Editing Berkeley, California (section)

==== 1990s ====
In the 1990s, the City of Berkeley faced a substantial increase in the need for emergency housing shelters and saw a rise in the average amount of time individuals spent without stable housing.<ref name=":4" /> As housing became a more widespread problem, the general public, Berkeley City Council, and the University of California became increasingly anti-homeless in their opinions.<ref name=":4" /> In 1994, Berkeley City Council considered the implementation of a set of anti-homeless laws that the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' described as being "among the strictest in the country".<ref name=Mitchell1997/> These laws prohibited sitting, sleeping and begging in public spaces, and outlawed panhandling from people in a variety of contexts, such as sitting on public benches, buying a newspaper from a rack, or waiting in line for a movie.<ref name=Mitchell1997/> In February 1995, the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU) sued the city for infringing free speech rights through its proposed anti-panhandling law.<ref name=Mitchell1997/> The following month, the [[Street Spirit (newspaper)|Street Spirit]], a monthly newspaper written for and by people experiencing homelessness, published its first of hundreds of issues covering homelessness in the Bay Area and across the nation.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Bay Area’s Street Spirit Newspaper - FoundSF |url=https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Bay_Area%E2%80%99s_Street_Spirit_Newspaper |access-date=2025-04-10 |website=www.foundsf.org}}</ref> In May of that same year, a federal judge ruled that the anti-panhandling law did violate the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]], but left the anti-sitting and sleeping laws untouched.<ref name=Mitchell1997/>

Following the implementation of these anti-sitting and sleeping ordinances in 1998, Berkeley increased its policing of homeless adults and youth, particularly in the shopping district surrounding [[Telegraph Avenue]].<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Amster|first=Randall|date=2003|title=Patterns of Exclusion: Sanitizing Space, Criminalizing Homelessness|jstor=29768172|journal=Social Justice|volume=30|issue=1 (91)|pages=195–221}}</ref> The mayor at that time, [[Shirley Dean]], proposed a plan to increase both social support services for homeless youth and enforcement of anti-encampment laws.<ref name=":5" /> Unhoused youth countered this plan with a request for the establishment of the city's first youth shelter, more trash cans, and more frequent cleaning of public bathrooms.<ref name=":5" />