Judge orders looser restrictions on San Rafael camping limits

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge ruled that the San Francisco Bay Area city of San Rafael can enforce restrictions on the size and locations of homeless encampments in the city, but can only do so if it modifies its original anti-camping ordinance to be less restrictive.

Homeless residents of “Camp Integrity,” the nickname given to an encampment along Mahon Creek Path in San Rafael, sued San Rafael in August after the city proposed an ordinance that would place limits on where encampments would be permitted and how large they could be. 

The proposed ordinance would have limited campers to 100 square feet of space and did not allow them to congregate within 200 feet of one another. Violators of the ordinance could face a $500 fine and six months in jail.

At a hearing in September, attorneys for the city said that officials wanted to enforce camping restrictions because of fire risks, garbage and criminal activity associated with the camps.

Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen granted a temporary restraining order blocking the ordinance on Aug. 16 and extended it in September. He said at the time that he was worried that the restrictions could violate campers’ rights.

On Thursday, Chen issued an order allowing the city to enforce camping restrictions if the city modified its original ordinance to be less restrictive.

“While the city is permitted to break up the encampment at issue, the city must allow 400-square-foot encampments, housing up to four people, and may impose a 100-foot buffer between campsites instead of 200-foot buffer,” Chen wrote. “The city must also ensure there is a process clearly identifying permissible sites and an orderly process by which such sites may be allocated or claimed.”

Fully enjoining the ordinance would create a hardship for the city, Chen wrote, while fully enforcing the injunction placed undue hardships on homeless residents.

The original ordinance “poses significant danger to plaintiffs, implicating their due process rights and rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act, among others,” Chen wrote in his ruling.

Plaintiff Eddie Metz praised Chen's order.

“Judge Chen’s order is a significant victory for us that will move these proceedings towards a positive outcome,” Metz said.  “The homeless have always been survivors, and we’ll survive whatever the city throws at us. However, we hope city officials take a more collaborative approach moving forward.”

Chen wrote that the 200-foot buffer zone restriction in the original ordinance would endanger campers who required “some community” to stay alive, including those with physical or mental disabilities.

“It separates disabled plaintiffs from caretakers upon whom they rely. It prevents neighbors from administering aid in a medical emergency such as a drug overdose, something that has occurred more than once in this campsite,” Chen wrote. “Moreover, the ordinance leaves the unhoused on their own to find permissible places to camp, under circumstances where such campsites may be relatively scarce.”

The 200-foot buffer zone was unfair to campers because it was out of their control if other campers violated the 200-foot rule, Chen wrote.

“Unhoused persons face an indefinite risk of eviction and prosecution were someone else to set up a camp near them, violating the mandated buffer zone, regardless of knowledge or control,” he wrote.

Chen said the city does not have a plan to mitigate these specific harms and has not implemented any scheme that will allow for the orderly allocation, assignment, or registration of permissible campsites. This would leave the unhoused playing a game of “musical chairs,” Chen wrote.

San Rafael officials did not answer requests for comment by press time.

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