Homeless win up to $10K from city over seized possessions

Last spring, Andrew Howard endured three sweeps in four weeks — the worst stretch he’s ever experienced in his three years of being homeless. Not only did the city workers throw his possessions into a garbage truck, during the sweep they disposed of the cremated remains of his loved ones. “That’s when I came unglued,” he said. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”

His experience came to the attention of local lawyers, who suggested the idea of a lawsuit against the city. It worked. By the fall, Howard had won the suit, and the $3,740 he received helped him get off the street. He moved into a hotel, and later became a volunteer who helped more homeless residents who had experienced similar treatment.

Others followed in a slew of cases as the Coalition on Homelessness has, for the first time, organized a successful effort to file property claims against the city. To date, 20 cases have been filed in small claims court, eight of which have been heard, with judges awarding compensation between $3,740 and $10,000.

Tori Larson, a staff attorney with the Homeless Advocacy Clinic at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, first suggested the idea to the Coalition on Homelessness. She saw it as a way to use an organized approach to a widespread legal problem of goods being confiscated. 

“Unfortunately, there hasn’t really been a centralized process or a centralized organization doing the work for decades” anywhere in the country, said Larson. Now there is.

As intuitive as these lawsuits might seem, for years no one had attempted them on a large scale, because legal services for the homeless were underfunded, or the small claims court cases were too petty to be taken seriously, Larson said. She and others saw something else: A legal standard clearly met. 

“The city is behaving unlawfully when they take people’s property in the manner that they do,” said Larson. “People have the right to their property.”

In theory, San Francisco has a bag-and-tag policy for storing homeless people’s belongings safely, labeling them, and providing receipts so the affected person to reclaim them. But, according to Larson, the government does not always follow them meticulously. This is where an organized legal action can make a difference. 

“It’s really, really hard for unhoused people to navigate the legal system,” said Ian James, an organizing director at the Coalition. He runs a clinical program with volunteers like Howard to help homeless people claim reparations from the city. James said that since last, over 200 people have begun preparations for an initial administrative claim. So far, eight have gone to court. 

One of the biggest obstacles, James said, is that the homeless resident can lose contact with James and his team during the filing process.

“You’re homeless already, you’re not feeling too good about yourself. You’re really living against the odds. You’re out there, and it’s not a safe environment,” said Howard. “Everything you have is gone and just crushed into a garbage truck, whether you’re there or not.”

In a recently filed case, a homeless resident wrote, “I came back to everything I owned gone. I was totally distraught and confused. This sweep left me totally devastated … Where can I go from here? They even took our clothes. I didn’t know where to go or who to call. It’s not like when you’re towed, there’s not even a number to call. I come home and there’s absolutely nothing.”

A partial injunction granted last December by U.S. District Court Judge Donna Ryu limits the sweeping of homeless encampments off the streets of San Francisco. After that ruling, James noted that the city offered to settle for the full amount in most of the next several cases before the hearing even started. The plaintiffs received $10,000, the maximum amount offered by the small claims court for such cases.

Homeless advocates, however, say that the conditions at the street level have not improved. “They actually increased the sweeps, and they went out and got a bucket loader. So now they’re just scooping the tents up and dumping them in the trash,” said Howard.

Larson, whose law practice is based in Sacramento, echoed part of this complaint. “The city did not stop doing the sweeps after the injunction was granted against them. It’s a callous disregard for the law,” she said.

Currently, documentation needed to file a lawsuit against the city includes a list of items taken and the prices to repurchase, preferably with photos or other proof. Pictures taken during the sweep will strengthen the claim if lack of advance notice or a failure of workers to properly wrap and tag items can be proved.

“Then there’s the other side of it, the mental side of it,” said Howard. “Because the mental anguish and the mental stress that you go through every time that you’re uprooted and your stuff is thrown away is really crazy. You just can’t really put a value on that, because it’s devastating to people.”

In theory, unhoused persons who have experienced many rounds of sweeps can file multiple claims, as long as the sweeps occurred within a certain time frame, Larson said. 

Larson is not worried about homeless residents taking advantage of the system. “There’s no more risk to somebody filing a false claim through this process than there would be to somebody filing a frivolous lawsuit in any other area.”

James believes the program is now in an initial phase and the filings are only limited by their legal capacity. “We have at least dozens more coming up.”

For James, this is the first stage of something larger: “It’s like enabling people to get justice through the legal system who otherwise wouldn’t have that. I think it’s really, really empowering.”