Does sleeping on the street make this disabled Marine Corps veteran a criminal?
This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.
Erin Spencer, a homeless Marine Corps veteran, says he has “lost count” of the number of times in the last 10 years that he has been arrested or forced to move from the streets where he sleeps in the San Francisco Bay Area.
And each time, he also lost something personal during the sweeps in one of America’s most progressive regions: the tools and materials he collected to make his artwork.
With Gov. Gavin Newsom calling for the removal of homeless encampments across the Golden State, Spencer and his belongings could soon be uprooted again.
Newsom’s July 25 executive order is the most extensive action in the country taken since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional for homeless people to be fined and arrested for sleeping in public places, even if there is nowhere else for them to go.
What happens next could be dire, advocates warn. Unsheltered veterans like Spencer are uniquely vulnerable to losing not only their possessions but also their benefits. And with the number of homeless veterans growing last year, the ruling and its ripple effects threaten a decade of gains in securing housing for men and women who served the country.
Spencer’s fate of being in the wrong place at the wrong time has become enshrined in the Supreme Court’s historic and controversial decision, an irony he attributes to for once being in the “right place, right time.”
In a scorching dissent that called criminalizing homelessness “unconscionable and unconstitutional,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor shared Spencer’s experience as one of the damaging outcomes of arresting people for being unsheltered.
After each time the disabled veteran was arrested, “his cart and belongings were gone once he returned to the sidewalk,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
The justice quoted Spencer’s words from a brief filed by the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and UCLA Veterans Legal Clinic: “[T]he massive number of times the City or State has taken all I possess leaves me in a vacuous déjà vu.”
What’s doubly unsettling for veterans like Spencer is losing the military discharge document known as “the DD-214” that proves their veteran status and connects them to critical services and benefits, from health care to homeless services to discounts.
For veterans, it’s losing a piece of their identity and history.
Spencer, who comes from a military family and enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1998, said he lost his DD-214 in a sweep and considers it futile to go through the hassle of applying for a new one.
“It’s a losing game at this point because they’re going to steal my paperwork again,” said Spencer, who is currently part of a lawsuit against the city of Berkeley for its eviction practices of encampments. “Whether it’s a sweep coming through and taking it, or somebody they hired to take it, or stupid dumb luck because I’m trying to move from place to place because they’re hassling me about where I am, it’s gonna get lost.”
Losing track of vets who need help is one of the troubling impacts of the Supreme Court ruling, homeless and veterans advocates say.
The decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson stems from a lawsuit challenging local ordinances in the southwestern Oregon city of Grants Pass that penalized people sleeping in public places.
It comes amid a spike in the number of unsheltered homeless veterans, which rose 14.3% last year to 15,507. That’s compared to a 9.7% increase in the overall national unsheltered homeless population, according to federal estimates. Homeless advocates insist the figures, which come from a one-night census, are a dramatic undercount.
In all, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated 35,574 veterans are considered homeless when combining those who live on the streets and those who are sheltered, a 7% increase over 2022. Experts point to rising rents, an affordable housing shortage, and the lifting of eviction freezes established during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the report noted the number of homeless veterans dropped 52% from 2009 to 2023, largely attributed to a federal investment in veterans’ housing.
Ed Johnson, litigation director for the Oregon Law Center who challenged the outdoor sleeping ban in Grants Pass and represented the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, called the ruling “potentially disastrous” for homeless veterans.
“What homeless veterans need is first, care from their community,” Johnson told The War Horse, stressing the need for housing and treatment programs for veterans struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues. An analysis by VA researchers of 31 studies of homeless veterans found that substance use disorders and mental illness were the biggest risk factors for veterans’ homelessness.
“We’re not going to be able to police our way out of this crisis,” Johnson said. “And if cities start ticketing and fining and arresting and jailing homeless people, including homeless veterans, it’s just gonna make it harder and harder for them to escape homelessness.”
Supporters of the ruling wanted the high court to ensure that government officials, not judges, have the ultimate authority to address homelessness in their communities. They say that courts have loosely interpreted the “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibition in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, preventing some states and communities from removing homeless encampments.
Facing a growing chorus of criticism from residents and business owners, California is among a number of states struggling to address the crisis and is reversing course after years of not prioritizing enforcement. Newsom wrote a brief “in support of neither party” in the Supreme Court case, stating that homeless encampments are unsafe for people living and working nearby.
“Businesses and residents near encampments are confronted by trash, used needles, and human waste, and increased instances of open drug use, property damage, theft and break-ins. They have seen their property values decline, their small businesses fail, and their public spaces become uninhabitable,” he wrote.
He has ordered the removal of encampments on state property and is asking local officials to follow suit. Since the Supreme Court decision, San Francisco, another Democratic stronghold at the center of the homelessness debate, has cracked down on encampments, as have communities from Arizona to Atlantic City.
In 2023, the major cities with the highest percentages of unsheltered veterans were all in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Fresno. In recent months, in a major initiative, California has started a program to require people struggling with mental illness to undergo treatment, and the state’s voters passed a ballot measure approving $6.4 billion in bonds to build more treatment beds and housing for the homeless.
While homeless advocates worry the new urgency to clear encampments could push veterans farther into the shadows, the top homelessness official in the U.S. Veterans Health Administration said caseworkers are trained and ready to find them.
“What I will say is our mission has not changed,” Monica Diaz, executive director of the VHA homeless programs office, told The War Horse. “We know how to do the job when it comes to housing veterans. We know how to do the job of how to reach the unsheltered veterans.”
She said her agency aims to house at least 41,000 homeless veterans this year, after housing 46,552 last year.
Diaz said a new program, piloted late last year, will select about a half dozen communities at a time with “an uptick” in homelessness. VA staff members will coordinate with other community providers, such as landlords, to create a rapid plan for veterans to get housing and services within days. She called it “a more aggressive and targeted approach to that unsheltered population.”
VA Secretary Denis McDonough announced in July $26.8 million in grants to 108 organizations to provide legal services to homeless veterans and those at risk of becoming homeless.
The Connecticut Veterans Legal Center is one of the recipients. Its phones have been “ringing off the hook” with calls from veterans seeking help, said Chelsea Donaldson, an attorney with the nonprofit.
“Quite a few of our clients are one emergency away from being homeless,” she said, adding that the center serves “a lot of housing-insecure, homeless, couch-surfing veterans.”
Donaldson said even veterans living in cars are losing their possessions. When their cars are repossessed, she said, “their stuff goes with it. Or, a car gets impounded, they can’t get their stuff.”
She said losing documents “absolutely puts a huge hindrance on getting benefits” and can add years to the application process.
In California, Newsom’s order calls for tagging and storing items retrieved from homeless camps for 60 days “that [are] not a health or safety hazard.” But William Knight, decriminalization director of the National Homelessness Law Center, said “municipalities rarely get property storage correct.”
Spencer’s sense of “vacuous déjà vu” isn’t by accident. He is bracing for more trouble in the streetside encampment in Berkeley that stretches for two blocks where he sleeps with his black dog, Bastet. His dwelling presses against a chain-link fence and relies on cardboard and a blue tarp for shelter. Cluttered with tools, scraps of food, and furniture found near dumpsters, his space is considered by authorities as a fire hazard.
A city of Berkeley representative, Peter Radu, told The War Horse the city’s approach to encampments is to lead with services and avoid enforcement as much as possible.
Spencer acknowledges he isn’t interested in transitional housing assistance—too many rules, a limit on dogs. “I like being outside,” he says—which makes VA’s mission all the more challenging.
Longtime homeless outreach workers say they sometimes encounter veterans like Spencer who are reluctant to go into housing. Dennis Johnson, an outreach worker with the Bay Area nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, says building trust with veterans over repeated visits can help change their minds. Johnson said sweeping camps will impact his job if it’s done without any coordination with supportive services. But if he or other outreach workers are notified in advance, it can help get veterans out of the targeted area and into temporary housing.
For more than a decade, Spencer hopped around the country, visiting friends, dabbling in college, before ultimately landing in Berkeley around 10 years ago.
“We have a right to exist in public space in the land of our birth,” said Spencer, whose nonprofit lawyer told him that Justice Sotomayor cited him in her dissent.
He continues to wrestle with how to react because the notoriety hasn’t directly impacted his life. He still lives on a sidewalk and vigilantly watches for thieves who eye his tools.
A Supreme Court justice says it’s unjust to criminalize where he chooses to sleep, but the liberal Democrat governor says it’s time for encampments like his to go.
Spencer wonders if being recognized for his plight in a landmark Supreme Court ruling will make him the target of “haters.”
“Because,” he said, “that’s always gonna be a thing.”
War Horse reporter Anne Marshall-Chalmers contributed to this report.
To Get Help: The VA has a 24-hour call line for veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and people who know of veterans in those situations and need help. The National Call Center for Homeless Veterans number is 877-424-3838.