Berkeley has become one of just three California cities with explicit legal authority to run multidisciplinary homeless outreach teams, after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill allowing cities designated as their own local health jurisdictions to coordinate outreach across agencies and share confidential information to help people get off the street. The signing puts Berkeley alongside Pasadena and Long Beach as the only cities in the state with this specific authority.
The law, Senate Bill 479, was signed September 30 alongside a companion measure, Senate Bill 692, according to The Daily Californian. Both bills passed the California Senate and Assembly without a dissenting vote. SB 479 was authored by state Senator Jesse Arreguín, a Berkeley Democrat, whose office describes the measure as covering homeless adult and family multidisciplinary personnel teams, according to a legislative update from the Governor of California.
Why Three Cities Needed a Legal Fix
Long Beach, Pasadena and Berkeley operate their own local health jurisdictions, separate from the counties that surround them, and that status had created a gap in state law. A letter of support from the City of Long Beach states that SB 479 would clarify the ability of those three cities specifically to create their own multidisciplinary teams. Per the bill text itself, a person designated as a team member may receive and disclose relevant information and records, subject to confidentiality provisions, per California Legislative Information.
That information-sharing piece addresses a real obstacle: existing legislation had limited local health jurisdictions' outreach teams in their ability to share information across disciplines, according to the seed reporting. Multidisciplinary teams are meant to identify and assess homeless individuals, then link them to housing and supportive services including mental health care and substance use treatment, with the goal of ensuring continuity of care as people move between providers.
What Outreach Already Looks Like on the Ground
Pasadena offers a glimpse of what this kind of team can look like in practice. Its Outreach Response Team is a collaboration between the city's Public Health and Fire Departments and Union Station Homeless Services, according to the City of Pasadena Public Health Department. The team provides field-based outreach and connects people experiencing homelessness with housing, medical care, mental health and substance abuse services, and the health department separately engages with unhoused residents to share information about available services and make quick referrals.
Berkeley already runs its own outreach infrastructure that could expand under the new authority. The city's Homeless Response Team fields encampment concerns from residents, councilmembers, merchants and city staff before assessing a site's impacts, with imminent dangers or accumulating problems able to accelerate the response, according to a city report. A separate evaluation of Berkeley's Homeless Outreach and Treatment Team found it conducted 1,506 outreach and engagement contacts involving 319 unique people, covering locations from the Dorothy Day Breakfast and People's Park to local shelters, the Women's Drop-In Clinic, Civic Center Park, encampments and the Berkeley Public Library.
Los Angeles County has described a similar model elsewhere in the region, noting that specialized outreach teams there include a health specialist, mental health specialist, substance use specialist, a peer with lived experience, and a generalist, with the goal of building trusting relationships with unhoused residents, per the Los Angeles County Homeless Services & Housing department.
What Supporters Are Saying
Arreguín said SB 479 and its companion bill empower cities with tools for better coordination and expedited response, according to the seed reporting, and separately said local governments need the tools to coordinate services and get people off the street. Berkeley Mayor Adena Ishii said helping someone move off the street takes consistent outreach, mental health care, coordinated services and a path to long-term, stable housing, per the same account.
The Companion Bill on Abandoned Vehicles
SB 692, signed the same day, takes aim at a related problem: abandoned and inoperable vehicles, including ones previously used for habitation, that can contain hazardous materials, human waste and drug paraphernalia. According to the seed reporting, missing parts often make these vehicles unsafe to tow, and previous law required local governments to either secure property-owner authorization or complete lengthy nuisance abatement procedures before acting.
The new law allows cities and counties to dismantle abandoned vehicles that cannot be towed because of their condition, while still requiring advance notice to vehicle owners and an opportunity for a hearing before dismantlement, preserving due process protections, per the seed account. Bill text reviewed through California Legislative Information states that when a lienholder stores such a vehicle, disposal may go only to a licensed dismantler or scrap-iron processor, and a separate excerpt of the California Vehicle Code notes that standard code sections on vehicle release do not apply once a vehicle is reported for dismantling, at which point the person seeking to dismantle it must surrender specified ownership and registration documents to the state.
Both SB 479 and SB 692 take effect January 1, 2027.
