Leaders of Fremont, California, on Tuesday postponed enforcing a new law that criminalizes living on the street and helping anyone maintain makeshift shelters in the Bay Area city.
Fremont’s elected officials delayed enforcement of the ordinance after homeless activists sued the city on the grounds that the new law, which primarily seeks to ban public camping, violates the First and 14th Amendments as well as the state constitution.
Mayor Raj Salwan said the city will seek to amend its unique stipulation that makes it illegal to “aid and abet” a homeless encampment — a misdemeanor that incurs up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Defining which actions qualify as unlawful has been hard for city leaders to pin down, leaving activists to say that the normal operations of homeless advocacy groups could land them behind bars.
“It’s impossible for anyone to say that the charitable organizations are now free from offending, when in fact, the tent that you hand over as a protective item becomes an instrument of criminality,” said Anthony Prince, an attorney representing the Homeless Union, which is part of the lawsuit.
Fremont attorneys have said the law specifically bans camping and the storing of personal belongings on public property, so anyone who aids and abets those acts could be found criminally liable.
As Mr. Salwan told local media last month, “You can give food, you can give water, a tent, you can help people. The only thing you can’t do is, you can’t build tree houses on creeks.”
Fremont’s City Council passed the ordinance in a 6-1 vote last month. It was set to take effect 30 days after its passage, until activists filed a civil rights lawsuit last week and caused officials to revisit the ordinance.
The filing claims that, under the law, the city’s homeless are not allowed to possess blankets, tents or other “survival gear,” which violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution.
The inability for aid organizations to provide materials to the homeless violates their First Amendment rights as well, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit even claimed that Fremont’s homeless are akin to runaway slaves.
“Two hundred years ago, by fleeing bondage, the runaway slaves “stole” themselves from their owners, and became, by definition, criminals,” the document states. “Today, it is the homeless resident of Fremont who has become the criminal.”
“’Fleeing’ from the cold of winter and extreme heat of summer that takes the lives of thousands of the unsheltered every year,” the suit states, “’fleeing’ the dangers of the unprotected streets and seeking refuge in a tent, car or under a freeway overpass; fleeing hunger and want by taking the outstretched helping hands of the concerned and the compassionate who, under this unconscionable enactment, have also been pushed into the ranks of the hunted and the criminal.”
Fremont’s new law is part of a growing crackdown on homelessness nationwide after the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson last year allowed cities to ban public camping even if no shelter beds are available.
The National Homelessness Law Center said nearly 150 cities across 32 states have passed laws targeting the encampments since then, including 40 cities in California — where a quarter of the nation’s 770,000-person homeless population has congregated.
Fremont has 612 homeless people, according to the city’s 2024 point-in-time count.
The City Council looks to amend the ordinance at its March 18 meeting.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.