Newsom was in favor of the SC ruling because CA has a lot of unused bed capacity. Many cities and counties have more unhoused people than beds, but many of the beds are unfilled.
Newsom wants to clear encampments if shelter space is available, not if shelters are full. That was impossible to do before the SC ruling. If you had 10,000 unhoused people and 2000 total beds, and only 1000 of the beds were filled, you would needed 10,000 beds before you could clear encampments. Newsom wanted to be able to say “I have 1000 more beds, so I want to get 1000 more people off the street.”
Last I checked a few months ago, San Francisco had about 10% of its beds open, and cities like Oakland have something like 30% of its beds open. I was looking for LA’s stats, but I have not been successful.
This all sounds great in theory, but a lot of people avoid shelters because they’re not safe, don’t allow you to have belongings, etc. That’s the first problem we need to solve. Adding more beds isn’t going to help if reasonable people don’t want to take them.