Many businesses Berkeley, CaliforniaSeveral companies, including a winery and a brewery, are suing the city of Berkeley because the city has failed to remove homeless camps near them, hurting their profits.
The lawsuit was filed this week in Alameda County by eight businesses, including Covenant Winery, Emily Winston of Boichik Bagels, and Fieldwork Brewing, and against the city of Berkeley.
The plaintiffs allege that the case involves the City of Berkeley, which is required to follow the same nuisance laws that private landowners must follow, and also has an obligation to its citizens to keep its streets and other public ways free of obstructions.
The businesses claim that over the years, the city has allowed homeless camps to persist on Harrison Street between Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth streets; along Codornices Creek; and in the Lower Dwight neighborhood.
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The city of Berkeley, California, is being sued by several businesses for failing to remove homeless encampments. (Superior Court of the State of California, Alameda County)
The plaintiffs say in the lawsuit that they believed the city allowed the camping after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit “erroneously” decided two cases, saying the city cannot treat public camping as a crime if there is no alternative location available for campers to move to.
Although the ruling did not allow or require the city to allow camping in a manner that would create a public nuisance, the city permitted and invited camping at Harrison and Lower Dwight, knowing it would create a public nuisance, the plaintiffs allege.
The city allowed the encampments to remain even though shelter space was available.
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But in 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and say municipalities are allowed to remove public campsites regardless of whether adequate alternative space is available.
The businesses said in the lawsuit that they believe the city is refusing to take action because it fears being sued by attorneys for people living in RVs and the homeless.
By filing the suit, the businesses are asking the court to intervene and require the city to follow the law and remove the encroachment so the neighborhood can be free of the public and private nuisance conditions.
The city of Berkeley, California, is being sued by several businesses for failing to remove homeless encampments. (Superior Court of the State of California, Alameda County)
Fox News Digital has reached out to the city manager and some of the businesses that filed the suit for comment.
These businesses are represented by Sacramento’s Gavrilov & Brooks and Arizona-based Tully Bailey LLP. The latter won a case requiring the city of Phoenix to clear a homeless camp within city limits in 2023.
Ilan Wurman, an attorney with Tully Bailey LLP involved in the Berkeley case, told Fox News Digital that the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year, which said cities have the right to remove homeless encampments, doesn’t force them to do so.
“It has become clear that Berkeley, even though it has something to offer shelters, and its offers are routinely rejected, is not planning to do anything about the camps,” Wurman said. “Only a public nuisance lawsuit can force the city to do the right thing and clean up the city. This legal principle was successfully applied in Phoenix, and we hope it will work in Berkeley as well.”
FOX 2 in San Francisco spoke with Winston, who said she has been trying to work with the city for years to control the camp near her business.
“It’s tough. It’s dirty. There’s trash everywhere. It’s scary for customers to drive down the street. It’s not safe for our customers or our employees,” Winston said.
She also told the station that she wants homeless residents to receive shelter and treatment, but she also criticized the city for not improving conditions, which forced her to take legal action.
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Governor Gavin Newsom with a Caltrans cleanup crew at a camp site near Paxton Street and Remick Avenue in Los Angeles while the state’s Clean California initiative continues in Los Angeles on August 8, 2024. (Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“I wasn’t looking forward to doing that. It was definitely not my idea of a good time. I wished the city would have cleaned it up anyway,” she said.
Camps for the homeless This is a growing problem in California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom took to California’s streets in August to call for cleaning up trash left by homeless camps, threatening municipalities with a state funding cut next year if they did not clean up the camps.
“I want to see the results,” Newsom said at the time. “I don’t want to read about them. I don’t want to see the data. I want to see it.”
The number of homeless people in the Golden State has grown greatly under Newsom’s leadership. According to the 2024 point-in-time count, which provides a snapshot of the number of homeless people on a particular night, the number of homeless individuals in California has grown to nearly 172,000. This represents an increase from the estimated 131,000 homeless individuals counted in 2018, the year Newsom took office.
The city of Berkeley, California, is being sued by several businesses for failing to remove homeless encampments. (Superior Court of the State of California, Alameda County)
earlier this yearNewsom’s administration blamed counties and cities after a state audit report found his own homelessness task force failed to track how billions of dollars meant to combat the crisis were spent over the past five years.
At the time, a senior spokesperson for the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (CICH), which coordinates homelessness programs across the state, told Fox News Digital that the audit’s findings “highlight the significant progress made in recent years to address homelessness at the state level, including the completion of a statewide evaluation of programs for the homeless.”
The audit concluded that over the past five years CICH had not consistently monitored whether the funds had actually improved conditions.
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the spokesperson said Local Governments “Primarily responsible for implementing these programs and collecting data on outcomes, which the state can use to evaluate program effectiveness.”
Since 2016, California has spent more than $25 billion on homelessness. This includes state, local and federal funds, allocated through a variety of programs to promote the state’s “housing first” ideology, which prioritizes getting people into housing before addressing mental illness or substance abuse problems.
Fox News’ Jamie Joseph contributed to this report.
