Over at National Review, Matthew Wilson clucks over Taraji P. Henson's claim that the Supreme Court has criminalized homelessness:
In fact, the Supreme Court did not make it a “crime to be homeless.” In Johnson, the Court held that it is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment for local governments to simply enforce laws against sleeping or camping in public places. Justice Neil Gorsuch correctly noted in the majority opinion that neither the Court’s ruling nor the law it was reviewing criminalize the “mere status” of being homeless.
It's true that Gorsuch said this. Many times! But saying it doesn't make it so. The Court ruled that even if no shelter beds were available, cities could still make it illegal to sleep in public places.
Not merely illegal to pitch a tent. Not merely illegal to haul out a sleeping bag. Illegal to sleep with so much as a blanket covering you. You can repeat all day long that this only criminalizes conduct, not the mere fact of being homeless, but saying the sky is green doesn't make it green. The plain fact is that if you have nowhere to go, then criminalizing sleep is effectively a prohibition against being homeless.
It's possible that this case was correctly decided on pragmatic terms. Maybe even on technical Eighth Amendment grounds, though that's iffy. Wilson is correct that plenty of progressive West Coast politicians welcomed the ruling because they believe that tackling homelessness is made more difficult by micromanagement from the courts. I sympathize with that.
Nonetheless, it's clear from the evidence that the city of Grants Pass had the goal of forcing homeless people out of town. The Court ruled this was OK as long as it somehow maintained the thin veneer of criminalizing conduct. But a thin veneer is all it is. The Supreme Court has given cities the power to make homelessness illegal in pretty much any way they choose.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
-- Anatole France
Indeed, this sums it up in a nutshell.
Arguably the most famous quote ever about the law. I guess National Review is not too familiar with other writers.
I'm looking forward to the police arresting anyone caught sleeping on a park bench. Since the homeless are there already they should start calling the police every time they spot some senior citizen taking a nap. In our town they passed an anti-loitering law designed to prevent groups of teens from hanging out together downtown, so the teens started calling the police every time they spotted groups of other people breaking the exact wording of the law by hanging out together. It was mostly old folks chatting who got the police called on them, and pretty soon the law was dropped.
That's what started the case, they were doing that. I've been rousted from a park when all I was doing was napping from a bicycle ride or sitting on a curb waiting for my spouse in the toilet.
You're lucky that sanity prevailed in your locality.
It also means there's no recourse for when cities apply it to some people and not others.
I have stayed and drive through Grants Pass multiple times a year - I will not stop in a sundown town again.
It's clear because Grants Pass has also sued churches for feeding the homeless, opening shelters and parking lots, etc.
Such laws used to be very common. Vagrancy laws, for example, were used to purge and punish undesirables from cities and counties. Especially insidious were laws punishing you merely for being unemployed, classifying that as a kind of crime where you'd go to jail for thirty days. This was used to control free black labor in the south; you couldn't leave your job because your employer would tell the Sheriff you were now a vagrant.
My friends in the South used to have rules about having a certain amount of money on them at all times to prove they weren't vagrant.
And some old guy who just nods off on a park bench, or sunbathers napping on the beach?
No one is worried about them. They won’t be prosecuted.
I am not sure that it's reasonable to force people into shelters either.
Well, the prior rules required them to either have a place they could camp, park, or take shelter with their pets and secure for their belongings.
The Supreme Court threw all that out.
Making it illegal doesn't do any good, really. I'm thinking the maggots will set up concentration camps... assuming they can find people to be prison guards.
Every state has a parks department that builds and operates campgrounds with bathrooms and showers in state parks for the recreational benefit of residents. Middle class residents who can afford to travel and recreate. Most of these parks departments also invest millions of dollars to improve campgrounds to accommodate the electrical needs of wealthier RV owners. Few, if any, states build and operate campgrounds with bathrooms and showers in urban centers for the homeless and transient.
Shelters should be in every neighborhood ready with extra space for people suffering from natural or domestic disaster.
These exist but are kept closed unless there is a need , i.e. natural disaster, for middle class people to access them.
Kurt Vonnegut often quoted an Indiana humorist named Kin Hubbard: "It's not a crime to be poor, but it might as well be."
This is probably going to make the homeless population larger in the bigger cities, since it's mostly suburbs and small towns that simply treat them as pests to be driven off to be Somebody Else's Problem.
Well, that's because it doesn't work for bigger cities; they have nowhere else to go.
It will certainly be done in any large city run by the maggots. We're going to solve the homeless problem the way they did in the 19th century, kill them all.
People with money are tired of people without money camped out in their shared infrastructure. Running them out of town will keep pushing the problem beyond city borders. Eventually there will be no where else for them to go, what then?
This will only get worse as more people fall out of the edges of the economy because they lack the skills and abilities to participate. This is not unique to the US, you see it in the UK and France as well. People with money have had it with the poor, immigrants, and anyone else who is not keeping up. This only gets worse, it does not get better.
When the next Trump administration cuts off benefits to all the Trumpers at the bottom of the food chain and starts cutting into social security, the howls of betrayal will be guilty schadenfreude for a lot of folks.
It is getting harder and harder to avoid being forced to participate in this capitalist society.
"Twenty acres and a mule" is a distant memory.
I've been explaining to my husband's adult kids that short of joining a commune, everything in their lives depends on how well they fit themselves in as a cog in the machine. Their paychecks reflect their value in keeping an employer/shareholders profitable.
The only other way is entrepreneurship and finding a lucrative niche that can't be copied by someone in a low-wage country, or at least flying enough under the radar that they don't realize the financial potential.
Those are your options, totally drop out, become a cog, go direct by starting a successful business.
The Grants Pass case was not about the biological necessity of sleep. Nor was it primarily about housing the homeless;
This case, rather, was about WHO should address these and similar issues: local governments or federal judges.
And, sorry not sorry, the Conservatives got it right and the Liberal justices got it wrong. I more or less completely agree with Gorsuch's conclusion here:
"Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it. The question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses ... The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy. "
The 9th circuit decision that has now been overruled was in fact an absolutely egregious abuse of judicial power.
Nevertheless, I believe Kevin's statement is also more or less true (even if he deliberately takes one of the most negative possible perspectives on the potential outcomes at hand):
"The Supreme Court has given cities the power to make homelessness illegal in pretty much any way they choose."
Will some municipalities now enact harsher punishments against the homeless? Quite possibly. And is that unfortunate? Yes.
But not all municipalities will behave egregiously. Some will act in a more compassionate manner than others. But the important thing is that they will now actually be able to act. Cities and towns will now be able to respond effectively to the problems they face regarding homelessness. Their hands will no longer be tied by distant federal judges attempting to use the 8th amendment to enforce preferred forms of behavior.
And as Kevin briefly mentions, I am not the only Democrat who feels this way. Here is the very liberal Governor Newsom of CA:
"Today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court provides state and local officials the definitive authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets. This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities."
And here is the very liberal Mayor Breed of San Francisco, praising the Supreme Court's decision:
"This decision by the Supreme Court will help cities like San Francisco manage our public spaces more effectively and efficiently."
If you feel compassion for the homeless, good for you. Vote for mayors and governors who will treat them with compassion. Fortunately, those mayors and governors are now free to respond accordingly.
Do not feed the troll.
How's that shit taste that you're eating, Leo?
This is from the guy who supported a motorist's right to plan to kill a pedestrian, then drive into an occupied crosswalk, and shoot and kill the pedestrian who complained.
In no way were the federal judges 'addressing' homelessness - nor were the localities which made basic biological functions illegal and unsupplied.
The homeless problem starts to take care of itself in LA.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/01/2100-deaths-in-10-years-how-fentanyl-is-devastating-los-angeles-unhoused-community
Last year, the LA county medical examiner for the first time logged more than 1,000 drug-related deaths of unhoused people, including a record-high of 728 overdoses linked to fentanyl.
...and the other guy who advocated for the murderer who planned, and then shot and killed, a pedestrian who complained of being threatened by a car in a crosswalk.
Most places in the country, fentanyl deaths have fallen for 2 successive years.
Here in Tampa it’s been illegal to sleep in public for several years now. Also to panhandle except on Sundays. It’s been great. A new state law makes it illegal state wide. Municipalities must provide encampments for homeless with toilettes, security, janitorial services, and some other provisions. But the encampments can’t be anywhere near neighborhoods or businesses. The state provides a lot of the funding for the encampments. There’s obviously a lot more details but that’s it in a nutshell. The state law doesn’t go into effect for another week or two but it’s hugely popular.
Of course, you think it's great that people without a place to sleep are penalized for sleeping.
You also advocate for higher maternal mortality, too.
Gruesome.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. The homeless are not penalized. They are asked to move to the camp. (Under the new law.). Municipalities can be sued if they do not provide the camps and continue allowing people to sleep in the streets.
If we could snap our fingers and solve homelessness that would be fantastic. Obviously that’s not going to happen. In the mean time, while we work on solutions, there’s no point in destroying the quality of life for everyone else. Maybe some lefties enjoy having homeless all over their streets and sidewalks. The vast majority of people do not. That’s why this law in FL is popular.
And no idea what you’re talking about with maternal mortality. Did you get confused and mean to post to a different thread?
"But the encampments can’t be anywhere near neighborhoods or businesses." There is no such place as not near neighborhoods and businesses in most places in the world
I’ll walk over to the park a half block away that we now avoid and ask what they think of this. Anyone need some meth or fent while I’m out? How about someone to shit behind your garage? (They put a portable toilet down there but it got tipped over the first night.)
"The Supreme Court has given cities the power to make homelessness illegal in pretty much any way they choose." No! No! No!. The supreme court has given cities the power to make homelessness criminal. (Unless you believe that the homeless have the superpower to forego sleep.)