> If it is truly de-jure illegal to be poor now, you'd be able to point at a law on the books which says that.
Boise recently had to deal with this.
Passed a law that said it was illegal to sleep on the streets or public property if a shelter bed was available.
Problem? No shelter beds were generally available but two religious shelters said they were "always available", even when they had no actual beds. Ergo, police made arrests because the shelters were available, even if, factually, there wasn't. That the shelters SAID there were was enough for the police to arrest.
Adding to the problem was both of those shelters required both attendance AND participation in multiple religious ceremonies per day as a requisite of you being there, even if there did happen to be a bed.
So now you had a situation where the police were able to arrest homeless for refusing to go to these shelters, which may not have beds available, and that forced religious participation to be there.
That was a law that made it onto the books, until it was rightfully challenged. But the fact it made it to legislation in the first place is problematic.
If you staying in someone's house you generally have to follow their rules. Unless said rules are... over the top. Is attendance and - at least token - participation in religious activity considered over the top? What if it was a case of starvation instead of (or in addition to) the homelessness?
That isn't there case though. You're being subject to arrest for failing to use an available shelter. The religious conditions are a side effect. Similar to how taking a dump is a side effect of eating, and so if you want to avoid taking one, you'd have to avoid eating, but you have to deal with the prospect of death as a consequence. You don't die from not taking a dump (usually), but from not eating.
Well, it turned out it was the case, and as it wound through the appeals process, this was upheld, because when the City knows that this is happening and continues to enforce, it becomes a de facto situation, that the Court specifically called out in their decision:
> A city cannot, via the threat of prosecution, coerce an individual to attend religion-based treatment programs
-- Judge Marsha S. Berzon, for 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Sure. I don't see a problem if the work is within reasonable parameters. This is a private entity offering use of their property under reasonable terms.
Keep in mind this was also how a lot of jim crow laws worked.
ex. it's illegal to be unemployed (enforced against blacks) where unemployed included self-employment. So now you have a large population that is forced to work for any wage or get throw in prison where they're forced into work detail anyways.
I know you're not actually asking for answer but the US spends trillions of dollars a year supporting homeless and otherwise disadvantaged people. There are public programs that exist solely to provide these people the help they need. In most cities something like half the homeless refuse free shelter.
In most cities, free shelter sucks. It's only available on a day by day basis (sometimes requiring waiting in line in a specific place as late as 7 or 8 pm to know if there will be any beds open), or it has weird hours that get in the way of working schedules, or it requires people to participate in religious activities, or it puts everyone in one big room with no safety measures, or it has no way to store even minimal possessions securely, or it has nowhere to plug in a phone charger, or it has all the spaces to plug in phone chargers in one heap where it's easy for someone to steal a phone as everyone's being made to rush out the door at 7 AM, or it doesn't allow even well-behaved animals, or...
And on top of that, there's almost always a drastic shortage in shelter beds, so even people who jump through all the hoops only have a small chance of getting a spot. For example, Portland here, which is considered pretty homeless-friendly by a lot of people, only has enough shelter beds for about 1/5th of the homeless population.
For a lot of people, even perfectly functional, non-mentally-ill people, this makes it a perfectly logical move to look at shelters as only a measure of last resort and otherwise sleep in a car or find somewhere out of the way that will let them put their energy into trying to improve their situation rather than into trying to satisfy a new shelter's rules every day.
It doesn't technically make being poor illegal. The sad truth is that plenty of people will living on the streets may now be breaking the law simply by having nowhere else to go, but that shit will roll up hill eventually. Courts and jails don't have the capacity to deal with charging everyone in that situation. Either cops will avoid arresting people for it or cities will eventually have to dramatically expand housing options for the homeless.
In the meantime, yeah this is terrible for anyone who is homeless. It could very well do a disservice describing eh ruling as making being poor illegal though. The ruling only covers homeless camps, there are still a ton of poor people who do still have a roof over their heads that aren't breaking the law by being poor.
Something can be illegal even if cops are not resting everyone who does it. That's the worse situation in fact, when it becomes the sole discretion of individual police officers who to punish.
I totally agree. My point, though, was that being poor isn't illegal. The ruling keeps the jurisdictions for camping in public at the city level, it isn't specific to why someone is camping or broadly about being poor.
If cops have to stop enforcing it the laws will eventually be overturned. If cops do enforce it courts and jails will back up, eventually the law would either be dropped or more support would be built out to help those in need.
That's not to say I like the law. I would much prefer it didn't pass, and in general I disagree with a legal system that is focused on punishing citizens rather than helping them.
The point is though that, at least in some jurisdictions, being so poor that you can't afford a house is now effectively illegal. Sure, the same law prevents the rich from camping outside, but that is irrelevant. The relevant thing is that there is no legal way to be homeless in those jurisdictions.
And note that cops don't have to actually arrest people in order to enforce those laws. They can simply prevent them from sleeping, endlessly.
We can agree, though, that the ruling doesn't make being poor illegal though? Right?
I get that you are saying functionally its illegal to be poor, but that isn't actually what the ruling covered.
At least in my opinion, that extrapolation really muddies the water when it isn't necessary. The fact that we have so many homeless people and that courts ruled cities are allowed to ban people from camping outside regardless of situation is bad enough.
No, I think it's important to keep pointing out what this decision was really about. They didn't hear a case about camping outside at night, they explicitly heard a case about making it illegal to be homeless in a jurisdiction. All of the most relevant arguments related specifically to homeless people.
The effect on homeless people is not some unintended consequence of the original law or of the SC's decision. It was explicitly what the whole case was about: homeless people complained that a law forbidding them from sleeping outside in a municipality was effectively punishing them for being homeless, and a federal judge agreed. The SC also agreed, but found that this doesn't violate their constitutional rights, so that it is constitutionally allowed to punish them for being homeless.
This is an exact illustration of the famous satirical quote about the law being equal to all, equally punishing the rich and the poor for sleeping under bridges. Only this time it's not satire, it's the explicit decision of the SC.
You and I clearly read completely different court opinions here.
I see a case where a local government made it illegal to sleep outside and a supreme court decision that says this is within local governments' jurisdiction and doesn't violate any federal laws. It specifically doesn't make being poor illegal, though obviously it will greatly impact the homeless.
Its a huge leap you're making to claim that the law or the ruling makes being poor illegal, and I don't see that claim supported by either the new law or the ruling. I get that you strongly disagree with it and find the law to be immoral, and I totally agree with that. But personal emotion doesn't change the words written down and misrepresenting the law doesn't do anyone any good.
The law sucks, but it doesn't make being poor illegal. Plenty of people who are poor still have a roof over their heads, and there are homeless people who sleep in shelters rather than on the streets. If neither of those are illegal then the law couldn't have made being poor illegal.
You don't need to make the leap to misrepresenting the law to point out how terrible it is. The law as written is garbage.
You're again ignoring the fact that the law was before the Supreme Court specifically because it makes it illegal to be homeless. And the Supreme Court agreed with that, but found that it is not a problem.
I'm not ignoring that, I just don't see being homeless and being poor as equivalent. Would you only consider someone poor if they're living in the street?
I also don't the the bench said it wasn't a problem. As best I understand it the question was related to (a) jurisdiction and (b) whether the local law is legal under our existing federal laws.
The DAs decide whether to pursue a specific case, but it's the police department that starts the case, not the DA. The DA is not out there patrolling the streets finding people in violation and deciding whether to call the cops. The cops patrol, find a person they don't like, take them to the station, and then the DA can decide whether to charge them with a crime or not.
Before this case went to the supreme court, if a city offered someone on the street access to a homeless shelter then they were allowed to force the person to move. It was only when the city did not have shelter space that they were no longer allowed to criminalize the person for existing on public property.
Now the city doesn't even have to offer bed space.
What if just all municipalities forbid homeless encampments? The result of this will be a race to the bottom, as more and more municipalities ban homeless camps, the negative effects will concentrate on fewer and fewer municipalities, making the issue worse and worse. This will in turn drive them to forbid camps as well.
Of course, eventually that will lead to a growing number of people just giving up and either accumulating tickets they will never be able to pay or actively draining city money by spending every other day in jail (which also happens to be temperature-controlled and have free food).
> What if just all municipalities forbid homeless encampments?
If all municipalities did this instantly and provided transportation to the homeless - either unincorporated parts of a state, or jail, most would choose jail. Nobody wants to try to survive in the wilderness.
How is that anyhow helpful? Jail is much worse for the homeless and it's actually much more expensive to society than providing a home. If the goal is harm reduction, provide them with housing and support. The cruelty of the law is the point.
You might not, but nobody? There are those that do. There are even TV shows, multiple reality shows for watching people do just that. It’s not easy living for sure but getting a cabin out in the woods and trying to live off the land is totally a thing people do.
For a real world example, you don’t go to the woods outside of Seattle because there are unhoused people living there and it's dangerous to go there.
Nobody does. Bear Grylls wouldn't be popular if the overwhelming majority of the planet didn't choose lounging on the couch watching TV over survivalist practice.
> but getting a cabin out in the woods and trying to live off the land is totally a thing people do.
And not a realistic option for the homeless unless you can afford land to live on. What kind of bizzaro country do you live in where this is remotely realistic or legal? The real world isn't Minecraft.
Allemansrätten is a Swedish word that means right to roam. What it means, is that as long as you respect nature, you're allowed to enjoy nature by walking, cycling, riding, skiing, camping, etc.
I'm not Swedish but I spent some time there. you can just go camping anywhere, just don't leave trash or mess it up. But the US has untold acres of unpatrolled national parks and private land that nobody is watching. Sure, legally, you can't just live there, but without anybody to enforce it, yeah you can.
If you live on a national park in the United States, whether you are kind to your surroundings or not, you will be arrested once discovered and escorted off the property. Trust me when I say there is no sliding window of self-sufficiency that makes this a legal (let alone feasible) option for America's homeless.
It's genuinely insulting to log onto this website and listen to people repeat travel magazine advice as their solution to homelessness.
You know what all of those shows have in common? The protagonist has thousands or tens of thousands to spend on setting up the basic infrastructure needed.
And they only have to survive three weeks. How is that relevant?
Edit: and looking over some episode summaries, it's not like they reliably came out in great health, despite going in in more or less peak condition. Unless your point was that even short periods of homelessness has severe health risks and consequences?
Article: "The homeless residents said those penalties violated the Eighth Amendment of the US constitution because the city did not have any public shelters."
The shelters are full and other areas are in the same situation. When you see people living on the street that means the system is overloaded. The "visible" homeless are the tip of an enormous iceberg.
> There is a charity run homeless shelter in the town where they were camping on public grounds.
That "charity" is a religious organization which requires all residents to abide by strict "Christian values" including immediate abstinence from all drugs (even nicotine) and sex, attendance to multiple daily sermons, etc. while also working for the organization.
The group filed a brief with the court arguing for the ruling we got, stating that people were choosing to camp on the streets instead of go to the shelter as if that weren't an indictment of their offering that they believe a significant portion of their residents were only there because they would otherwise be arrested and not because it was actually a better choice than being on the street.
It's not "church or jail". The shelter is just one option. They could also crash on a friend's couch, or go somewhere with a shelter that doesn't require religious service.
Or they could just stop being poor and buy a mansion.
No one is sleeping outside because they don't want to sleep on a friend's couch. It's a government ultimatum to force people to attend religious services, plain and simple.
Yes. It is what ultimatum means, because they can no longer flout the law without punishment.
They are "members of the public". That doesn't mean they can unilaterally dictate the laws of society. If they were "the public", then they could just change the law. I wonder why they can't? Because most people don't want anyone setting up their household in a public park.
They weren't unilaterally dictating the laws of society, until 5 hours ago it was the US constitution which said this was the law in this country. 6 people unilaterally dictated the new law of society that enables the mob to ignore the rights of the few.
Believe it or not, but the legitimacy of our institutions aren't in question after a ruling you dislike.
And I will enjoy my park. Maybe the rate at which I have been hearing stories about children getting pricked with dirty needles will lessen with this ruling.
Actually, in Boise, it literally was. If a religious shelter said they had a bed (and one of them said they would "always take someone in", even if they didn't have a bed), it was an arrestable offense to be sleeping on public property.
> They could also crash on a friend's couch
Ahhh, AirBnB for the homeless, of course. Because when you're profoundly troubled by mental illness, or addiction issues, everyone opens their doors and homes to you.
There aren't even nearly enough homeless shelters. That holds the same basically everywhere in the US with a significant homeless population, except for those specific locations with a right to shelter law, like NYC.
