Last Tuesday — recycling day in our neighborhood — my son went outside to discover his car window broken and several items stolen. I suspect some of the scavengers, likely homeless, who canvas neighborhoods for recyclables also peer into cars for things to steal.

I don’t want to imply all homeless people are thieves. But for reasons both humane and self-serving I would like to see Stockton’s homeless population housed.

It’s not just me. “I am also bombarded by calls from people who can’t walk down their sidewalks, can’t go to their parks, can’t walk down their levees,” City Council Member Dan Wright said at Tuesday’s meeting.  

Council Member Brando Villapudua said he receives daily calls from angry business owners.

“We have to take this really, really seriously and take this city back,” Villapudua said.

Their comments were made as the City Council discussed a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Grants Pass v. Johnson. The ruling allows municipalities to clear homeless encampments from public spaces.

“It will allow us to retake our parks,” said Stockton City Manager Harry Black. “It will allow us to retake our public spaces.”

Grants Pass reversed Martin v. Boise, a poorly reasoned 2019 Ninth Circuit ruling that held that rousting homeless campers who have nowhere to go violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. 

In one fell swoop, Boise short-circuited a dozen of Stockton’s municipal ordinances designed to ensure a clean, safe city: laws against loitering or camping in parks, living in cars or campers, obstructing sidewalks, and more.

With Boise gone, Stockton’s laws again can be enforced. If done right, this will not criminalize homelessness. It will criminalize criminality. Homeless persons may still camp, elsewhere. They retain property rights. City and county will still provide services and shelter beds. But now the enforcement arm is untied.

City Manager Black said the priority will be to take back city parks. “That will basically be clearing out the parks.”

Miguel Villapudua — same last name as Brando, but chairman of the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors — lauded the ruling.

“In the last decade, with our hands tied, we have seen an explosion of encampments, public park dwellings and deterioration of quality of life throughout local cities,” his statement reads in part.

He added, “I want to be clear that being poor or without a home is not a crime, or a moral failing, but this ruling restores our ability to encourage, with consequences and safe boundaries, those among us who are in the throes of addiction and mental health crisis to get the help that they need.” 

Villapudua’s embrace of balanced policy mirrors a statewide shift towards firmer handling of homeless people, when needed. 

For instance, Care Court — created by Stockton’s Democratic State Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman and Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Garden Grove, through Senate Bill 1338 — allows a special court to place people with untreated mental illnesses in housing and treatment programs.

I didn’t want to do a cliched good news/bad news lede, but here’s the bad news: over the last two years, homelessness in San Joaquin County doubled, according to a soon-to-be released homeless count.

The biennial Point in Time Count, due to go public within days, says San Joaquin County’s homeless population has spiked from 2,319 in 2022 to 4,723 this year.

The number of Stockton homeless was not available. But Stockton always has the lion’s share: 66% in 2022. If that percentage remains the same, there are around 3,100 homeless people in Stockton — more than in the entire county two years ago.

This jaw-dropping increase is an unwelcome surprise. San Joaquin County and its cities have done so much in recent years, spending millions, creating numerous evidence-based programs, and adding scores of shelter beds, investing in affordable housing. 

Could it be a case of lies, damned lies, and statistics? The prevalence of Covid-19 in 2022 and the dispersal of the homeless population may have caused an undercount.

Conversely, the 2024 count used a different method, one that combined counting and extrapolation. Supposedly this methodology led to more accurate results, but the reverse could be the case, an overcount.

A cause may be that some of the fixes are still in the pipeline. That’s the case with the Care Court, deferred a year but due to launch in December, with the homeless Navigation Center, delayed by a controversial reorganization of the shelters, and with housing projects such as the 326-bed Pathways Project.  

Or the cause may be the obvious: homeless policies in Stockton and San Joaquin County are inadequate. Not bad, necessarily, but unequal to the giant homeless-producing factory that is California’s dysfunctional housing policy. 

Study after study has shown that California’s regulatory impediments to housing construction drive home prices and rents upward. 

Census figures say 15.6% of Stocktonians live below the poverty line, and many more close to it. These residents are unable to afford the median home price of $382,000 (26% above the national average) and are so severely pinched by the median rent of $1,417 that they are one auto accident, hospital stay, or layoff away from losing the roof over their heads.

Perhaps local municipalities are malfunctioning, too, by not collaborating. 

“I think everybody’s been working in a silo until recently,” said Krista Fiser, chair of San Joaquin County Continuum of Care. “I think there’s an opportunity for all of the cities and the county to continue building their partnerships. They’re doing really great this year in building partnerships.”

Fiser added, “And there needs to be a heightened focus on outcomes.”

At Tuesday’s meeting City Manager Black said staff will study Grants Pass, develop policy recommendations, and schedule a council study session for August. The council can vote on its course of action at the very next meeting. 

The public spaces look to become cleaner and safer. Whether government can reduce the booming homeless population is a good question. 

Michael Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email:mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com