Fremont city officials and San José advocates are split on whether banning houseless encampments will push unhoused residents into neighboring cities and counties. They also disagree if unhoused advocates will be charged with a misdemeanor if they continue to help unhoused community members.
On Feb. 11, Fremont’s city council voted 6-1 to pass a policy banning community members from building houseless encampments on public property, according to a Feb. 14 news release.
Any person “aiding (or) abetting” someone who is in violation of the policy can be considered guilty of a misdemeanor and could receive a fine up to $1,000 or go to prison for up to six months, according to the ordinance in Fremont city council’s agenda.
Crimson Fist, an unhoused advocate from Bay Area Superheroes who distributes supplies to unhoused communities in Fremont and San José, said unhoused residents and unhoused advocates are understandably nervous.
Fist, who uses they/them pronouns, requested to be anonymous out of fear of retaliation from other groups who may oppose the advocacy work they do.
Bay Area Superheroes is an independent activist group that advocates for multiple communities, including the unhoused community, the LGBTQIA+ community and more, according to its Linktree web page.
“Everybody's definitely kind of on edge,” Fist said.
Fist said they are also concerned that San José and other neighboring cities and counties may adopt similar policies.
Shaunn Cartwright, an unhoused advocate and founder of the Unhoused Response Group, said there is a passionate community of unhoused advocates to fight against these types of policies in San José.
The Unhoused Response Group is an advocacy group that distributes supplies and supports the unhoused community throughout different parts of the Bay Area, according to its Facebook page.
However, Cartwright said she is concerned that the ordinance will put a target on both unhoused community members and advocates in and outside of Fremont.
“This will affect all of us (unhoused advocates) nationwide, because it's already got that stigma of aiding and abetting, and you can't take that back,” she said. “You just can't. The only people who are (aiding and abetting), are people committing a crime.”
Around 6,343 people were unsheltered out of 9,450 people of Fremont’s unhoused population, according to the city’s 2024 Point-In-Time Homelessness Report.
Around 21% live in makeshift shelters and 17% live on streets or sidewalks, according to the same source.
The city also estimates that it had around 223 encampments between 2022-2023, according to the ordinance within the previous agenda.
Fist said they estimate that Fremont’s policy will influence many unhoused community members to attempt to find shelter in more urban areas of the city.
“We already see (through) my drive through here, people (are), like, sleeping in bus shelters,” they said.
In 2024, around 2,271 of the 2,440 emergency shelter beds (93.1%) were occupied in Alameda County, according to the county’s 2024 Point-in-Time Homelessness report.
Geneva Bosques, the director of communications for the City of Fremont, said the city does not have enough shelters to house all of Fremont’s unhoused population and does not have any future plans to build another shelter in the city.
Bosques said the city has been struggling to collect more funding to expand its shelter programs for the past two years.
“We probably have one of the lowest number of shelter beds available,” Bosques said. “We did attempt to secure Homekey funding twice (but) we were not successful.”
Homekey is a statewide effort to expand housing options for unhoused community members or those who are at risk of becoming homeless throughout California, according to a web page from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
Fist said unhoused advocates will continue to distribute supplies to different unhoused communities in Fremont, but they will have to make small changes to adjust to the ordinance.
They also said they are concerned unhoused community members in Fremont may be influenced to move to neighboring cities and counties around Fremont.
Around 7.1% of unhoused individuals interviewed by Alameda County reported living in the county for one year or less, according to the same Point-In-Time report.
“I feel like it's an unavoidable thing that we're going to start seeing soon, if there's no place for people to go here and they're getting consistently hassled by the cops to move to a different place to sleep like that,” Fist said. “You can only push people so many times before they're in different places now.”
Bosques said the intent of the ordinance is to not to encourage people to leave.
She said most unhoused residents typically prefer to stay in their original communities because of familiarity.
More than three-quarters of those who self-reported that they were unhoused recorded that they lived in Alameda County for ten years or more, according to the same Point-In-Time Homelessness Report.
“The intent of the ordinance is not for us to enforce the ordinance and encourage people to leave,” she said. “Most unsheltered people tend to try to live in the communities that they grew up in or where they have family.”
The ordinance does not prohibit unhoused advocates or community members from providing aid and services to unhoused residents in Fremont, according to the same news release from the city.
Fist said the language is too vague in the ordinance and that it is very difficult to understand how
the City of Fremont will enforce the policy.
“The examples we've provided to the community and during the council meetings have been somebody helping to provide a structure enabling someone to camp, or helping them to camp because the ordinance’s prohibition is camping on public property,” Bosques said.
Providing food, clothing, water, blankets and tents would not be considered “aiding and abetting,” according to the same web page.
Cartwright said she doesn’t trust the City of Fremont to not fine or arrest unhoused advocates for helping unhoused residents.
“You can never, ever trust a city that is clearly trying to criminalize homelessness. You just can't,” Cartwright said.
