SB 1011 would criminalize houselessness statewide
SACRAMENTO – Over 100 organizations across California joined the Equal Rights for Every Neighbor coalition in opposing Senate Bill 1011, submitting a letter to the California Senate Public Safety Committee this week. SB 1011 would criminalize houselessness across wide swaths of the state without offering real, tangible solutions to the state's housing crisis.
The array of groups includes people with lived experience of houselessness, service provider organizations, criminal justice advocates, anti-poverty organizations, and labor organizations such as the California Nurses Association, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the Steinberg Institute, ACLU California Action, Housing California, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, and many more.
As the letter notes: “Not a single jurisdiction that has implemented laws making the experience of houselessness a crime can show these laws work to achieve any valid policy. To the contrary, laws that make living on our public streets or sidewalks a crime are completely ineffective at achieving stated goals.”
According to a 2023 RAND report, laws criminalizing houselessness “fail to decrease the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, despite widespread enforcement through encampment clearing.” The letter states, “criminalization drives people into further poverty and keeps people unhoused longer, according to this report."
The bill will be heard in the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, April 16.
The full text of the letter can be found here.
Equal Rights for Every Neighbor is a coalition of community-based organizations and people with lived experience of homelessness dedicated to lifting up proven solutions to solve homelessness, rejecting false narratives about homelessness and our unhoused neighbors.