The law, Senate Bill 364, bars cities and counties from enacting ordinances prohibiting individuals or organizations from providing assistance, such as legal services, medical care or food and water, to homeless folks.
"Service workers, good neighbors, faith-based organizations, and other community outreach groups can continue their critical work to assist people experiencing homelessness without fear of criminal penalty," the National Alliance to End Homelessness said in a press release.
Local crackdowns on homelessness have increased nationwide since a 2024 Supreme Court ruling in favor of Grants Pass, Oregon. Johnson v. Grants Pass gave municipalities more power to enforce public camping laws, even if there’s no shelter capacity for homeless folks.
For example, Cal Matters reported earlier this year that Fremont made aiding and abetting a homeless encampment a misdemeanor, a change it later revoked.
"The legislation provides commonsense protections for service providers, especially non-profits and faith-based ones, who are doing the work every day to assist unhoused Californians," bill author Senator Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) said in a statement. "This new law removes the threat of local governments outlawing their ability to provide supportive services, including legal and medical services, as well as other basic survival resources like food, to unhoused individuals."
The law has been scaled back from its original version, which would have prevented any civil or criminal penalties for homeless people "for any act immediately related to homelessness or any act related to basic survival."
The bill received support from nonprofits and homeless service providers, including the California Homeless Union Statewide Organizing Council and the Coalition on Homelessness.
However, a long list of cities opposed the bill, arguing it would take away their agency and worsen the problem.
“The City of Corona has worked hard to develop a system that connects people to shelter, services and housing to ‘end’ homelessness, not support programs that perpetuate street homelessness, such as community-based/faith-based organizations serving meals in parks, providing mobile showers, and providing tents and blankets that result in encampments," Corona said in a statement.
"SB 634 strips cities of all enforcement tools, giving individuals the legal right to sleep, sit, or erect tents in any public space without consequence," La Verne Mayor Tim Hepburn said in a statement.
"Moreover, this proposal flies in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Johnson v. Grants Pass, which clarified that local governments may impose reasonable regulations on encampments in public spaces."
Before the Supreme Court ruling, Grants Pass also tried to regulate groups helping homeless people on public property, but the mayor vetoed the measure.
According to a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness in California grew by about 3% between 2023 and 2024. The state also has almost half of all people nationally experiencing chronic homelessness.
The law takes effect Jan. 1.
