Officials in Oakland sharply increased the number of homeless encampments they cleared in the months after the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision made it easier for municipalities nationwide to do so, new research from UC Berkeley shows.
Many sites have been closed repeatedly, the analysis found — one was swept 18 times in a four-year period. More recently, efforts to close camps have shifted into census tracts that have higher poverty rates and larger shares of Hispanic residents.
The research brief published today (May 28) in the American Journal of Public Health is believed to be the first of its kind looking at encampment closures since the June 2024 Grants Pass v. Johnson decision. That case freed local governments to enforce camping bans and punish homeless people for sleeping outside, even when shelter space is lacking.
Jamie Chang , a UC Berkeley associate professor of social welfare and senior author of the study, said the research shows the limited effectiveness of encampment closures on reducing homelessness.
“The primary question that I hope it raises for people is, do sweeps actually work?” Chang said. “Are they effective? They cost a lot of money. But the repetition of the sweeps and also this dispersive effect really raise questions around sweeps as an instrument of homeless management.”
Using a publicly available database managed by the city of Oakland, Chang and a team of researchers analyzed 785 encampment closure reports from January 2021 to December 2024. The analysis involved combing through several hundred additional encampment action logs, translating vague locations into specific coordinates and charting those operations over time.
Before the Grants Pass decision, crews swept an average of 14.4 camps each month. That number more than doubled in the six months after the decision, averaging 32.2 per month.
In that four-year period, researchers found 156 camps were closed more than once.
“Now that the decision has been made that it’s not cruel or unusual punishment to sweep folks off the street, even if they don’t have anywhere to go, it is just easier for municipalities to do it,” said Prabhleen Kaur, the paper’s first author. Kaur graduated from Berkeley last year with a data science degree and is in medical school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The problem hasn’t been solved,” she said. “They’ve just pushed them somewhere else.”
That relocation is reflected in the data. Before June 2024, the statistical center of the city’s sweeps was several blocks southeast of Lake Merritt. It then shifted approximately 1.5 miles southeast toward East Oakland, moving into census tracts with lower household incomes and smaller shares of White and Asian/Pacific Islander residents.
Researchers said there are two possible explanations: The Supreme Court case enabled governments to expand enforcement to new areas, or new encampments formed in response to prior closures.
“Our findings show that sweeps are dispersing people rather than addressing homelessness,” said C.J. Gabbe, an associate professor of environmental studies at Santa Clara University and one of the study’s co-authors. “I’m concerned that Oakland’s approach is pushing vulnerable people into even more vulnerable neighborhoods rather than helping them find stability.”
At the time of the 2024 decision, many Berkeley researchers said the changes would increase the distress of homeless people and force them to live in more dangerous places. The new research bears that out. It also follows a recent analysis from UC Berkeley Law students that found at least three counties and 50 cities in California passed new anti-camping laws targeting unhoused populations.
Instead of focusing on encampment sweeps, Chang and her team said, communities should reallocate resources toward expanding adequate shelter and housing options. And if encampment closures are to continue, municipalities should also publicly report health, economic and displacement outcomes from the efforts.
“We don’t know what’s happening to these people,” Chang said. Her prior research has, however, examined the health harms of encampment sweeps, from missing medications and physical harm to psychological trauma. “The health effects are so profound, and they are complex and cascading. They’re so very deeply felt.”
Homeless Encampment Closures Before and After City of Grants Pass v Johnson
28-May-2026