FREMONT, Calif. — Domestic violence survivor Becky Wolf said she tried to leave her alleged abuser at least half a dozen times during their 30-year relationship. She would from time to time escape and become homeless. But he controlled their finances, so she felt compelled to return to him.
Now, with the city of Fremont passing what many say is one of the nation’s most stringent laws on homelessness — because it not only criminalizes the unhoused but also punishes those who offer them assistance — many like Wolf are wondering whether other California cities will follow suit.
And Wolf, 51, said she wonders whether friends, such as the one in whose Bay Area home she is currently couch-surfing, would fear to perform such kindness.
On Feb. 11, Fremont’s City Council voted 6-to-1 to criminalize encampments. Anyone who violates the ordinance could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
It includes a provision — perhaps the first of its kind in the nation — that similarly fines those who “aid” and “abet” the unhoused. Another provision makes camping in a backyard for longer than 72 hours at a time a crime.
“Resorting to punitive measures is easier than providing affordable housing,” said Ron Hochbaum, associate clinical professor of law at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. He said it’s a kind of ordinance that “criminalizes charity.”
Enforcement, which was set to begin March 13, might be delayed because of a lawsuit filed this week by several advocacy organizations and church groups, accusing the city of criminalizing homelessness and compassion.
Vivian Wan, chief executive officer of Abode Services, a Fremont-based nonprofit trying to end homelessness in the Bay Area, spoke Tuesday at a Fremont City Council meeting, expressing her anger over the ordinance. In an interview with the Public Press, she said she was concerned about how her organization can continue to provide services.
Wan said that survivors already move around to avoid further violence. “Any ordinance that encourages people experiencing homelessness to go into hiding — like this ordinance does — and requires them to move, has safety impacts for survivors of domestic violence,” she said.
She said that if survivors are moved by police, or cited, fined and jailed, “it can make it harder for them to ever achieve housing on their own, and can result in ultimately returning to their abuser.”
“This means nonprofit groups like the one I run in the city, local religious institutions or even individual concerned citizens could find themselves in trouble just for doing the right thing and treating people humanely,” she wrote in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle.
As of January 2024, California had the nation’s largest homeless population, about 187,000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That is 0.48 % of the state’s population.
According to Fremont’s 2024 Point in Time survey — a count of people experiencing homelessness on a single night — the city had 807 who were unhoused. Of those, 195 were staying in shelters, while 612 people were unsheltered, with 62% of that group living in cars or RVs, 20% living in tents or makeshift shelters, 10% sleeping on sidewalks or streets, and 8% in other locations. The city has a total of 111 shelter beds.
Since last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson decision allowing cities to ban encampments on public property, about 150 cities nationwide have adopted laws banning homelessness even if the unhoused have nowhere else to go. The laws also criminalize sleeping in public places, such as sidewalks or parks, as well as storing private property on public land.
“Since Grants Pass, 40 to 50 California cities have modified their ordinances to make them stricter,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “All of our research shows that cities pass such ordinances to win some political points.”
Attorney David Bonaccorsi, who spearheaded opposition to the Fremont ordinance, lambasted it as “Orwellian” and its language as horrific. He said that just because the Grants Pass ordinance, which has emboldened so many cities to pass harsh laws, “is not unconstitutional, it does not mean it is good policy.”
And he warned that because Fremont’s ordinance is not tied to shelters and support services, it is destined to fail at eliminating encampments.
For women’s rights advocates who fear that copycat ordinances will spring up around the state, the Fremont policy is a setback. They are already worried about reduced support from Washington, with federal funding frozen by the Trump administration.
Harsh ordinances are going to make abused women reluctant to reach out to law enforcement, said Jennifer Dow-Rowell, executive director of SAVE — short for Safe Alternatives to Violent Environments — a Fremont-based non-profit for survivors of domestic violence.
According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, on average it takes someone experiencing domestic abuse — and it is women who are largely affected — seven attempts before they leave their abuser for good, and violence often escalates after each attempt.
If a woman flees her abuser and then “gets arrested for sleeping in a public space, that will go against her in her bid to get custody of her children,” said Wendy Seiden, a consultant and child and homeless services advocate.
Zakia Afrin, director of survivor advocacy and prevention at Maitri, a South Bay support group for domestic violence survivors, said that because domestic violence often overlaps with homelessness, and because many cities don’t have enough domestic violence victims’ shelters, the Fremont ordinance is particularly perilous for those survivors.
“They may opt to stay with their abusers,” she said.
Viji Sundaram reports for the San Francisco Public Press, where this story first appeared. It is republished here with permission.
