San Francisco will begin clearing homeless encampments — a major change that Mayor London Breed announced Monday, calling it “a path forward” for how the city tackles its twin homelessness and drug crises.

The change follows clarification from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over the definition of “involuntarily homeless.” Since December 2022, the City by the Bay has been hamstrung by a district court ruling prohibiting San Francisco from clearing encampments of “involuntarily homeless” individuals as long as the number of homeless persons in the city exceeds the number of available shelter beds.

There are roughly 8,000 homeless persons in the city and fewer than half that many available shelter beds. In August, San Francisco’s city attorney asked the Ninth Circuit for clarification on the definition of “involuntarily homeless,” so the city could begin clearing tents of those who decline offers of shelter. On Monday, the city got its wish.

“After months of confusion, the Court has acknowledged that individuals are not involuntarily homeless if they have declined a specific offer of available shelter or otherwise have access to such shelter,” Ms. Breed wrote on X. “This clarity from the Ninth Circuit is a step in the right direction.”

Homeless encampments have become a huge issue in West Coast cities in the last few years, with San Francisco being hit particularly hard. Tents line the sidewalks in the hardest hit neighborhoods of the Tenderloin and SoMa. Open drug use, discarded needles and foil, and human feces are common complaints. More than two persons die a day in the city from overdoses. The city’s downtown has struggled to recover from Covid, and retail theft, open drug use, and encampments are exacerbating the problem.

The district court injunction against clearing tents is still in place, but San Francisco now has a limited path forward to clear its sidewalks so long as “genuine” offers of shelter are made. Ms. Breed wrote in a post to Medium Monday that city workers will be trained on how to ensure they are complying with the new rules.

Ms. Breed also warned that “the plaintiffs in this case will still be out interfering with their work.” The plaintiffs she is referring to are members of the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness, whose suit against the city led to the 2022 district court block on clearing tents, and the ACLU, which is representing them.

“They will film our city workers. They will try to tell our workers what they can and cannot do,” Ms. Breed wrote. “These activists are the same people who hand out tents to keep people in the street instead of working to bring them indoors, as we are trying to do. And they are the same people instructing and encouraging people to refuse shelter.”

“Their agenda is clear,” Ms. Breed wrote.

Despite not having enough shelter beds, the city is gambling that most homeless individuals will decline offers of shelter. The city’s Healthy Streets Operation Center approached 2,344 homeless persons on the streets in 2023, according to TV station Kron4, but only 1,065 — 54 percent — accepted the offer of shelter.

“Most will deny shelter,” a formerly homeless San Francisco drug addict and founder of Recovery Education Coalition, Tom Wolf, tells the Sun. “They don’t like the fact that there are some rules. They don’t like the fact that there’s no drug use allowed inside those shelters. They don’t like the fact that you’re infringing on their freedom being out there.”

The executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, Jennifer Friedenbach, disagrees, telling the Sun by email that, “there has been lots of misunderstanding the case in the reporting on this issue.”

“The idea that unhoused people are refusing shelter in large numbers is completely unfounded and contradicts the evidence submitted to the court that underpins the injunction,” an attorney for Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Zal Schroff, who is representing the Coalition on Homelessness in its suit against the city, said.

“The public should understand that monitoring the City is a critical First Amendment right to ensure the city keeps its word, given its proven history of not abiding to the law and its own policies,” a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, John Do, said.

Ms. Breed says the city has made “substantial investments” in shelter and supportive services but that the injunction has done more harm than good. She writes that it has “created the opportunity for those who want to use tents and encampments not primarily for housing but to conduct illegal behavior like drug dealing, human trafficking, and theft.”

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is also pushing for more authority for cities to clear homeless encampments. On Friday, Mr. Newsom submitted an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court asking it to review the Ninth Circuit’s 2022 ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which further limited cities’ ability to clear encampments beyond the 2018 Martin v. The City of Boise decision. These decisions have prohibited West Coast cities from clearing homeless encampments.

The brief says that Mr. Newsom does not take issue with “the narrow rule” of Martin v. The City of Boise — “that people experiencing homelessness should not be criminally prohibited by a municipality from sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go” — but that the Grants Pass decision is a gross “distortion” that has “paralyzed communities and blunted the force of even the most common-sense and good-faith laws to limit the impacts of encampments.”

“It’s unacceptable what’s happening on the streets and sidewalks. Compassion’s not stepping over people on the streets. Compassion’s not just waiting for someone to die,” Mr. Newsom said earlier this month in an interview. “I’ve had it. We’re going to intervene, and I hope it goes to the Supreme Court. And that’s a hell of a statement for a progressive Democrat out of California to say.”