Geospatial evaluation of San Francisco, California's homeless encampment sweeps injunction.

INTRODUCTION: Homelessness remains a pervasive issue in many communities within the United States (US). "Sit-lie" policies restrict where individuals can sit or lie down in public places and are frequently passed and cited to forcibly re-locate individuals experiencing homelessness. In December 2022, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction of San Francisco, California's sit-lie policy, due to a pending lawsuit arguing that the enforcement of such policies when shelter cannot be offered is a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.

METHODS: To examine the effects of this preliminary injunction, we spatially examined data from San Francisco's 311 reporting system to identify encampment report hot spots.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Overall, we found spatial shifting of encampment reporting, but fewer reports overall during the preliminary injunction period, relative to 1 year prior. Future work should examine the effect of the reversal of the injunction following a recent Supreme Court decision and subsequent ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.