news US Supreme Court to rule on criminalizing homelessness

[DAP]

NHLC statement:

 

Quote

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that they would hear the case of Johnson v. Grants Pass. This sets the stage for the most significant Supreme Court case about the rights of homeless people in decades. At its core, this case will decide whether cities are allowed to punish people for things like sleeping outside with a pillow or blanket, even when there are no safe shelter options.  

 

The National Homelessness Law Center fully expects the Supreme Court to protect the rights of people who are forced to live outside and to follow the consistent precedents set by lower federal courts. The Constitution’s protection from Cruel and Unusual punishment applies to all people, not just those fortunate enough to have their own home. In deciding this case, SCOTUS will determine if people who are forced to sleep outside are allowed to do so without the threat of arrest or fines.  

 

Contrary to the statements of those who believe cities can arrest and ticket their way out of homelessness, this case does not limit communities’ response to addressing homelessness. Cities remain free to use any of the many evidence-based approaches that end homelessness, like housing.  All this case says is that, unless everybody has access to shelter that meets their needs, they cannot be arrested, ticketed, or otherwise punished for sleeping outside. If politicians were truly focused on ending homelessness, they would focus on proven solutions like housing and services. Sadly, too many policymakers seem eager to focus on costly, harmful solutions – like jails and fines – that make homelessness worse. Cities that have failed to provide for the basic needs of their residents, like housing and shelter, should not be allowed to punish people when they have no safe place to go.  

 

Homelessness is growing not because cities lack ways to punish people for being poor, but because a growing number of hard-working Americans are struggling to pay rent and make ends meet. Grants Pass, Oregon, like many cities in America, is thousands of housing units short of what is needed. The lack of housing and resulting homelessness will not be solved by putting more people in jail or issuing more fines. The solution to homelessness is safe, decent, and affordable housing for everybody.   

 

Still, not criminalizing homelessness is the bare minimum. The rent is too high for most Americans, and many hard-working families are just one missed paycheck or accident away from losing their housing. The Court’s ruling will have a tremendous impact on the 250,000 people who sleep outside on a given night. We are confident that the court will affirm what we have said for years: the solution to homelessness is housing, not jail cells or courtrooms.   

 

Edited January 14 by DAP

[Aston Martin]

Well this country already criminalizes poverty in a myriad of different ways, so I can't say I'm surprised that they're going to do it again. It's disgraceful though. 

[X~MoviePoP]

How can you be a criminal if your homless...if you want homelessness to go away.. 1. Tackle mental health and school systems regarding young people/troubled homes and 2. Make things more livable cost wise for people...bleach shouldnt cost 6$ and a pineapple shouldnt cost 4$

Edited January 14 by X~MoviePoP

[Ghiles]

Next they will make The Purge a real thing

[Gorjesspazze9]

Not suprising and not a coincidence that rent is ridiculous, and getting worse by the months

[Happylittlepunk]

4 minutes ago, X~MoviePoP said:

How can you be a criminal if your homless...if you want homelessness to go away.. 1. Tackle mental health and school systems regarding young people/troubled homes and 2. Make things more livable cost wise for people...bleach shouldnt cost 6$ and a pineapple shouldnt cost 4$

Throwing money to develop housing is useless. Unless they tackle the biggest issue for many homeless people which is drug addiction and alcohol. 60% of homeless people have issues with addiction that purely a choice. You can’t help what doesn’t want help. And you can’t force them to go too rehab. Education imo is the key.  I grew up in the Bay Area and San Francisco and building more affordable housing and rent control has done nothing too the homeless issue. 

[Peroxide]

11 minutes ago, Happylittlepunk said:

Throwing money to develop housing is useless. Unless they tackle the biggest issue for many homeless people which is drug addiction and alcohol. 60% of homeless people have issues with addiction that purely a choice. You can’t help what doesn’t want help. And you can’t force them to go to rehab. Education imo is the key.  I grew up in the Bay Area and San Francisco and building more affordable housing and rent control has done nothing to the homeless issue. 

There are some really great evidence based results which promote a “housing first” philosophy. Denmark and Finland have similar policies and those countries have a much smaller homelessness problem relative to their populations.

 

If you want to fix homelessness - give these people housing.

 

And addiction isn’t a choice - it’s a disease.

Edited January 14 by Peroxide

[Communion]

15 minutes ago, Happylittlepunk said:

Unless they tackle the biggest issue for many homeless people which is drug addiction and alcohol

This is a myth. You're more likely to develop a drug addiction or begin struggling with alcoholism as a product of being homeless than these being *why* people become homeless.

Edited January 14 by Communion

[X~MoviePoP]

26 minutes ago, Happylittlepunk said:

Throwing money to develop housing is useless. Unless they tackle the biggest issue for many homeless people which is drug addiction and alcohol. 60% of homeless people have issues with addiction that purely a choice. You can’t help what doesn’t want help. And you can’t force them to go too rehab. Education imo is the key.  I grew up in the Bay Area and San Francisco and building more affordable housing and rent control has done nothing too the homeless issue. 

U think people use drugs and alcohol because they just want to? Its much deeper than that. Its because of untreated trauma and homelife/influence that causes substance use.

[Cherish]

20 minutes ago, Peroxide said:

There are some really great evidence based results which promote a “housing first” philosophy. Denmark and Finland have similar policies and those countries have a much smaller homelessness problem relative to their populations.

 

If you want to fix homelessness - give these people housing.

 

And addiction isn’t a choice - it’s a disease.

Yes, but you also can’t help people who don’t want help, literally. If they won’t go to rehab or can’t afford it, they won’t and can’t go. 

[Domination]

We as a society need to accept homelessness as a deeply complex issue for which there is no singular, effective solution (believe it or not, forced shelter is not exactly ethical!) and neither throwing money at the problem or criminalizing homeless people will solve it. We should start by criminalizing the officials in red cities that bus their homeless people to blue cities so it can appear they’ve found an effective means to eliminate the problem.

Edited January 14 by Domination

[Happylittlepunk]

41 minutes ago, Peroxide said:

There are some really great evidence based results which promote a “housing first” philosophy. Denmark and Finland have similar policies and those countries have a much smaller homelessness problem relative to their populations.

 

If you want to fix homelessness - give these people housing.

 

And addiction isn’t a choice - it’s a disease.

Drug addiction is a choice there are plenty of people who are homeless who are not addicted to drugs. How can you say it isn’t a choice. Homeless people are not forced to consume drugs and alcohol. Drug addiction isn’t a disease it’s not something you just develop like bacteria or a virus and it’s something that is just naturally just born in the world. 

[Happylittlepunk]

43 minutes ago, Peroxide said:

There are some really great evidence based results which promote a “housing first” philosophy. Denmark and Finland have similar policies and those countries have a much smaller homelessness problem relative to their populations.

 

If you want to fix homelessness - give these people housing.

 

And addiction isn’t a choice - it’s a disease.

San Francisco has literally spent hundreds of millions to try to fix the homeless problem along with ca in general especially in Northern California by building more affordable housing. It has not solved the homeless issue at all. There far more camps, drug addictions, burglary, and violence. I’ve worked with many homeless people because of my job in healthcare. I can tell you from experience many of them do seek help and fight to get out of homelessness. But I ain’t making stuff up when I see a huge chunk of them have addiction issues and is nurses always have to search there rooms for smuggled drugs and we we do help them with housing many simply refuse treatment, rehab, advice etc. I am no social science expert but I can see clearly it always be complicated. Education imo for now is probably the best thing we can do. But throwing money for housing is simply just not working and forcing people to attend rehab or shelters isn’t going to work either. At the end of the day they have too make a choice to get help. 

[Peroxide]

1 minute ago, Happylittlepunk said:

Drug addiction is a choice there are plenty of people who are homeless who are not addicted to drugs. How can you say it isn’t a choice. Homeless people are not forced to consume drugs and alcohol. Drug addiction isn’t a disease it’s not something you just develop like bacteria or a virus and it’s something that is just naturally just born in the world. 

Addiction is absolutely an illness… labelling it as a ‘choice’ negates how truly difficult it can be to overcome.

 

As @Communion mentioned, it’s often a byproduct of being homeless - people turn to different things to cope.

 

God knows if I was unfortunate enough to become homeless I would absolutely turn to something like alcohol to numb the pain.

[Happylittlepunk]

46 minutes ago, Communion said:

This is a myth. You're more likely to develop a drug addiction or begin struggling with alcoholism as a product of being homeless than these being *why* people become homeless.

People homeless is hard there is no doubt about that. Getting out of homeless is harder when someone has addictions. No amount of money or shelter is going to be enough if you refuse services or using addiction as an excuse why you can’t get out. Homelessness is a very complex issue but many people especially outside the healthcare industry/ social service industry never want to talk about or ignore the fact addiction and general poor choices play a major factor in homeless. 

[Peroxide]

6 minutes ago, Happylittlepunk said:

San Francisco has literally spent hundreds of millions to try to fix the homeless problem along with ca in general especially in Northern California by building more affordable housing. It has not solved the homeless issue at all. There far more camps, drug addictions, burglary, and violence. I’ve worked with many homeless people because of my job in healthcare. I can tell you from experience many of them do seek help and fight to get out of homelessness. But I ain’t making stuff up when I see a huge chunk of them have addiction issues and is nurses always have to search there rooms for smuggled drugs and we we do help them with housing many simply refuse treatment, rehab, advice etc. I am no social science expert but I can see clearly it always be complicated. Education imo for now is probably the best thing we can do. But throwing money for housing is simply just not working and forcing people to attend rehab or shelters isn’t going to work either. At the end of the day they have too make a choice to get help. 

I work for a homelessness charity so I have some insight on this issue too… though I can only really speak to my experiences from the U.K.

 

Homelessness is a horribly complicated issue. More resources should be funnelled into preventive measures… this includes things like education, community hubs and identifying young people “at risk” early on…

 

And sadly those that do become homeless often fall into a cycle of finding accommodation and then returning to homelessness an average of ten times before they leave it behind for good. The system we have needs work but criminalising and vilifying the homeless is not a pragmatic solution.

 

Housing first is a genuinely radical and progressive initiative which has seen some really encouraging results. I urge anyone who’s interested to do some reading.
 

With the rental market spiralling out of control homelessness is becoming more of a reality for a lot of people. It’s a seriously scary time for the sector.

[Tropez]

So will they provide free or low cost housing as a right for all Americans? You can’t make homelessness criminal when the people who are homeless can’t afford a home. 

[Cruel Summer]

I have exactly zero faith that they will rule in a direction that even coincidentally aligns with compassion, human rights, and recognizing the value in our shared human experience. This Supreme Court can’t even disappoint me anymore, because I expect less than nothing - it’s a bottom of the barrel bench representing the dying gasps of a broken institution. The systemic criminalization of homelessness is one of the most profoundly ****** up things local governments in the US - and elsewhere, I’m aware - are doing day to day. I live in a metropolitan area where it’s illegal to sleep in your own car if it’s not on your own private property, and nobody has ever been able to articulate to my why that law exists if not to punish people with nowhere else to go for representing some made up risk of crime or for simply being some kind of nuisance. It’s sickening that people who are struggling are essentially reduced to statistics about crime and drugs. I also hear my father denigrate people like this or in low income housing constantly, and he worked for his local and state government housing agencies for years; it really reinforced my beliefs that most of the people with the power to change things for the homeless only regard them with malice and contempt.

[byzantium]

Maybe the Supreme Court will finally end poverty by making it illegal!  

[byzantium]

29 minutes ago, Tropez said:

So will they provide free or low cost housing as a right for all Americans? You can’t make homelessness criminal when the people who are homeless can’t afford a home. 

Watch them…

[byzantium]

53 minutes ago, Happylittlepunk said:

San Francisco has literally spent hundreds of millions to try to fix the homeless problem along with ca in general especially in Northern California by building more affordable housing. It has not solved the homeless issue at all. There far more camps, drug addictions, burglary, and violence. I’ve worked with many homeless people because of my job in healthcare. I can tell you from experience many of them do seek help and fight to get out of homelessness. But I ain’t making stuff up when I see a huge chunk of them have addiction issues and is nurses always have to search there rooms for smuggled drugs and we we do help them with housing many simply refuse treatment, rehab, advice etc. I am no social science expert but I can see clearly it always be complicated. Education imo for now is probably the best thing we can do. But throwing money for housing is simply just not working and forcing people to attend rehab or shelters isn’t going to work either. At the end of the day they have too make a choice to get help. 

This is the same San Francisco that hit a 10 year in the number of housing units added last year right?  The San Francisco that is mostly single family zoned.  The San Francisco that vigorously protests and increases the costs of any new housing unit?  Throwing money at this problem without fixing the scarcity issue will only increase the cost of rent and property values further. 

[pisuke]

When you think the US couldn't be more disgusting, they double down!