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FREMONT, Calif. — Dominating one corner of a sprawling homeless encampment on an abandoned lot next to Fremont’s rumbling BART tracks, Michael Austin has built his own kind of palace.
His makeshift home — a tent fortified with wood paneling, steel poles and chain link fencing — rises two stories high, with a day bed on the first floor and a queen mattress on the second, plenty of cushioning for his 18 cats to get cozy. He’s built a fire pit out front, and planted a long pole in the middle of camp to fly the American flag. Scattered throughout his camp, along with piles of dried cat food, is an assortment of tools, scrap metal and motor gear that Austin, 60, transforms into mini go-karts, motorized bikes and scooters.
His 20 or so neighbors camping on the lot at Osgood Road and Washington Boulevard live in a grim assortment of tents, tarps and plywood.
Normally, Austin said, he likes to keep his space in a state of organized chaos. But lately he sees no point in tidying up. Any day now, he expects orders to pack up and move from the lot he’s called home for two years. A new city law bans encampments on public and private property. Violators could face misdemeanor charges, a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.
“I’m going to jail. That’s the only way they’re getting me out of here,” said Austin, petting his gray cat, Steamer. Maybe he’d voluntarily leave if the city offered him affordable housing that allows his cats and tools, but that seems unlikely. His campsite, with all its cats and clutter, may not be a house, he said, but it’s “my home.”
The Fremont City Council adopted the anti-camping ordinance Feb. 11 with a 6-1 vote, making this diverse Bay Area suburb 40 miles southeast of San Francisco the latest in a long line of California cities to pursue tougher enforcement against homeless camping. Local leaders estimate the city has about 800 people who lack a permanent residence, more than 600 of them living unsheltered on the streets or in cars. Although those numbers pale in comparison with the tens of thousands of people living homeless in Los Angeles, it’s a visible presence in this family-friendly suburb of roughly 225,000 people.
The anti-camping trend has swept through the liberal Bay Area, where local residents have grown weary of tent cities. In city after city, voters have used the ballot box to elect more moderate leadership and push local officials to take back the streets.
Democratic-run cities such as Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, among the most liberal jurisdictions in the nation, have all adopted more aggressive enforcement strategies against homeless encampments in the wake of a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court ruling last June that empowered communities to restrict homeless encampments on public property, even when there is no available shelter.
Advocates for this get-tough approach say the Bay Area’s reputation for generosity and compassion has had an unanticipated downside, fostering a subculture of chronically homeless people who don’t want to be helped.
Organizations that advocate on behalf of the homeless, on the other hand, have routinely blasted the camping bans as a short-term bandage that does nothing to solve systemic poverty, untreated mental illness, a dearth of drug treatment programs and a shameful lack of affordable housing.
Fremont is the latest Bay Area city to struggle with how best to navigate those turbulent crosswinds.
Fremont’s ordinance incorporates language adopted by numerous California cities, banning camping in public spaces including sidewalks, waterways and parks. As originally adopted, the ordinance went further to also prohibit “aiding and abetting” homeless encampments.
The language enraged and confused homeless activist groups, who said the “aiding and abetting” clause posed a direct threat to outreach workers who provide crucial food and medical care to homeless people.
“Punishing people for experiencing homelessness is cruel, and punishing people who just want to help them is cruel,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center.
During the lengthy Feb. 11 hearing where the ordinance was initially adopted, dozens of advocates and community members lined up to speak in opposition. “What are we doing?” one man said. “We are playing musical chairs with people’s lives. We’re treating them almost as trash.”
But plenty of others told council members that they felt the scales of tolerance had tipped too far, and they no longer felt safe in their community.
“I love Fremont. It is my home. But we are living in fear,” one woman said. “We are living in frustration.”
Fremont Mayor Raj Salwan is among the city officials who were surprised by the angry blowback from homeless advocates and local nonprofits. Salwan, a mild-mannered veterinarian who grew up in Fremont, was elected to the nonpartisan mayor’s office last November after two four-year stints on the City Council.
He said the city has no intention of arresting everyone living outside, let alone the outreach workers who help them. The goal, he said, is to give the city more leverage to get people to accept services and also to ensure safe access to city spaces for all residents.
He said the ordinance would give the city the leeway it needed to target egregious violations of the law, and recounted recent incidents of community members helping homeless people build tree houses. The city logged more than 880 complaints last year from residents reporting concerns about encampments, including public nudity, open drug use, human waste and rodent infestations.
“We’ve stated at least 20 times what our intent is and what we’re trying to do,” Salwan said. “I think some people just don’t like the ordinance, so they’re going to poke holes one way or another.”
He and other city leaders noted that Fremont has a history of investing generously in efforts to support homeless people and get them back into housing. The city funds a 66-bed transitional shelter for families and adults, as well as a navigation center that helps connect people to permanent housing. There’s a family resource center that offers job training, mental health services and food assistance, and a winter hotel program. City-funded teams crisscross the city providing mental health and medical care.
Unlike many Bay Area suburbs, Fremont is in compliance with state-mandated housing construction goals, with more than 1,300 affordable units in development, according to city officials.
“We’re not one of those cities that has run away from the issue, or tried to hide the issue, or sweep the issue. We’ve always wanted to help tackle it and address it,” Salwan said.
At the same time, he said, it’s also his job to consider how entrenched homelessness affects the broader community. What about the small business next door to an encampment that is losing customers and struggling to stay open? Or the homeowners who share property lines with an unkempt tent city? What should young kids and their families do when parks and trails are littered with trash and used needles?
“If we want to get the will of the community to do more programs, more shelters, more housing navigation centers,” he said, “we need to also show them we will address severe concerns that you are having.”
Even so, in the face of the pushback from homeless service groups and threats of legal action, the City Council this week revisited the ordinance, just nine days before it was to go into effect.
Salwan proposed deleting the “aiding and abetting” provision, in an effort to reaffirm “positive relationships with nonprofits, faith‑based organizations and other government agencies.” The council approved the change on another 6-1 vote, and also loosened the camping ban on private residential property to allow camping in limited circumstances, for friends and family, with the owner’s consent.
The ordinance, originally scheduled to take effect in mid-March, probably will come back to the council for another discussion.
Putting the new law into effect will be a delicate balance, city officials said. But “the intent will never be to arrest someone for being unhoused,” said Fremont Police Chief Sean Washington. “And in fact, our policies prohibit us from doing that.”
Spokesperson Geneva Bosques said the city would prioritize the dismantling of large tent cities, as well as removing smaller encampments that pose immediate health and safety risks. The ordinance requires the city to provide campers with written notice in advance of a sweep. Bosques said the city will store personal belongings for 90 days.
One of Fremont’s more entrenched encampments is hidden along the tree-lined banks of a large creek in the Quarry Lakes Regional Recreation Area.
It’s clear that some of the campers have spent years here, expanding their tent homes into multi-room dwellings connected with wood paneling and tarps. One campsite is surrounded by a white picket fence. Another features a large “backyard” with an orange couch and potted plants.
It’s also obvious why the city wants to dismantle the camp. An estimated 25 to 30 people live along the creek in flammable structures, generating trash and debris that pose environmental hazards and have prompted multiple complaints to the city.
Brianna Herrera, 31, and her boyfriend, Fernando Luna, were huddled in their own souped-up tent, with 2-month-old puppies toddling around them. Herrera said she has lived in the encampment for years, and gave birth to a daughter there.
The tent she shares with her partner has linoleum floors and a generator to provide electricity. She said they support themselves by collecting scrap metal that they sell to a recycling center, bringing in about $200 on a good day.
Herrera said she’s worried about the new ordinance, and how someone could “go to jail for being homeless,” but she also understands the risks the encampment poses, including fire, and the concerns about how big it’s gotten.
She, like Michael Austin across town, is preparing for an evacuation order.
“Usually our places are cleaned up,” Herrera said. “But we’ve kind of given up, because we have to leave anyways.”
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