickly on scraps of unused land, often under overpasses or on small, vacant lots.

But though the idea is to move people from the street into a tiny home, and then quickly from a tiny home into permanent housing, that doesn’t always pan out. A Bay Area News Group investigation found that though tiny homes work better than dorm-style traditional shelters, tiny home residents in Alameda County failed to find permanent housing nearly three-quarters of the time between June 2019 and June 2022. In Santa Clara County, they failed to find permanent housing more than half of the time.

Newsom’s announcement Thursday comes after he briefly held state funding hostage last year, saying he was disappointed by the failure of cities and counties to set ambitious goals to reduce homelessness. The 2022 plans cities and counties submitted set a paltry goal of reducing homelessness statewide 2% by 2024, Newsom said, which was “simply unacceptable.” He backed down less than three weeks later. Cities and counties agreed to step up and increase their goals in future plans, Newsom said, and he agreed to release the funding.

Now, Newsom’s office says that has paid off. In their 2023-2024 plans, California cities and counties have upped their goals to a 15% reduction in homelessness statewide by 2025.

The lawsuit challenges the seaside Southern California city’s attempt to circumvent Senate Bill 9 — a newly enacted law that allows up to four units on lots in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes.

“Huntington Beach City Council has chosen to stifle affordable housing projects, infringe on the rights of property owners and knowingly violate state housing law,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said during a virtual news conference that included Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The council on Feb. 21 banned the city from processing SB 9 development applications, as well as accessory dwelling units — small backyard or garage units also known as ADUs. The state is asking the court for a preliminary injunction that would immediately force the city to roll back that action while the litigation progresses.

Huntington Beach officials quickly fired back by filing their own lawsuit against the state, claiming Sacramento’s efforts to thwart city zoning rules and force cities to build more housing are unconstitutional.

“We know neither the state nor Gavin Newsom are serious about actually producing more housing. Their goal is just to urbanize quiet private property owning communities,” Huntington Beach Mayor Tony Strickland said during his own news conference. “This lawsuit filed by our city attorney today is the first major step in taking the governor and the state to task over their faulty narratives about housing and their unconstitutional legislative and administrative means of stripping charter cities of their ability to make their own decisions.”

It’s the latest example of tension between Sacramento and city governments as the state attempts to build its way out of a housing shortage that has driven prices sky-high, priced people out of their hometowns and exacerbated a mounting homelessness crisis.

State officials anticipate California needs 2.5 million more homes by 2030, and legislators have passed nearly 100 laws in recent years aimed at developing more housing. Enforcement of those laws also has ramped up. In 2021, Newsom created a new Housing Accountability Unit tasked with helping cities get into compliance with state housing laws — and cracking down on those who refuse.

State officials have come after other cities, including some in the Bay Area. In 2019, the California Department of Housing and Community Development threatened to sue Cupertino, warning that if a massive housing project planned at the defunct Vallco Mall site didn’t progress, the city would be out of compliance with its state-mandated development goals. The attorney general called out Woodside earlier this year after the wealthy Peninsula town tried to exempt itself from SB 9 by claiming the town is a mountain lion habitat. Last year, the state launched a first-of-its-kind review of San Francisco’s permitting process, after the city reported the longest timelines in the state for approving housing projects. And Newsom last year threatened to take back millions of dollars in state funding after he claimed Oakland shirked its responsibility to clear a large West Oakland homeless encampment.

But in each of those cases, the city worked with the state to solve the issue. Huntington Beach, which also was warned, is an outlier, Bonta said. Newsom called Huntington Beach “Exhibit A” in what’s wrong with housing in the state of California.

“They’re thumbing their nose. I guess for attention,” said Newsom, who is recovering from COVID and joined the news conference virtually. “But it’s coming at the cost of the community and those they claim to serve.”

This isn’t the first time Huntington Beach has faced off against the state in court. The state sued in 2019, accusing the city of failing to allow enough new housing development. That lawsuit was settled and Huntington Beach agreed to plan for 502 new low-income housing units. Huntington Beach, with a population of nearly 200,000, also sued the state seeking to be exempt from recent housing laws, but it lost that lawsuit in 2021.

“This is a waste of money, a waste of time,” Newsom said about the current legal battle. “They will lose again.”

Two new bills introduced by Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, a Stockton Democrat, would overhaul how the state handles conservatorships — a last-resort program for those who are incapacitated due to mental illness or addiction. The current system, which has been in place for decades, makes it difficult to help those with severe mental illness who are unable to take care of themselves. As a result, advocates of reform say too many people are left to wander the streets of the Bay Area and beyond — even when they are partially clothed, meandering into traffic and screaming at cars.

“We know that they deserve care. They are somebody’s sister. They are somebody’s mother,” Eggman said during a news conference this week to announce the bills. “It’s so hard to explain to our children why we can’t do better. This is the year that we are going to do better.”

The bills would revamp a statewide program through which courts appoint a conservator to control a patient’s medication and treatment. Patients in the program are generally confined to a residential psychiatric facility.

The legislation comes at a time when the state as a whole is responding to an increasingly loud call-to-action from those who are tired of seeing their incapacitated neighbors and loved ones living on the streets or bouncing in and out of hospitals without receiving meaningful and appropriate care. While expanding involuntary treatment has been controversial, conjuring grim images of mass institutionalization, officials increasingly are embracing the idea as the homelessness crisis worsens. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new CARE Court, signed into law last year, allows judges to order treatment plans for people in crisis. Those who refuse to follow the plan could be referred to a more restrictive conservatorship. San Francisco must start the new program by October, while the rest of the Bay Area must implement the law by December 2024.

This isn’t the first time Eggman has tackled the state’s fraught mental health system. She introduced a set of bills last year tackling the same issues, most of which stalled or were vetoed before they could become law. This year, she’s optimistic the outcome will be different. Her new bills have bipartisan support and are backed by the Big City Mayors Coalition, including San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

They still face opposition from civil rights groups that argue the state should not be expanding programs that strip people of their autonomy.

“The response should be to invest in greater voluntary, culturally responsive mental health services and supports to help people get on a path to recovery while maintaining their dignity and civil rights,” Deb Roth, senior legislative advocate with Disability Rights California, said in an emailed statement. “The response should not be to make it easier to lock people up and strip them of their rights.”

And Eggman’s bills do nothing to address one of the state’s chief problems when it comes to mental health care: a lack of treatment resources. And it’s unclear how many more people might enter conservatorships under the proposal or how much it would cost.

Senate Bill 43 would expand who qualifies both for a long-term conservatorship and for a short-term, involuntary stay in a psychiatric hospital. To be eligible for that type of intervention, someone must be “gravely disabled” — defined since 1967 to mean the patient is unable to provide for their food, clothing and shelter. The new legislation would broaden that definition to include, among other qualifications, the inability to seek medical care and keep themselves safe. The bill also specifies that an incapacitating addiction can qualify someone for involuntary care, and it makes it easier to use a patient’s medical history when determining if they can care for themselves.

Senate Bill 363 would create an online dashboard to show where beds are available in psychiatric and substance-abuse facilities. While the tool by itself won’t increase the state’s sparse supply of beds, advocates hope it will make it easier for clinicians to refer patients to treatment.

“We know that California is in desperate need of beds,” Jessica Cruz, executive director of mental health organization NAMI California, said during this week’s news conference. “This will at least provide us with a little bit of insight into beds that are actually available, but a whole lot of insight into the lack that we have available within the state.”

The state’s broken mental health system is on full display in the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the city’s new crisis response team fielded more than 14,000 calls over a year and a half, Mayor Breed said during this week’s news conference. Many of the patients were placed on 72-hour involuntary holds in psychiatric facilities. But after that, the city had no power to force them into treatment or even into housing — something Breed described as a “tragedy.”

In 2021, a homeless man who was unable to care for himself was beaten to death in Oakland after a group of concerned neighbors spent months trying to get him placed in a conservatorship.

Patricia Fontana, a steering committee member for Alameda County-based Families Advocating for the Seriously Mentally Ill, described Eggman’s new legislation as very encouraging. Fontana’s adult son, who has a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, has bounced in and out of homelessness, conservatorships and other programs for years to little avail because it was so hard to get early intervention and long-term care, Fontana said. Crisis responders said her son didn’t qualify as “gravely disabled” because he knew the location of a garbage can where he could find something to eat, she said.

For now, her son has housing in Berkeley amid progress she described as “fragile.” The proposed reforms could help others like her son before they deteriorate dramatically.

“This is really a matter of life and death,” she said. “It’s so, so important.”

After three decades as a United States senator, Sen. Dianne Feinstein — who shattered glass ceilings as San Francisco’s first female mayor and then as the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history — on Tuesday confirmed months of rumor and speculation and declared that she won’t seek reelection in 2024.

The announcement caps a trailblazing half-century career in Democratic politics during which Feinstein, 89 and currently the oldest senator, spearheaded a national assault weapon ban, helped create the AMBER Alert system and served as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — the first woman to hold that role. In what has become an increasingly rare approach to politics on Capitol Hill, she prided herself on working across the aisle, crafting legislation with the late Sen. John McCain, among other Republicans.

Even though experts expected Feinstein, facing reports of cognitive decline, to sit out the next election cycle, her official announcement is sure to pump new urgency into the campaigns to replace her — and to bring contenders out of the woodwork. Her Senate seat is almost guaranteed to go to someone more progressive, ushering in not only a new generation but also a new style of Democratic leadership in the state.

“It is an important announcement,” David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University, said of Feinstein’s impending retirement. “It is one where we reflect on her legacy, and it is one that opens up a whole lot of questions for what comes next for Democrats in California.”

Big-name politicians from San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom to President Joe Biden and even those running to replace Feinstein took time Tuesday to honor the senator and remember her historic legacy.

So far, U.S. Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter have announced that they are running to fill her seat. Rep. Barbara Lee, from Oakland, intends to launch her campaign this month.

“While I hope we will keep the focus in these coming days on celebrating the senator and her historic tenure in the Senate, I know there are questions about the Senate race in 2024, which I will address soon,” Lee said in a statement.

Feinstein said Tuesday that she intends to accomplish as much as she can until the end of her term — including passing legislation to fight gun violence, preserve nature and promote economic growth.

“Even with a divided Congress, we can still pass bills that will improve lives,” she said in a statement. “Each of us was sent here to solve problems. That’s what I’ve done for the last 30 years, and that’s what I plan to do for the next two years. My thanks to the people of California for allowing me to serve them.”

Some experts speculate it may be difficult for Feinstein to get things done now — if rumors of her impending retirement hadn’t already made her a “lame duck,” Tuesday’s announcement certainly has. But the Democrats’ majority in the Senate is so slim, people can’t afford to ignore her, said Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist who advised Feinstein during her campaign for governor in 1990.

“Her vote will still matter, and her voice will still matter,” he said. “I think she’ll be relevant for the remainder of her term. And my guess is she’s going to devote herself to getting some big things done.”

Gun legislation is a likely area where Feinstein can shine, especially after another mass shooting this week left three people dead and five wounded in Michigan. She wrote the national assault weapons ban in 1994 that prohibited certain militaristic semiautomatic guns — a feat remembered as one of her most notable accomplishments, though it expired in 2004. In 1978, Feinstein became the first woman to lead San Francisco after Supervisor Dan White fatally shot Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

But despite her storied reputation, questions about the senator’s mental acuity were further amplified Tuesday after multiple journalists reported that Feinstein didn’t seem to know that her coming retirement had been made public.

A spokesperson from Feinstein’s office said the senator approved the release of the announcement Tuesday, but there was confusion on the timing. Feinstein was out of the office for votes, a meeting and lunch when the announcement was sent out, he said.

Making the announcement was the right move — it will be good for California to finally start looking for our next senator, said Melissa Michelson, a political science professor at Menlo College.

“California voters appreciate all the things Dianne Feinstein has done for her constituents over the years,” she said, “but I think we all knew it was time for her to go.”

Now that the cat’s out of the bag about Feinstein’s retirement, experts say Schiff and Porter are sure to ramp their Senate campaigns into overdrive, racking up donations and endorsements left and right. And anyone else who had been thinking of entering the race but delayed out of respect for Feinstein had better jump in soon if they want a chance at winning over voters, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego.

Schiff, a Southern California Democrat who recently scored endorsements from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 40% of the state’s Democratic delegation, is the most center-leaning of all the candidates so far to replace Feinstein, Kousser said. Therefore, Schiff might be able to snap up those voters who align with Feinstein’s moderate views.

But Schiff, Porter and Lee all skew decidedly to the left of Feinstein, meaning California will get a “very different type” of senator next term, McCuan said. In deep blue California, no Republican is given a chance at the seat.

Feinstein also belonged to an era when politics were more civil, and politicians were respected, not reviled, for making deals and even friends across the aisle. She famously drew criticism in 2020 for hugging Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham following confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

“Her moving on represents the end of an era,” Kousser said, “not just the Dianne Feinstein era, but of an era of someone who had strong relationships on both sides of the aisle and was committed to the institution rather than just her party.”

Staff writer John Woolfolk contributed to this story.

Senate Bill 35 — one of Wiener’s signature achievements — shook up the state’s building process when it passed in 2017, and sparked intense pushback from some city leaders and residents who contended it gave Sacramento too much control over what kind of housing is allowed in their neighborhoods.

But it also helped thousands of new homes make it through an approval and permitting process that otherwise can be so difficult that projects are stymied. Now, Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, wants to make the changes permanent by removing a provision on SB 35 that would cause it to expire in 2025. He’s also proposing expanding the law’s reach.

The bill “has been absolutely transformational in terms of allowing people to build housing,” Wiener said Monday during a news conference. “We are desperately in need of new homes in California. We are short millions of homes.”

Under SB 35, cities must grant streamlined approval to certain projects that include affordable housing — and those projects are immune from environmental lawsuits often used by opponents to halt or delay construction. The law applies only in cities that have not approved enough housing to meet state guidelines — which currently includes most of them.

Wiener’s new bill is sure to meet swift backlash from community members worried that it will allow apartments and other multi-family dwellings they might view as eyesores in their cherished single-family neighborhoods.

Susan Kirsch, who has spent years advocating against fast-tracked housing development, fears Wiener’s latest will further prevent communities from getting a say in what gets built.

“There’s already been such a reduction of local control,” said Kirsch, who founded advocacy group Livable California and now heads Community Catalysts for Local Control. “And we don’t see that communities are looking more beautiful. We don’t see that they’re more able to manage homelessness.”

Affordable housing advocates, however, say this type of legislation is necessary to help California build its way out of a dire housing shortage.

SB 35 helped developers move forward with plans to turn the defunct Vallco Mall in Cupertino into 2,400 housing units — half of which are intended to be low-income — 429,000 square feet of retail space and 1.97 million square feet of office space. After years of litigation and opposition, developers now are seeking tenants for the yet-to-be-completed project.

Between 2018 and 2021, developers proposed about 18,000 housing units statewide under SB 35 — including about 13,000 low-income units, according to preliminary data from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Of those, more than 11,000 qualified for streamlining under the law by the end of 2021. Data for 2022 is not yet available.

San Francisco alone added nearly 2,000 units under the law — 1,851 of which were affordable, as of May 2021, according to the city’s planning department.

“SB 35 is an essential tool for streamlining housing in California,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a news release. “It has helped San Francisco build affordable housing projects quickly in neighborhoods across the city, and more importantly, it has helped us to create safe homes for people who need them.”

David Garcia, policy director at the Terner Center, said most projects that have used SB 35 statewide have been entirely or mostly made up of low-income units. So while the law has been “pretty useful” for getting affordable housing approved, it hasn’t been as helpful when it comes to market-rate developments, he said.

Garcia’s team still is trying to figure out why. But one thing he says could help boost market-rate production: Under the new version of the law, Wiener wants to drop a requirement that market-rate developments use union labor. Instead, he’s proposed that all projects — affordable and market-rate — pay prevailing wage and offer healthcare benefits.

That change has sparked opposition from the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.

“This bill continues a trend that will create unintended consequences that will result in widespread fraud and mistreatment in the residential construction sector,” deputy legislative director Beverly Yu said in a statement.

SB 35 guarantees that certain projects that meet a city’s zoning rules are streamlined — meaning permits are issued in three to six months. That can be a game-changer for projects like Tahanan on Bryant Street in San Francisco. Wiener held Monday’s news conference at the 145-unit apartment building for formerly homeless residents, which was completed in 2021 using SB 35. Because of that legislation, the project was approved in four months — a process that normally takes an average of two years, said Ramie Dare, director of real estate development at Mercy Housing, which built the apartments.

Elaine, who lived in a tent and then in a shelter before moving into Tahanan, described it as a “godsend.” Elaine, who uses they/them pronouns and declined to give their last name, had never imagined being able to afford an apartment.

“This is actually mine,” Elaine said. “I can actually shut the door. I can actually shower. I can actually take a breather and not be afraid.”

As the homelessness crisis grows and those with nowhere else to go increasingly seek shelter on BART trains, stations and along its tracks, the transit agency is investing significant time, money and staff into social services. It’s a big departure from BART’s core mission — running the trains on time — and represents a major shift in how unhoused people are treated on Bay Area public transportation. But while it’s a first in the Bay Area, BART’s new focus is part of a larger statewide trend of transit agencies compelled to become social service providers.

“The situation that the Bay Area’s in, it just became impossible to ignore,” said Daniel Cooperman, whom BART hired in 2021 as its first-ever homelessness czar. “And so we want everyone to be able to have a safe and comfortable time and ride while they’re with us, and also make sure that folks that are sort of stuck in the system have somewhere to go.”

The number of unhoused people counted in downtown San Francisco BART stations increased 20% in the second quarter of last year compared to the year before — with an average tally of about three dozen a month.

In an effort to stop arresting, citing or asking unhoused people to simply “move along,” BART hired 10 transit ambassadors and 20 crisis intervention specialists tasked with de-escalating tense situations and offering shelter beds and other resources to those in need. Last month BART released an official “Homeless Action Plan” that lays out potential next steps — including spinning out a new nonprofit to raise funds for aid. This year, the agency is spending about $11 million on homelessness programs.

It hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride. An unflattering report from the agency’s inspector general earlier this month revealed that BART spent $350,000 on a two-year outreach program that resulted in just one person obtaining shelter. Staffing shortages within BART Police mean there aren’t enough officers to accompany outreach workers. BART also has to grapple with the region’s inadequate supply of beds, mental health resources and addiction services. And because BART is a transit agency, it isn’t eligible for helpful state and federal homelessness funding.

While BART navigates these hurdles, it has to maintain a delicate balance of addressing homelessness without straying too far from its main mission.

BART isn’t alone in those struggles. While it’s the first transit agency in the Bay Area to take such a significant leap into social services, others in the state are making similar moves. In Los Angeles County, LA Metro has teams of outreach workers looking for unhoused people to help and the agency sometimes uses its own funds to pay for rent, job training and medical bills for those in need. Sacramento Regional Transit recently hired a social worker to help people camped along its train tracks and in its bus shelters. Nationally, a group of transit agencies meets regularly to discuss how to respond to homelessness.

It’s not out of choice, said Desarae Jones, who spearheads homelessness programs for LA Metro.

“I don’t know that I would call it a trend. It’s more of a necessity,” she said. “We’re seeing homelessness on the rise in the communities we’re serving, and we’re seeing gaps in the services that exist today, so we’re, as transit agencies, having to fill in those gaps.”

There were more than 171,000 unhoused people living in California as of last year — a 6% increase from 2020.

On a recent afternoon, Morey Deundra Moore and Ontreal Wiltz, two BART crisis intervention specialists, donned their uniforms and set to work riding trains and patrolling stations in Oakland. They carried the overdose-reversing drug Narcan (which they’ve had to use only once) but no guns or handcuffs — they’re social workers, not police officers. They approached people slumped over on train seats and station benches, those without shoes and anyone else who seemed to be struggling, and asked if they could help. They were friendly, offering smiles and fist-bumps.

At the Coliseum station, Moore and Wiltz saw a man talking to himself and told him they could get him into a shelter that night. The man smiled. He did want help, he said. But soon his attention wandered and he was once again responding to the voices in his head. After several gentle attempts, all Moore and Wiltz had been able to coax out of him was his name. Eventually, he walked away, ripping off his shoes and socks as he went.

“At this moment, there’s not much we can do,” Moore said.

Nine out of 10 times, people refuse their help. When that happens, Moore and Wiltz hand them a business card, hopeful that maybe they’ll be ready to accept help tomorrow.

Last year, about 2,300 people accepted referrals to shelter beds or other services through BART.

BART also has a patchwork of partnerships with local nonprofits — including La Familia, which does outreach at stations in Alameda County. They bring people to CARES, a Fruitvale center that gets them into residential addiction and mental health programs. Since they started in June, 40 people have come to CARES through BART, said Jason Toro, La Familia’s chief program officer.

It’s “system-changing work,” he said. But it’s not perfect. Because of the area’s lack of resources, those at CARES find a bed just 70% of the time.

Advocates who work with the unhoused community are keeping an eye on BART’s new approach. So far, Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness, likes what she sees. That hasn’t always been the case. In 2014, the Coalition staged a protest after BART started citing people sleeping in its stations.

“Historically it’s been a more troubling direction that they would take,” Friedenbach said. “This new direction of trying to connect homeless people with services is much more positive.”

“That was good,” Moore said, after they got off the train. Wiltz agreed. “I feel like he actually might show up.”