Amid recent controversy surrounding homelessness, the San Bernardino City Council is creating a special subcommittee to make recommendations on homeless initiatives.
The council unanimously agreed to create the subcommittee — which was suggested by Acting City Manager Rochelle Clayton — at a Wednesday, July 3, meeting, according to city spokesperson Jeff Kraus.
Mayor Helen Tran will announce council members appointed to the committee in the coming weeks.
“Homelessness is a top priority of our residents, business owners and the city,” Tran said. “The ad-hoc committee will allow the city council and me to take a more active role in addressing this issue.”
The new subcommittee will allow officials to provide more frequent, in-depth updates to council members, Kraus said.
“Homelessness is a complicated issue with many ongoing programs and solutions,” Kraus said. “Many of these require the direction, input and feedback from council members on a regular and more in-depth basis, which is not always feasible due to time constraints and competing priorities at a council meeting.”
Kraus said the city expects to have a temporary injunction against encampment cleanup enforcement lifted soon, and that the next steps will require extra guidance.
The encampment injunction is a part of a continuing lawsuit over the city’s handling of homeless encampments filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three people, along with grassroots organization SoCal Trash Army.
The suit, filed in August 2023, argued that the city violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and mishandled personal belongings of unhoused people during an encampment cleanup at Meadowbrook Park in San Bernardino in May 2023.
The plaintiffs said they had submitted accommodation requests to the city because moving would be difficult with their disabilities, and they alleged the city did not respond to the situation appropriately.
In January 2024, federal Judge Terry Hatter Jr. sided with the plaintiffs and granted their request for a preliminary injunction barring the city from removing or displacing unhoused residents and their belongings pending further judicial review of the case.
The city, however, argued that it responded to those with Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations and offered hotel vouchers to those in the park before it cleared encampments.
Kraus also pointed to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which the court, by a 6–3 vote, upheld that penalizing homeless people for sleeping outside when there is no available shelter does not violate the 8th Amendment, and that cities have the power to arrest, cite and fine those who sleep outside in public places.
Kraus said in a June 28 statement that the ruling provides “much needed clarity” and “confirms that cities like San Bernardino have the legal authority to maintain and clean public property and can make that public property available to all residents, not just those who are unhoused.”
Speaking about the subcommittee, Kraus said it also will help guide the city’s construction of two new transitional housing facilities – one an interim shelter for nearly 140 individuals with about $35 million awarded to the city by the state earlier this year.
The city declared a local state of emergency over homelessness in February 2023 and has been working to create a plan to provide housing options for those without permanent shelter.
The city of San Bernardino reported about 977 unsheltered individuals during the 2024 Point-In-Time Count in January – a slight decrease from the 1,017 unsheltered people counted the previous year. Still, the tally is the highest homeless population among other cities in the county.
