Berkeley homeless evictions spark clash over ADA, public safety

(CN) —  A homeless advocacy organization challenged the city of Berkeley, California, in federal court on Friday morning over the city’s policies around evicting homeless people from encampments.

The Berkeley Homeless Union says that the city is placing its homeless residents in greater danger by removing them from established encampments and, essentially, forcing them to sleep on the street. It also claims that the city’s policies violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and due process laws.

However, the city argues that efforts by the court to force its hand into providing accommodations for certain homeless people runs the risk of future litigation and creating unnecessary burdens on the city.

“The city doesn’t have a policy of removing unhoused or homeless individuals from the streets,” Assistant City Attorney Christopher Jensen told U.S. District Judge Edward Chen. “It has a policy or program of maintaining the public right-of-way, of maintaining the safety and accessibility of the streets, of preserving the public welfare on these public spaces. That is what is at issue here.”

In particular, the attorneys quarreled over a number of homeless residents who have camped at a longstanding contested encampment in the Northwest Berkeley neighborhood at the intersection of Harrison and Eighth streets.

The city argues that it has repeatedly offered shelter to the residents at the encampment, who number between 30 and 40 people, though they have denied the offer.

The Berkeley Homeless Union argues that the city shelters simply aren’t equipped to care for some of the residents, many of whom suffer from mental and physical health problems, attorney Anthony Prince told the court.

“These are almost all people with PTSD, who cannot go into certain environments, because their disability will be triggered and exacerbated,” Prince said. “This notion that people are just willy-nilly refusing places to go is simply not true, and we have an extensive record.”

By forcing the city’s homeless population out of encampments and into the streets, the city is creating a more dangerous environment, Prince said.

“This is a life and death issue, your honor,” he said.. “The counsel can’t answer the question, ‘where are people gonna go?’ I’ll tell you where a lot of them are going to go — they’re going to go to the graveyard. That’s not hyperbole, your honor. That’s statistically proven, and I think that’s the context within which we have to look at this.”

Throughout the hearing for summary judgment, Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, often appeared frustrated with the city attorneys’ inability to offer some middle ground response, accusing it of an all or nothing approach.

This also came up when the city suggested impounding some of the inoperable vehicles that have remained at the encampment at Harrison and Eighth. Rats have infested the vehicles, which have resulted in an outbreak of leptospirosis, a bacterial disease that can infect animals and humans with flu-like symptoms, according to the city attorneys.

Chen asked why the city wasn’t able to provide an inspection of the vehicles and RVs. City attorneys argued this also presents complications for the safety of city employees and property rights issues with the vehicle owners.

“If you want them to move, why not just offer assistance in towing them?” the judge asked.

But that solution offers another problem, Jensen said. Now, a potentially rat-infested vehicle is occupying a different public parking space.

The city could destroy the vehicles, to prevent the spread of disease, but Prince pushed back on this. He argued that the city’s willingness to evict potentially leptospirosis-infected residents out of the encampment was inconsistent with its supposed desire to stop the spread of disease.

The city announced the outbreak earlier this year.

Friday’s hearing also included a motion by the city to dissolve a preliminary injunction blocking it from evicting homeless residents from camps and a motion for a temporary restraining order by the Berkeley Homeless Union preventing the city from displacing its members. The Berkeley Homeless Union filed the lawsuit in February 2025 after it says the city began to intensify the displacement of homeless residents around the city.

The case bears much in common with the Where Do We Go Berkeley case, which Prince also referenced throughout the hearing. Chen is also presiding over that case. In that case, a similar group of disabled homeless people also sued the city for constitutional violations and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Both cases have appeals in the Ninth Circuit.