Supreme Court Judgment on Homelessness Might Lead to More Prosecution

(VOR News) – Advocates for the homeless say that the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in a significant case on camping prohibitions may exacerbate the homeless situation, trapping more individuals in a cycle of incarceration, debt, and street life.

On Friday, the Supreme Court decided to favor Grants Pass, Oregon, a tiny community with a high homeless population. According to attorneys for Grants Pass who talked with USA TODAY, the judges ruled that the town may continue with its prohibition on sleeping in public with bedding, which would prevent unhoused people from staying in parks. Individuals who breach the prohibition will face penalties and potentially prison time.

In their 6-3 judgment, the court said that enforcing a camping ban does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The result reversed a lower court decision that had prevented the prohibition from being imposed.

“This is a pretty hard blow, and it’s devastating,” said Helen Cruz, 49, who feeds homeless people in Grants Pass parks and has long opposed the camping prohibition. She said that she had been homeless for most of her adult life. Recently, she was allowed to reside at a church where she volunteers.

Cruz told USA TODAY that the finding was the worst conceivable consequence for the hundreds of people living outdoors in Grants Pass. “These individuals who had nothing had a glimmer of hope, which has been taken away from them. How far can you beat someone with nothing? “I don’t understand,” Cruz replied through tears.

National homelessness campaigners said Friday that the court’s decision was tremendously disappointing. “We are extremely disappointed, and we are concerned about how quickly some communities will implement local ordinances that are now legal under this ruling,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Since 2018, communities in most of the western United States have been unable to enforce 24-hour restrictions on public camping, making it more difficult to dismantle big tent encampments, according to officials.

Cities with substantial unsheltered homeless populations, like Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle, may now enact rules to restrict individuals from sleeping outdoors. Evangelis, the lawyer who defended the case for Grants Pass, said Friday that the court’s decision provides “urgent relief” to towns trying to handle homeless camps.

“Years from now, I hope that we will look back on today’s watershed ruling as the turning point in America’s homelessness crisis,” Evangelis said in a written statement. Policy experts who backed Grants Pass in the case said the Supreme Court’s ruling was a triumph for local governments nationwide.

“The court made the right decision not to become micromanagers of local homeless policy across the entire United States of America,” said Judge Glock, director of research at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that supports individual liberty and the rule of law, and submitted documents to the Supreme Court in support of Grants Pass.

In Oregon, a 2021 state law provides certain safeguards for unhoused persons in Grants Pass and across the state in the face of 24-hour sleeping prohibitions, but localities may still impose tighter camping laws after the Supreme Court overruled a lower court ruling.

Mayor Sara Bristol of Grants Pass expressed her satisfaction with the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the city. She informed USA TODAY that she and the city council would start examining the ruling and state legislation to determine the best course of action.

“I’m relieved that Grants Pass will be able to reclaim our city parks for recreation,” Bristol said. She said that her community has “been trying to find solutions” for homelessness, calling it a “complex issue.” An authorized camping site or a new shelter may have been established as a solution, but the city opposed both ideas.

Ruth Sears, the owner of a dance studio building next to the site of a previously proposed shelter in downtown Grants Pass, expressed doubt that the court’s decision would address homelessness in her community.

“Unless their idea is they’ll go somewhere else, which is obviously not a real good answer for the homeless people,” 72-year-old Sears said, “I don’t see how it’s really going to help.”

Legal experts representing the homeless plaintiffs in the case are concerned that additional communities would enact like laws, reducing the number of places where homeless individuals can reside outside the law.

“What if every jurisdiction passes these laws? As an attorney with the National Coalition for the Homeless in Florida, David Peery predicted they would soon be seen nationwide.

According to Oliva, the penalties associated with camping and sleeping prohibitions would only make people’s homelessness worse by making it more difficult for them to get employment and homes due to debt and a criminal record. Oliva said, “We know they can’t pay those tickets.”

Grants Pass Homeless: How does the narrative of a homeless lady fit into the larger national discussion?

Grants Pass authorities now have additional power to clamp down on individuals living outdoors. Previously, they imposed penalties and implemented a statute that forbade people from pitching tents in the same location for an extended period of time.

Eric Tars, the Legal Director of the National Homeless Law Center, said this Supreme Court ruling would exacerbate homelessness. “Harmful approaches like criminalization are a crutch to avoid dealing with their affordable housing problems,” Tars said. In a similar vein, Oliva labeled camping prohibitions as a “fake solution” to the catastrophe that is unfolding in American homeless encampments.

Advocates argue that cities should concentrate on affordable housing

On Friday, Oliva said that local mayors and municipal councils nationwide must remember to serve unhoused populations and housed citizens who want the homelessness problem resolved.

Oliva believes that instead of cracking down harder on individuals in encampments by enacting harsher camping prohibitions, local elected authorities should create more shelters and link unhoused persons to more resources via outreach.

“Housing-focused shelter and outreach will keep people as safe and healthy as possible while we build more affordable housing for people; that’s the path forward,” Oliva informed us. Tars termed the court decision “heartbreaking.” “But we are not done fighting,” he told USA TODAY.

What was the court debating during oral arguments?

During oral arguments on April 22, the judges debated whether being homeless is an inescapable condition or whether sleeping outdoors is a behavior that results from not having a house.

The justices said it would be more appropriate for local and state governments to decide on a homelessness policy rather than having the country’s top court intervene.

In April, several justices pondered whether the court might restrict the case by ruling that the Grants Pass sleeping ban violates a new Oregon statute prohibiting 24-hour prohibitions.

What exactly was the Grants Pass case about?

Grants Pass v. Johnson pitted the homeless population of Grants Pass, Oregon, a town of roughly 40,000, against municipal authorities who said they wished to reclaim control of public parks where around 600 unhoused persons live in tents, beneath tarps, and sleep on tables and benches.

According to Ed Johnson, the public defender who initially handled the case, the majority of the unhoused persons living outdoors in Grants Pass became homeless as the cost of housing increased over the previous several decades. Johnson is not related to Gloria Johnson, the plaintiff in the case.

The city wanted to permanently remove people from parks, but it couldn’t because a 2022 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision ruled that homeless people in areas without enough shelter beds have an Eighth Amendment right not to be punished for living outside and protecting themselves from the elements.

There is no city-run shelter; instead, a church-run program for the homeless includes a shelter where inhabitants must labor. Transitional housing, in the form of a small house village, will open in 2021, but there are only 17 available places. According to service providers, due to an absence of affordable housing in Grants Pass, turnover at the institution is minimal.

The mayor of Grants Pass and certain city council members tried hard to establish a sanctioned campground and a new shelter, but many schemes were derailed due to community opposition. Bristol previously informed USA TODAY that as of this spring, the municipality had no more finances to establish the shelter space required for its unhoused population.

“We need to help establish a place where people can legally sleep, and it’s been a real uphill battle with all kinds of different challenges,” Bristol told reporters in April. To address the issue of homeless encampments in public parks, Grants Pass attorneys petitioned the Supreme Court in April to reverse a Ninth Circuit judgment that prevented unhoused individuals from being punished for sleeping outdoors.

“The Ninth Circuit ties cities’ hands by constitutionalizing the policy debate over how to address growing encampments,” Evangelis said in April when arguing for Grants Pass before the Supreme Court.

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