(IMAGN) Alex Hoxie of Brockton, right, who gives aid to the city's homeless people, hands out supplies under the Crescent Street Bridge on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.
Sacramento, California – California is preparing a new push to tackle one of its most visible and persistent challenges: the thousands of encampments that line highways, overpasses, and state-owned property across its largest cities. Governor Gavin Newsom announced the creation of the State Action for Facilitation on Encampments, or SAFE Task Force, a multi-agency team designed to speed up the removal of encampments while expanding access to shelter, housing, and health services.
The move comes just over a year after Newsom directed state agencies to take a more active role in clearing encampments and just months after he circulated new draft ordinances for local governments. Framing the initiative as both urgent and humane, Newsom said in a statement that “no one should live in a dangerous or unsanitary encampment” and emphasized that the SAFE Task Force would “pair urgency with dignity” in restoring public spaces.
The task force will bring together officials from a wide array of state agencies, including the Office of Emergency Services, Health and Human Services, the Highway Patrol, and the State Transportation Agency. Caltrans, which has already cleared more than 18,000 encampments since 2021, will play a central role in removing camps along state rights-of-way. Other agencies will coordinate services ranging from mental health and substance use treatment to housing and supportive care.
The initial focus will be on California’s ten largest cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose, Long Beach, Anaheim, Bakersfield, and Fresno—where the crisis is most acute and the public pressure for action is highest. Within 30 days, state and local teams are expected to begin coordinated operations targeting large and unsafe encampments.
The governor’s announcement follows last year’s Supreme Court decision that eased restrictions on how cities and states can clear encampments, removing legal ambiguities that had limited enforcement. Newsom, who filed a brief in that case urging the Court to expand local authority, quickly followed up with an executive order directing state agencies to adopt a model that combines encampment clearance with offers of shelter and adequate notice to residents.
Recent pilot agreements suggest the approach is already producing results. In San Francisco, a new arrangement between the city and Caltrans has led to the clearing of dozens of encampments this summer, connecting some residents to shelter and removing hundreds of cubic yards of debris. A similar agreement with San Diego was struck in July.
The governor’s office points to early evidence of progress statewide. Recent counts show decreases in homelessness across several counties, including Los Angeles (-7.9% in the city), San Diego (-13.5% in the city), and Sonoma (-22.6%). While homelessness rose nationally by more than 18% in 2024, California’s overall increase was limited to 3%, one of the lowest rates in the country.
Even with those gains, the scale of the crisis is daunting. Between 2014 and 2019, before Newsom took office, unsheltered homelessness grew by 37,000 people. The governor has promised to “reverse a problem decades in the making,” betting that a coordinated, statewide effort like the SAFE Task Force can finally bend the curve.
