![\"Jamie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/chang.jamie_.updated.png\")
Jamie Chang<\/p>\n
Jamie Chang<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe primary question that I hope it raises for people is, do sweeps actually work?\u201d Chang said. \u201cAre 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n In that four-year period, researchers found 156 camps were closed more than once.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that the decision has been made that it\u2019s not cruel or unusual punishment to sweep folks off the street, even if they don\u2019t have anywhere to go, it is just easier for municipalities to do it,\u201d said Prabhleen Kaur, the paper\u2019s first author. Kaur graduated from Berkeley last year with a data science degree and is in medical school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem hasn\u2019t been solved,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ve just pushed them somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n That relocation is reflected in the data. Before June 2024, the statistical center of the city\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings show that sweeps are dispersing people rather than addressing homelessness,\u201d said C.J. Gabbe, an associate professor of environmental studies at Santa Clara University and one of the study\u2019s co-authors. \u201cI\u2019m concerned that Oakland\u2019s approach is pushing vulnerable people into even more vulnerable neighborhoods rather than helping them find stability.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time of the 2024 decision, many Berkeley researchers said<\/a> 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<\/a> from UC Berkeley Law students that found at least three counties and 50 cities in California passed new anti-camping laws targeting unhoused populations.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening to these people,\u201d Chang said. Her prior research has, however, examined the health harms of encampment sweeps, from missing medications and physical harm to psychological trauma. \u201cThe health effects are so profound, and they are complex and cascading. They\u2019re so very deeply felt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials in Oakland sharply increased the number of homeless encampments they cleared in the months after the 2024…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-336492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}