U.S. Supreme Court keeps ruling barring prosecution for sleeping in public
reuters.com
reuters.com
Here’s most of my other comment:
The decision was that because sleep - not camping, but sleep - is a biological necessity, there must be a practical way for homeless people to obtain it.
If that method isn’t shelters (because they’re full or inaccessible), then there needs to be places and/or times when sleeping is allowed and practical. The justices explicitly noted that this doesn’t mean municipalities can’t enact and enforce significant restrictions on when, where, and how (for example, no multi-day camping or no erecting structures) this can happen, including when no shelter beds are available. There needs to be a viable way to obtain sleep, though, whatever that way is.
https://sccinsight.com/2019/04/08/what-the-9th-circuit-actua... has an excellent unbiased explanation, though the core part of the decision is not that long. Here’s the footnote which explicitly carved out this stuff:
> Naturally, our holding does not cover individuals who do have access to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they have the means to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them for free, but who choose not to use it. Nor do we suggest that a jurisdiction with insufficient shelter can never criminalize the act of sleeping outside. Even where shelter is unavailable, an ordinance prohibiting sitting, lying, or sleeping outside at particular times or in particular locations might well be constitutionally permissible. See Jones, 444 F.3d at 1123. So, too, might an ordinance barring the obstruction of public rights of way or the erection of certain structures. Whether some other ordinance is consistent with the Eighth Amendment will depend, as here, on whether it punishes a person for lacking the means to live out the “universal and unavoidable consequences of being human” in the way the ordinance prescribes.
> The Ninth Circuit panel then walks through several important cases that touch on this question of what can be made criminal. Those cases highlight distinctions between criminalizing “status” and criminalizing “conduct,” beginning with a 1962 case, Robinson vs. California, in which the Supreme Court found that the State of California could not criminalize the state of being addicted to the use of narcotics (as opposed to the actual use of narcotics)
What if they have the ability to earn the means to pay for shelter, but choose not to do it? Or they have the means to relocate to somewhere where they could afford to pay for shelter but choose to remain in an area with a higher cost of living? IMHO it's a mistake to focus solely on the the current state and not the choices which led there.
If any hardworking individuals were given the same accountrements in a high-cost city (permanent housing with housekeeping), there would be a huge waiting list. With a possible impending retirement crisis, able-bodied may not be the best term for qualification.
As an aside, recycling is not profitable anymore, but the pre-existing obligations prevent dramatic or even drastic change on that front. This is no different.
If I were to throw something on the wall for homelessness, I'd say keep it simple and build 3 new regional cities in the west, central and east with a clean slate design and throw up a sign that says "give us your tired, your poor" and see what happens. That way, several states, cities and counties are pooling their resources/budgets, you give everyone a red/white/blue moment, but in the true American Spirit, you make it someone elses problem overnight (aka. Make it disappear) for something you were going to pay for anyway.
If we limit "extreme economy/political/welfare/climate experiments" to only these 3 regional areas, we may actually get lucky and build something resilent enough to be a runway for future generations, while being strong enough to be a safety net for the current gens.
I say all of this in jest, but if it becomes a question of millions of old people dying with dignity, instead of homeless in the streets, there will be enough "zeros" to build it (nimby lingo).
Then many states won't let you have a license if you are homeless, unless you get help from a shelter and also try to make it harder to vote too. So you have to pretend you live with a relative or go to Texas or South Dakota to setup a mail forwarder and declare domicile since they recognize full time RVing. Plus heard some shelters won't help you if you still own a car, got to sell it first to receive services.
I have heard though South Dakota only lets you vote for federal and state elections though, not local(city and county) but not sure how true that is... For example one of the counties doesn't have a "Wheel Tax", which would effect people registered there if ever passed, so RVers would vote no of course on it. Yet they say you can still be called for Jury Duty as mentioned on the affidavit, but heard the popular county for mail forwarders exempt those addresses, so you won't get picked in the first place but even if you do just call and tell them you are traveling full time to be exempted... But kinda interesting you are like a resident but not really a resident. I guess no states really considered people could retire and RV full time or younger people could live in a van and work remotely online.
I guess kinda the same with college though... If you lived in California but your parents retired early and moved to Florida or Nevada, yet you wanted to stay in California to go to school with your high school friends then California would consider you a resident for DMV, taxes but no longer a resident for tuition since they go by your parents domicile until a certain age, yet until after a full year or two FL or NV wouldn't consider you a resident for school either, so I guess you could technically not be a resident of any state for tuition proposes.
It should be illegal. Parking spaces are by and large meant to primarily serve the needs of legal, taxpaying residents. When they get taken over for use as housing, it diminishes the ability for others to travel and visit friends/family/businesses. And street parking is taken away from those who live locally who may need to park overnight.
All this is still leaving aside the fact that it is super creepy to have someone living out of an RV on your block, watching everyone's arrival/departures, casing their joints. Especially because a number of these RV dwellers are permanently-nomadic drug-addicts who engage in property crime to fuel their habits.
No thanks.
Our inability to address the homeless problem is a direct result of "caring" and "nurturing" eclipsing all other values. We've become incapable of enacting any policy that someone might call "harsh", even if that policy would be better for everyone in the long term. Sometimes the right approach really is tough love.
That's a pretty loaded statement presented without evidence. Vagrants are aren't "the most vulnerable people in society'. They're criminals. If we punish them like criminals, they'll stop their criminal behavior or spent time in prison where they can't cause problems for everyone else.
That's a pretty loaded statement presented without evidence.
Wow. I've received 3 speeding tickets, and 2 right on red tickets in my life. I committed a crime. I paid fines. I was not removed from society.
That is the case with a huge number of crimes, today, otherwise we would have an even worse prison problem.
> I see no reason to abandon this tradition now.
We've already abandoned it, and we are reducing the sizes of prisons as you prattle on about the problems of vagrancy.
Let's get mental health care facilities, rehab, and more, to the levels that existed before Republicans gutted them starting in the 50's. I don't know, like institute new-deal type things so people aren't wanting for basic needs, and maybe vagrancy will go away.
Well, it did the last time we did that.
Why wouldn't we do the exact same thing that worked last time?
So give them that chance to say no. Right now, you're advocating for paying $81k/year (average for CA prisons) to keep people in prison, instead of trying to fix the underlying causes. Estimates put the number of homeless people in California at roughly 120k+, including families, children, etc.
So if we solve the problem as you are proposing, by putting them in prison right now, that's $9.7 billion / year. It would more than double the current California prison population, from current 115k people, to 235k+, and we'd need new child prisons, because a lot of those homeless folks are families with children.
Putting "vagrants" and other "homeless" people in prison is stupidly expensive, pointlessly punitive, and doesn't solve the underlying economic or social problems. It doesn't stop people from being poor, it just makes being poor suck worse than it already does. All you've done is put a bunch of vulnerable people in prison.
Is prison expensive? Sure. I bet it doesn't have to cost that much to lock people up. But even if it does, locking people up is a much better use of public funds than endless and equally expensive homeless "services" that enable bad behavior.
Property crime is already a crime, hence the term. Assuming your stereotype is accurate, the police will arrest them for their actual crimes soon enough. Until then, the pre-crime of living in an RV isn't sufficient cause.
No this does not happen. Property crime ends up being the bottom priority in many cities because of limited staffing/resources/competing priorities.
> Until then, the pre-crime of living in an RV isn't sufficient cause.
Sure it is. Should a city allow everyone to do whatever they want? If not, why is it out of scope for them to create rules that minimize the likelihood of crimes in the first place? You are asking tax-paying law-abiding residents to rely on a low-probability outcome when there are better ways to avoid being in that position in the first place. The city government exists to support its tax-paying, law-abiding residents. Otherwise why would those residents live there and pay taxes?
Seems like some people RV by choice, and some people are forced into it. Like in some expensive places some people might take their last paycheck and buy a RV that barely runs so they still have some sort of shelter, still working locally, etc. I guess it's stereotyped for being homeless, or being retired while there are normal families who decided on this lifestyle. Some people even live on boats too. Some do it to try to save money, while some end up spending more than living in a house or apartment. Then the experience part, more of a adventure than the same boring same over and over.
I think if I did it, I'd probably stay a week or two in a area as I think moving every day would be stressful but a lot of neat stuff to see. Some people try and see every state in their first year... but if doing this full time can always come back to a place. But I guess planning and deciding on things can be hard since so much to see and do in this country. But I'd probably stick to campgrounds, rv parks, approved spots for boondocking... Sleeping on random streets just seemed odd to me, and I'd want the peace of mind of not being woken up by someone in the middle of the night.
Even some of the national forests seem to not be friendly towards people camping anymore. Coconino national forest I've heard complaints of, and as someone who studied a bit about civil rights I seen one story which I suspect the forest ranger totally broke the law, and not sure what the PC was... Someone had a truck camper, not the prettiest thing but he said the ranger was banging on his door and demanding all his info questioning him even though it was a legal spot on the map, sounds like the ranger was super rude and aggressive even though no law was broken he just wanted to know who was in "his forest" before leaving them alone. but apparently that forest is full of homeless people and not just people on vacation too.
Then some forests are understaffed, was reading reviews for one forest not too far from here and someone got their car broken in at a trailhead and no one even came to take a report, not sure what they did in that case since you need a report for insurance company. Then the forest fires out west has been a big drain on the budget too.
Some people want to privatize the national forests and parks. I'm kinda conflicted on that idea though. I feel like private companies would manage things better with more services, better hospitality, better made websites with information but probably be more expensive too. Then commercializing things take a bit away from nature, relaxing and disconnecting... I guess one of the ideas is to add WiFi, food trucks and same day Amazon package deliveries to the national parks as one of the proposed plans by the new administration to modernize the parks, which does seem convenience but I know people are against it too. Can see both the pros and cons of that idea.
I do feel the focus is more on the national parks though, seems like the national forests are being abandoned and some even want them shutdown or sold off completely which is pretty sad since some are being neglected. I guess the National Parks get higher priority when it comes to funding, probably since more popular too compared to the National Forests.
Palo Alto tried to accommodate the RVs with a parking lot in the civic center, but stopped after a couple of incidents at the nearby school.
Will RV/van parking become compulsory?
The ruling is hardly a huge win for civil liberties. It's pretty narrow and specific. A better title would be:
"States can't jail people for sleeping in public if there's no homeless shelters."
Of course such a title would seem reasonable and normal and wouldn't produce a click-bait news title that stokes the flames of national division.
If you can pay for a hotel room or other accommodation you the city/state can make it illegal for you to sleep outside.
So, at least we know there is some bar - albeit very low - beyond which they're not willing to let local authorities victimize the poor. That is - you are at least allowed to sleep outside on the cold hard floor. Thanks SCOTUS.
If the problem is with the laws and the executive policies - and it really is - then let's fix those.
Utah has shown that housing people first alleviates a lot of stress. It takes away that fear of not having a basic, consistent place to sleep and be somewhat secure. Cities that implement housing first programs save a lot of money, as it's easier for those people to get to find work and get themselves out of the system.
Will some people abuse it and stay in government housing forever? Sure. But even with those people, municipalities still save money because a good chunk of the people can build their way out once their basic needs are met.
The fundamental failure of Measure H was that while there is the money to build the necessary housing, and the general political will to build somewhere....there is intense political opposition to any specific place that gets proposed as the location for homeless or transitional housing.
If this is an expected outcome, I would consider it fiscally irresponsible to propose building housing shelters in NIMBY neighborhoods and instead choose other places where money won't be wasted on litigation. There's no good reason for homeless shelters and other charitable services to be located on extremely valuable real estate and in NIMBY neighborhoods.
When I donated money last year to address this issue, I donated to an organization in Texas, despite living in San Francisco, because I knew the money was going to be wasted on the problem in San Francisco. When people making 6-figures right out of college have difficulty finding stable living arrangements in a place, it's futile to try and keep people in that same place that don't have nearly the same capacity to support themselves in an extraordinarily expensive market. For many homeless people, keeping them in SF is tantamount to keeping them homeless in perpetuity because almost none of them have a chance of escaping homelessness in that environment.
There are tons of good reasons. The primary reason is that "place" is a huge determination of societal outcomes for individuals. Homeless individuals in a nicer neighborhood will on average have better outcomes (rehabilitation, returning to normal life, seeking mental health treatment) than homeless individuals in rougher neighborhoods.
There are plenty of places in the US where you're less likely to meet costly legal resistance where people can get rehabilitation, returning to normal life and seeking mental health treatment.
Furthermore, even those services, such as rehabilitation and mental health treatment should be moved to lower cost of living markets where each dollar goes much further than in San Francisco. The salary of a social worker in SF is approximately 30% higher than some place like Dallas, TX.
Quite a few of these are planned for areas that already have a sizeable homeless population. It's beyond me how people think they're less safe with a Nav Center rather than just a bunch of people on the streets nearby, defecating on the sidewalk and ranting at the sky all day. (And before I get accused of stereotyping, this is literally what I see on my walk to work.)
And yet no one will dare admit complete incompetents are in charge of solving this problem.
I really have no problem with the concept of "criminalizing homelessness" -- as long as we can provide sufficient housing for everyone, regardless of their financial state.
> The 9th Circuit noted that those facilities could still refuse to shelter homeless people who exceed limits of the number of days they can stay or who object to mandatory religious programs.
It'd be quite problematic for folks to be jailed for refusing mandatory religious programs - even if those people were homeless. I'm happy to see that this group of people managed to stand up for their rights against Boise - and maybe the city just needs to put out a bit more money toward health and safety by supplying adequate secular shelter options[1].
1. As an aside, I really dislike that so many of the US domestic charities are religiously driven.
A significant portion of homeless people are actually 'invisible' homeless people- people living out of their cars, or sleeping on couches. They arguably do have things, up to and including a sense of identity and self for which any attempt of indoctrination must erode. I don't think someone who is sleeping on a friend's couch would be down for sleeping on a bed instead for the low low price of conversion therapy.
(FTR: I don't think religion is brainwashing/conversion therapy or whatever. I also just think this take is also very bad.)
If the reason you help someone is because you want to sell them something or use them, you're doing help wrong.
I suppose you could argue that religion is harmful.. but even as an atheist, that’s a stretch for me to agree with.
How is that a stretch for you? Have you ever heard of conversion therapy. Do you know how that came to be and similar to slavery. I know a lot of LGBT+ friends that had religious parents throw them on the streets because of God wouldn't make them not be normal.
Catholic Charities had consistently good programs. In my experience, they did not ever require you to listen to a sermon to get the help you needed.
Yes, I chose to go hungry rather than attend shitty services with lousy food that put my welfare at risk with their shitty policies. Some so-called "help" is worse than nothing.
And not all homeless have literally nothing. Some have income, just not enough to support a middle class life. Some have regular jobs and live in fear of being fired if their employer learns of their situation.
The thing that bothers me now about the homeless is how many of them appear to have their basic shit together.
Hmm? I think there's a typo in there. Did you mean that it bothers you about homelessness (not the homeless people) that people with "shit" together still have trouble getting housing?
But unlike others, I don't agree that religious charities should not do any proselytizing. A genuine religious person believes their doctrine, not just in being a good person like anyone can be. Christians believe there are eternal issues at stake.
The point is that basic services should not be conditional and proselytizing should invitational, not mandatory.
In fairness, many of them are very good. The Mormons, for example, have always impressed me. I had a friend who grew up in Menlo Park, fell on hard times, and ended up in Utah. The Mormon community there was very supportive in substantial ways, and although they did evangelize, I hear it was pretty mild.
But yeah, it's...evil when a religion gets transactional with it's charity.
Getting transactional with charity is the whole point. That's why religious organizations often fight against public programs instead arguing that religiously affiliated charity should take its place (receiving public funding to do so in many cases).
Utah in particular loves to under-fund programs, and let the church pick up the slack. The benefit to them is that it is both transactional, and allows them to exclude as they desire.
The Mormons might be nice, but they shouldn't be getting public money to provide public assistance. They should be cut out entirely and taxes should fund these programs directly and fairly.
But does Utah give that money to the church programs instead? It’s not clear from your comment.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_The_Church_of_Jesu...
Mormons as a rule are very generous with the church, and often with church affiliated charities. If the deduction for charitable giving was removed, the Mormon church would do fine, and likely so would many of their charitable activities, and it would seem more like separation of church and state to me.
If the charitable giving deduction were removed, I guess I agree that at that point there wouldn't be a way to argue (from a constitutional perspective) against Mormons in Utah voting for low levels of government support.
As it happens, I'm not convinced the "all charity should be provided by religious institutions in Utah" narrative for Utah voters is actually accurate; Salt Lake City at least is fairly generous with the homeless, at a government level.
But spirituality is quite real, and there are those who really believe in selfless giving without expectation of anything in return. Lots of people. They exist in the "cooperate/cooperate" equilibrium, and honestly, it's better there. It's not that you don't see the cheating, the greed, especially in the name of charity, its just that you're choosing to do something different, something that feels more wholesome. (I say this as someone who's served a bunch of meditation courses, and really enjoyed it.)
Why are religious organizations fighting public assistance programs? Why are their members arguing that a church should provide these same services instead? Your "criticise the crique" strategy isn't actually a retort, just an argument that religious affiliated organizations should be above criticism wholesale.
If religions want to stay out of politics, I'm all for leaving them be. But as it stands they're a major power broker, particularly at a local level, and therefore cannot be ignored (particularly when they're arguing for religious discrimination of public services).
My other point was noting the cynicism behind your view, and why I think there are better options.
Not all religions do. Catholic Charities, for example, doesn't care what religion you practice and does not try to convert people who seek its help.
I guess another way of looking at it is why aren't there more atheist charities? What is it about religion that makes people help other people so much more?
He was wanting to put together a program where students would go volunteer to help NGOs do software projects in India.
Something he was surprised by was that NGOs in India are almost all oriented around lobbying the government to do things (particularly that they'd already promised to do) and not around provisioning social services themselves.
My understanding is that in some religions, we are living today in the "afterlife" of a previous life, and subject to karma based on what we've done.
If one has bad karma that has put one in an undesirable social position, it's not a stretch that Earth is a hell for those people, and we're supposed to be the demons that make life miserable for them.
Can you name those religions for me. I view everything as deterministic and see the world as either heaven/hell. Although the idea of karma doesn't make sense when understanding determinism. Since everyone is destined to do bad or good depending on the life they're born into.
edit: whoever downvoted me, I'm asking a simple question and stating what I observe. Please let me know why you find the need to downvote for that.
It's offensive.
Treat others as you want to be treated. And if I was poor I'd want someone to feed me.
My guess is that there are simply fewer atheists.
I don't see how this follows. There are punishments for committing crimes that don't come from a vengeful god, like punishment from a legal system.
i.e. "The government should replace charity, and only the millionaires and billionaires should be the ones paying for it".
I'm atheist myself, but I've definitely seen this reasoning make it easy for fellow atheists to explain away their lack of charity.
Religous groups account for "31% of all donations", so that leaves a lot for other groups.
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&...
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...
That 31% is donations to churches (from what I'm reading). Not donations to charities organized separately from the churches.
So if there is a catholic charity which focuses on Haiti, then that would be excluded from the 31%.
1. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
Black swan effect? It may just be that the charity and/or atheism isn't reported.
> that makes people help other people so much more?
I think that's reading a lot more into both motivations and actions than is possible from here; or, in other words: I think you're anecdotally on to something - my religious neighbors definitely feel more kind / charitable than my other neighbors - but science would need to be done. For example, perhaps it's not the "religious" part but the "community" part that drives participation in charity efforts. I also wonder about the role that tax exemption plays into all of this.
It's also worth noting that in the US, there still exists a fairly strong bias against any openly atheistic people or organizations[1], so it would make sense to direct the public's attention towards what they're doing and therefore away from what they don't believe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheist...
When people say atheist charities, what they are trying to say is secular charities lacking any religious affiliation. They aren't trying to say charities that are actively "affiliated" with being atheist.
I can think of 2 reasons why the religious want to help others:
1. Within many religions, the concept of charity is tied to eternal salvation
2. Helping people is a good way to recruit numbers
Why pick on atheists? What about secular charity or otherwise irreligious charity? Many such charities/aid groups exist. Doctors Without Borders, ACLU, Unicef, Goodwill, Oxfam, Rotary International, etc.
More importantly, what about social security?
I think the US government is too conservative when it comes to relying on outside entities for help getting people up on their feet. It really should be a government's prerogative to proactively help people enter society as a productive member, earning a wage, staying healthy, spending money and paying taxes, no?
But by studies performed by religious organizations themselves (who if anything are likely to skew the numbers more positively), across the board, "Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget", and an additional 5% goes to "church run programs" (be it after school care, social or group activities).
If a secular charity - and lets go back to Charity Navigator here - Top Ten Inefficient Fundraisers (https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten) we see some of the worst charities spending 15% of their donations on "program expenses" (i.e. doing what they are being given money to do).
I'm not familiar with the monitoring of 501(c)3 groups, but I suspect if charities were to regularly spend only one per cent of their givings on what they got to enjoy tax exemption to do, they'd likely have such a status revoked.
And, if you factor in this average percentage (even the six per cent combined, which is generous, as as much fun as social and youth activities are, they're not necessarily serving a critical need), and start to question 'how much money is being spent on 'spreading the word', patting themselves on the back, competitions in Texas to see who can built the world's biggest cross just down the road from where the world's previously biggest cross was built at costs of millions, there comes more and more skepticism of just how highly you can value "giving to your church" on the scale of charitable contributions.
A study by ECCU (http://web.archive.org/web/20141019033209/https://www.eccu.o...) stated that churches use 3 percent of their budget for children’s and youth programs, and 2 percent for adult programs. Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget.
So I -do- place some skepticism on the idea of blanketing 'religious giving' as 'charitable contribution'.
Depending on your definition, pretty much all activist organizations could fall into this. Red cross, project eden, engineers without borders, etc. Honestly I'm stumped as to what constitutes "atheist charity" vs any non profit whose goal is not "spread the word of $deity".
it's then a smaller step to use some of those organizational resources for evangelizing in the form of charitable acts.
(Notably, it’s not like less religious places have devised secular replacements for religious charity. As a percentage of income, people in San Francisco donate just half of what people in Alabama and Mississippi do.
until it's used to keep people apart in "mandatory religious programs"
That said, I really despise hypocrites and the biggest ones I can see today are Prosperity Gospel preachers and that Evangelical voting block that support the "good christian" in office today. I have no problem with faith and churches, but when they start getting political or taking advantage of the needy then they've got to go. Lastly, it's getting a bit weird with religious institutions fighting against women's health organizations - and that discussion is a pile of snakes so let me just say I understand where both sides come from and don't really care to discuss the topic.
It is highly likely that the religious institutions you're thinking of aren't these partisan televangelists or con-men but those guys have left a sour taste in my mouth for religious institutions in general - I default to spurning and distrusting them until I've seen an organization act in a beneficial and ethical manner. I trust them more slowly then I trust secular charities.
But that's not what was happening, right?
> I have no problem with faith and churches, but when they start getting political
I disagree with the notion that religion must be a private matter. Religion is not only a matter of personal belief. Its a framework for organizing communities and raising children. Forcing people to keep religion private amounts to an infringement on "the free exercise thereof."
Notably, religion in the U.S. has always been political. Many of the original colonies were founded by religious people who were too radical for Europe. They didn't create a Constitution where the right to "free exercise" implied banning the very religious communities they had come to America to establish. Rather, religion has always been a part of peoples' politics. It played an outsized role in everything from abolition to women's suffrage to the civil rights movement.
Directly? No.
"If there is a homeless shelter open, we can cite and jail you for sleeping outdoors".
"But one of the shelters has a policy of always being 'open', even if there are no beds. They also require mandatory religious activity and participation."
"If there is a homeless shelter open, we can cite and jail you for sleeping outdoors".
Is a fairly strong indirect link.
> Boise said it does not issue citations if the city’s three homeless shelters are full. The plaintiffs said that the two Christian-based shelters have policies to never turn away anyone for lack of space, and so police have continuously enforced the ordinances. > > The 9th Circuit noted that those facilities could still refuse to shelter homeless people who exceed limits of the number of days they can stay or who object to mandatory religious programs.
As to your other point
> I disagree with the notion that religion must be a private matter. Religion is not only a matter of personal belief. Its a framework for organizing communities and raising children. Forcing people to keep religion private amounts to an infringement on "the free exercise thereof."
That's fair, it definitely needs to be a balance, it's my opinion that things like Prosperity Gospel not being outright illegal and pundits like Pat Robertson are good examples that it has gone too far, but I definitely see and understand concerns about going too secular. I'm privately faithful and secular in nature, but that's just me and I understand that other folks have their own understandings of faith and religion.
Other places in the US, you mean. They have done this elsewhere, they call it socialism.
If person A takes from person B by coercion to give to person C because person D voted for it. Neither person A nor person B nor person D can claim to be engaging in charity.
Charity is voluntary giving.
That said, a better example is that 'socialist' countries seem to give less to charity for those abroad. The biggest donating countries per capita are Myanmar, the USA and Australia, the most likely to help strangers appear to be Iraq, Libya and Kuwait. Even in Europe, it's topped by the UK which, while it is in possession of a social safety net, I would not call Socialist.
Mississippi and Alabama need religious services because religious people suffocated the government. I'd much rather be poor in San Francisco and enjoying public services than be poor in Mississippi hoping for religious services.
It’s not really voluntary, which brings in the question of if it’s really charity.
> I'd much rather be poor in San Francisco and enjoying public services than be poor in Mississippi hoping for religious services
Which public services do you think SF has that aren’t available in Mississippi? I think you’ll find that the real difference is tolerance of homelessness in general and programs that allow continued drug use while receiving benefits.
Medicaid expansion.
That was one of the keys - "the City said it wouldn't cite people when shelters weren't open", but the plaintiffs said that one of the religious shelters had an "always open" policy, even if they didn't actually have beds, and they did require religious participation, so the city's point was effectively moot.
At the time Massachusetts ratified the First Amendment, everyone was required to belong to a church and State tax money was used to support those churches: http://www.statelegalhistory.com/home/1-new-england-legal-hi.... Several New England states had government-supported churches well into the 1800s.
And the opposite view: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constit...
1) It's full of invective and straw-man arguments. It accuses Christine O'Donnell of not having read the Establishment Clause, for example. And it makes a completely irrelevant reference to "old antebellum slave oligarchies," even though it was the free New England states that were the ones that had state-supported churches.
2) It makes tenuous arguments. The "words 'separation of church and state' are not in the text," the article concedes. But "the idea of separation is" present. Of course! In support of that view, it points to the fact that the Constitution prohibits religious tests for office. "If government can't require its officials to support a church," it reasons, "is there a serious argument that church and state are not separate?" Of course, the prohibition on religious tests is entirely consistent with the existence of a plurality of public religions.
It also pulls a "??? Profit!" over the most significant issue: what does "no law respecting an establishment of religion" mean? The article states that it "mean[s] that not only no church but no 'religion' could be made the official faith of the United States." That reads the phrase as "no law establish[ing] [a] religion." But if that's what the Framers meant, they would have written that. That's how they wrote the rest of the first amendment "no law ... prohibiting ... or abridging ...."
3) As with the present Supreme Court precedent on the subject, the article rests almost entirely on the letter of Thomas Jefferson. But Jefferson (a) was not a Framer; and (b) was a radical wingnut. What he thought about things carries some weight, but not all that much. (I would add that almost everyone who invokes Jefferson's view to interpret the First Amendment would recoil in horror at invoking his views to interpret the Second.)
This is, by definition, a law respecting an establishment of religion. It was permissible only because the Bill of Rights was not applied to the States until the passage of the 14th Amendment.
If you look at the first amendment, the Establishment Clause stands out:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
For the other rights, Congress used verbs: "prohibiting" the free exercise of religion, and "abridging" the freedom of speech, etc. But "an establishment of religion" is a noun. What is an establishment of religion? In 1789, "an establishment of religion" was a known thing: the established churches of the states. So the First Amendment can be interpreted to mean that Congress can't mess with the established churches of the various states.
Turning to incorporation: remember, its not automatic, and incorporation of each amendment must be justified on its own terms. Not all of the Bill of Rights makes sense as applied to the States--for example the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, because those set forth a separation between State and Federal power, not individual rights. There is a natural reading for incorporation of the Free Exercise Clause. But whether it makes sense to incorporate the Establishment Clause turns on what you interpret the Establishment Clause to mean. If the latter, then its really setting forth a separation of State/Federal power, not an individual right, and it makes no sense to apply that to the states.
It means neither.
"Respecting" means "with reference to", and this definition is the same as it was when the Constitution was written. Ergo, "respecting an establishment of religion" means "with reference to an establishment of religion". "Establishment of religion" means "an organization of religion", including both lay churches all the way up to the Anglican Church and the Vatican. So the first half clearly states that Congress shall make no law "with reference to an religious organization."
This is where the separation of church and state comes from. That, and Thomas Jefferson saying explicitly that this was the purpose of that clause and the commonly understood meaning of the Constitutional Congress when they voted on the language...
For the second half: "thereof" means the thing just mentioned, and "exercise" meant "practice" (as in practice a religion, from the original Latin meaning). So "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means "prohibiting the free practice of religion."
Reading "establishment" synonymous with "organization" would be anawkward and un-idomatic even today. Would you call the ACLU a "civil rights establishment?" Would you call NARAL a "women's rights establishment?"
There are good reasons to believe that's not the sense in which the word is used. The Constitution repeatedly uses the word "establish" in the sense of "to make official." It uses the word "establishment" in one other place, referring to the requirements "for the Establishment of this Constitution.” I.e. the requirements to make the draft constitution the official law of the country.
And historically, "establishment" was used precisely in that sense--a religion that had been made official. The Church of England was an "establishment of religion." The Colonies had had "established" churches, and many, but not all, had "disestablished" their churches. “An establishment of religion” is not a weird way to say “religious organization” but a legal thing that existed at the time that made sense to talk about. And what the First Amendment does is prohibit the federal government from making laws with reference to those "establishment[s] of religion."
Within that framework, Congress was probably prohibited from establishing a national church. But why? Is the answer: because established churches were bad in the same way that cruel and unusual punishment is bad? That would be an odd reading given how many of the original 13 colonies had some form of government supported religion. The other interpretation is that the amendment endeavored to protect these establishments from federal interference. That’s what makes the most sense given the structure of the colonies at that time.
Within that framework, incorporation doesn’t make sense. You take a provision that was intended to protect states' rights to maintain their established religions free from federal interference, and turn it into a provision that eliminates the very right the amendment sought to protect. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
Lastly I wanted to mention the parallel term you draw here because it's also a drifted phrase
> to make official
Is actually a highly accurate synonym for establishment, but only in archaic word usage, official (the adjective) is actually just a corruption of official a noun, it's sort of like "the influencer lifestyle" or "that's an influencer hat". Technically all "off-*" words originally related to religion, but that's gone by the wayside quite a bit by now.
Quite frankly, I don't care what the words mean today, since we have a body of court cases that has expanded the application of the First Amendment beyond the strict scope of the words as they were written.
There are good reasons to believe that's not the sense in which the word is used. The Constitution repeatedly uses the word "establish" in the sense of "to make official."
You keep trying to make linguistic arguments while ignoring the linguistic means of the words at the time they were originally written, especially when one of the men responsible for actually writing the Bill of Rights explicitly stated what the words of the First Amendment were intended to mean at the time they were written.
The First Amendment was explicitly intended to create separation of church and state at the Federal level. Like the rest of the bill of Rights, it wasn't intended to apply to the states at the time, so your arguments about state churches are entirely irrelevant.
Jefferson wrote this in 1802:
> Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their "legislature" should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
Madison wrote repeatedly about the separation of church and state, as anchored in the 1st Amendment. It was one of the issues that he was particularly passionate about.
As for the states passing legislation regarding religion, the 1st Amendment was originally only a limit on what the Federal government could do. The 1st-Amendment separation between church and state was extended to the states through the 14th Amendment (which led to several of the liberties in the Bill of Rights being extended to the state level).
So in conclusion, the idea of the separation of church and state goes back to the founding generation of the United States. That's not to say it hasn't evolved over time and become stronger. It was a novelty at the time, so you wouldn't expect it to have sprung from Zeus' forehead fully formed.
There is, in fact, a church in northern San Diego county that has a free meal open to anyone on Friday nights, no questions asked. It does involve listening to a sermon. It's one of the best free meals I attended while homeless and I wrote it up on one of my websites as a model program that should be copied because it was so well done.
No sermon, no lecture, just unconditional -- and very good -- food as part of a deeply held sense of community. They have leapt to help in disasters, kept going through riots a few years back, and keep sticking to those principles as numbers keep rising. Rising because the UK government created a need for food banks out of nowhere over ten years, and more and more now need free food... I keep hearing of quiet Sikh efforts across the country as our government deconstructs the benefits system and safety net.
I'm life-long atheist, but I feel much warmer toward our Sikh communities than the UK's formerly christian heritage - where charity so often seems to come with a catch, or a sales pitch, or worse is conspicuously absent. The Sikh sense of community feels far stronger, and more of a true belief as a result.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805859
I think the Sikh community probably was the source of the absolute best homeless meal I ever got, but I wasn't offended at listening to them share their Christian faith at the program mentioned above and it was a good meal, far better than most homeless meals.
There is zero contradiction in saying "Don't hold homeless people hostage for a meal" and saying "Offering a free meal as part of sharing something you love -- be it Calculus or Christianity -- with whomever wishes to join you is not the same as holding homeless people hostage." They are entirely different points and they in no way conflict.
But that's a darn good example because free food with a lecture (or timeshare opportunity, or conference on industry tool) is a really common occurrence marketing wise and it raises a question that I can't answer in terms of legal and moral right - those lunch and learn conferences, do some people feel pressured to attend because it's subsidizing the cost of their lunch that day? How much time do they lose to engaging in such things and how many of them missed better job opportunities because of it.
I don't understand your sentence. "separation of religion" with what? Is there a law stating religion needs to be separated from everything else?
This case (partially) answered "Can the government jail you for being homeless?" The answer being "No, not generally, but perhaps under a certain set of circumstances that are outside the scope of this case."
Much of the discussion here is "Can a charity compel you into indoctrination in return for bed/food/etc?" The answer to which is "No, not if they are receiving state funding." (They probably shouldn't regardless of funding, but that's a moral question, not a legal one)
Omitting that addendum I agree this is more clear cut legally - I still think there may be moral questions about feeding people conditional on their attendance to a lecture religious or otherwise, but honestly... there are some moral questions about refusing to feed someone in need in any circumstances that our society has mostly moved on from acknowledging so I think most of my objections (excluding the potential arresting scenarios) are academic and beyond the common ethics.
Neat thread though, lots of fun stuff in it.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
this has generally been opined to imply a separation of church and state since any state endorsement of a religion (any directly stated ties) would support the establishment[1] of one religion[2] while also curtailing the establishment[1] of another religion.
1. The usage of the word establishment is pretty archaic language-wise, I think it's fair to conceptually substitute organization, enrollment and participation.
2. Generally, traditionally we haven't minded supporting religious organizations unless that support is unequal, this is why a lot of religious organizations are tax free and have some other fun benefits.
People were, essentially, arrested for not attending religious ceremonies - there is a lot more interesting nuance here, but suffice to say that the 1st Amendment is absolutely relevant if people are potentially being jailed by the state due to a failure to attend religious ceremonies.
That kind of separation.
Should not the state stop this practice?
What if shelter A says I will close if you don't allow me to practice religion?
But the shelter's policy can and should limit what the city is allowed to do. Saying "I have a 'choice': to go to your religious shelter or be arrested for sleeping outside" is a problem.
What the ruling says is that you cannot prosecute a person for sleeping on the street if they have nowhere to go, and that a room that comes attached with a lecture about your life choices doesn't count as a place to go.
They happen to be more motivated to provide services. If you wish there were more alternatives, more secular people should start their own charities.
I use to donate to a large homeless feeding / sheltering place here in town. When I was told by someone who was asking for food money (that I told about the free food at the mission in which I donate to) - that the place forced you to listen to religious sermons before you can have a plate, I was flabbergasted.
I no longer donate to that place.
To those who are all bent out of shape about 'why not religion charity' - hey I don't mind them doing whatever they want to do - but be transparent about it to everyone.
I think if your religion group is good enough, you can give free food and offer another room for sermons if you want to check it out, another area with pamphlets about your gods, whatever, if it's good - have religious counseling available, that's all fine - but don't force people to listen to your cult leader espouse some kind of brainwashing, magical spells, incantations or whatever to starving people in order for them to get some bread.
Have another room for the kool aid, if it's good and welcoming, people will go there. No need to force it.
imho. No offense intended by outrageous characterizing - from what I have seen, some places are offering both without going overboard - and that's great.
I've seen really good organizations that just do good and don't have expectations. The Catholic and Jewish religions tend to have more open charities from what I've seen. They frequently try to solve problems without an expectation or requirement on membership.
In particular Catholic nuns teach in the fringes of society. Where people aren't able to get funding by the state. The cycle is, they go to the fringes, teach those fringes get big enough for state sponsored education and they move further out. I've worked with these amazing people and to put them in the same category as others is a disservice to their work.
On the flip side there are religions that only help if you are an active member. Which is why I think it's important to recognize that MANY religious organizations aren't bad. But that some are, so we can differentiate between them.
I'd also like to say, not even all charities within a given religion are bad/good. When you get down to an individual charity it's run by a person or people and we have to weigh each on on it's own merits.
If we want more secular charities, we have to find a way for people to organize outside of religion. I'd strongly suggest everyone here look at something such as First Robotics or another secular charity.
I'm an atheist myself, but this speaks volumes about the people who aren't religious and their propensity to be charitable.
As much as secularists like to fall into the ego trap of hating on religious institutions, once you separate out the dogma, there's probably a lot to learn from them in terms of fostering desirable behavior like charitable giving.
If you factor that in to 'charitable giving as a whole', then secularists are doing more than fine with their propensity to be charitable.
> As much as secularists like to fall into the ego trap of hating on religious institutions, once you separate out the dogma, there's probably a lot to learn from them in terms of fostering desirable behavior like charitable giving.
I sense a certain hypocrisy there. It's an ego trap to hate on religion, but religious folk have the upper hand and "much to teach" about charity? (Which, as previously stated, is a highly suspect argument foundation).
"Elevation Church does post some financial records on its website, reporting that the church took in $33.5 million in offerings last year and gave away about $3.8 million in outreach, spent $9 million on personnel and reported $13.9 million in cash assets."
(this after their pastor purchased a 'not that great' 16,000 sq ft home on 19 acres, and said that would be 'against Christ's teachings' to disclose what he was paid).
A study by ECCU (http://web.archive.org/web/20141019033209/https://www.eccu.o...) stated that churches use 3 percent of their budget for children’s and youth programs, and 2 percent for adult programs. Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget.
Edit: I'm referring to this bit: "As an aside, I really dislike that so many of the US domestic charities are religiously driven". The bulk of your comment was interesting and fine. Unfortunately, flamebait dominates discussion regardless of intent, so your subtle point was lost.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France
https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/l...
Hopefully this will convince cities that putting people in jail is not a solution to homelessness.
Everyone will post that article about Utah but Denver instituted the very same program at the very same time with far less effective results.
I try really hard to maintain my compassion but I see a problem with seemingly no solution and am just not sure what we can even do at this point.
This SC decision seems pretty clear in saying that if shelters are provided but not used, that can be illegal. It is only not possible to say people cannot sleep outside if there is no other options.
I want to remain compassionate, too. What it comes down to for me is, I can't be too angry at the people living in these tent cities -- that's no one's first choice (barring, of course, that in any population some very small percentage of people want an itinerant life like that; certainly not this many).
So I wondered, how has society broken down that this is it for so many people? How has the city, the state, and the federal government skewed the great societal playing field, that so many people must live like this? The safety net has a lot of holes, more than it seems like it used to, and who gains? For whom is this status quo the preferred one?
I don't have answers (outside the usual economic stuff like, real wages haven't risen alongside the big three economic sinks for most people, education, health care, housing; a lot of attainable jobs have been sent overseas or replaced by technology), but where my compassion goes is, it can't be this many people's bad choices that got them here -- or, if it is, how has society been restructured that bad choices get people here, where falling this far didn't used to be such a readily available option?
I do know that, doing the same thing we've been doing isn't going to get things to be better. And, intuitively, I don't think that smashing up tent cities (like they frequently do in Portland, in "sweeps") or jailing these people is going to solve the problem.
I like what Utah has done. It's unfortunate that that hasn't worked in Denver; I wonder why. I don't like what Portland does (sweeps, moving people from encampment to encampment, tossing out what little stability and possessions they have). But I don't know what else we could do, locally or nationally.
Definitely open to hearing options.
I prefer the old days when the cops would show up and roust them out of there and tell them to go be a pain in the ass someplace else. I feel the same way about crime, too--the cops should be busting heads, instead we have muggers at the mall parking lot because "racism."
They definitely still are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner
The good news, I guess, is that kids now have the Internet to learn from, and libraries are no longer a foundation of civic life.
Is this born out by an increase in crime at the library? Or are you just not feeling safe?
A few weeks ago, I had to walk through and witnessed a woman pull down her pants and defecate on the sidewalk, about 50m from the library entrance. This wasn't in an alley or something--it was the main sidewalk, easily visible from the library entrance.
I would not bring kids there.
Hell public restrooms with showers like at a truck stop would actually resolve most of these issues. Most of them are there for the free bathroom facilities and the ones that came to use the chairs and internet wouldn't stink.
Had the lower court's decision involved criminalizing hundreds of thousands of people's daily lives, that might create the sort of controversy the court would consider vital to resolve.
But: Sometimes doing nothing is the best answer. Sometimes, it takes enormous wisdom and personal restraint to act on that fact by doing nothing. It's why sayings like "The only way to win is not to play" are popular.
(Entire blog post about that right here: https://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hand-li...)
"Each had been fined between $25 and $75. Five of them were sentenced to time served, while one twice served a single day in jail."
The core issue is punishing someone for something they are, vs punishing them for their behavior. The courts have said its cruel to prosecute someone for not having a home, when you're pretending that it's their behavior which is under attack.
Shelter is essential to life.
Yes indeed, because of those ruthless gangs of homeless drug dealers, what with their effective means to procure and transport expensive products without being noticed, and their total lack of any profit from said enterprise keeping them homeless.
There is crime anywhere there are lots of people who have needs they can't meet, but even so, the crime rates aren't significant compared to other populations. Analysis such as this one by the Guardian show that the existence of homeless encampments don't have a direct link to crime rates: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/23/homeless-vil... Sometimes crime rates may increase slightly, and sometimes they decrease slightly. Reports like these go back decades: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...
It is no secret that San Francisco has a homelessness crisis and if they can't prosecute how are they expected to clean up their city of homeless people?
Edit: This is a legit question why all the down votes?
1) Zone 90% of the city for detached single-family homes? 2) Mandatory decade-long design review for every new home? 3) Lots of parking lots? 4) Designate every extant building a "historical resource"?
Some combination of those policies should eventually solve the housing crisis, I think.
But homelessness of the kind at issue in this case is a very different thing. The vast majority of these homeless are mentally ill, drug addicts, or both. Re-zoning single-family lots won't do anything to address this problem, because most of them have families with homes who've simply given up on trying to take care of them.
Citation? That's a much repeated trope, but I've yet to see actual numbers to support it.
Thousands of homeless live on or travel to Skid Row each day, but most people who attempt this challenge don't get to double digits.
But within 7 miles of me in any direction, more than 100,000 new units have come online in the past 2 years, and more than another 100,000 are expected to come online in the next 2. Across LA, there are a few hundred thousand more units in the pipeline, some of which would already be built and occupied if not for NIMBYs in single-family houses opposing the construction.
And quite frankly, even if we could build at the speed of historic norms, there simply isn't the available land. You'd end up with housing tracts hundreds of miles from their associated job centers.
So, my point stands. The only people who believe this is a boom haven't looked at this graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LOSA106BPPRIVSA
Down the street are two new apartment buildings which house another 1000-1500 people.
Two blocks away from that are a cluster of apartment buildings which collectively house more than 10,000 people.
And quite frankly, you are simply wrong about the statistics you are citing.
The pre-1990 figure is primarily residential single-family homes, so each structure was on average capable of housing just 4 people. Current residential construction is primarily multi-unit residences, so each structure represents residential capacity, on average, of several dozen people.
So my point stands, and I would strongly recommend you take a statistics course.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LOSA106BP1FH
The breakdown of permits issued in 2018 in Los Angeles was as follows:
1 Unit: 10042 2 Units: 1528 3-4 Units: 522 5+ Units: 17432 Total: 29524 Source: https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/txt/tb3u2018.txt
As you can see from the total, this is not anywhere near 50000 units per year, as you initially claimed. These 30000 units are also spread across an area with diameter far greater than the 14 miles you started with.
Also, in addition to being wrong about every other aspect of this debate, you are quite wrong about this one. By FAR the majority of PERMITS go to single-family homes.
When you are very ignorant about a topic, it would be helpful to type less and read more.
Prosecution only leads to more problems, as people cannot adequately gain the skills they need in US prison and are then shunned by US employers.
I don't know what the situation is like in SF or Boise, but in LA more than half of the homeless aren't even from California. They're just here because they were given a free bus ticket and told they would get free food and drugs and good weather if they rode all the way to the end.
Expect a lawsuit.
Both Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey are suing New York City for busing its homeless over the Hudson River.
California has a long history of doing the same. It wasn't that many years ago that Los Angeles agreed to stop busing its homeless people to Nevada.
This is blatantly false. SF and LA were sending the homeless back to their cities of origin. Their is a great deal of reporting on this in the NYT and LAT. (See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattl...)
Texas and the Midwest represent the biggest non-local sources of the homeless in Southern California. Combined, the Midwestern states generate more of LA's homeless than California itself. It was the openly stated policy of Texas for more than a decade to deal with the homeless by buying them tickets to Los Angeles, and it is still their official (but unstated) policy with respect to addressing homelessness. Their governor has admitted as much on television.
It's one of the most affluent cities in world history. That is exactly the obvious solution that SF has intentionally avoided implementing.
If it was a matter of 25,000 people, sure, I understand that would be a huge problem for a city of that size. It's a matter of closer to 5,000 people that need housing (out of SF's 8k to 10k homeless, some are long-term homeless, some are short-term homeless, so you end up with a lower tally of how much housing you need at a given time than the max figures). They have no excuse for the grotesque human rights abuses going on there.
I'm overwhelmingly in favor of the Federal Government stepping in and doing some very unpleasant things - as necessary - to the city in order to force their hands on fixing homelessness there. If they won't fix it, bring the full weight of the US Government down upon their collective heads until they squeal and capitulate (as they are guaranteed to do). The Feds have dozens of ways to beat on the city until it does by forced measures what it should have been more than happy to do on their own.
I get what you're saying here but you're expressing it poorly, and without regard to the fact that the overwhelming unpleasantness is likely to fall on the vulnerable rather than the excessively comfortable, as exemplified by the proliferation of bad policy choices currently taking place at the federal level.
pass a version of sb50, one that especially forces SF and LA to open up large tracts (but not all) of the city to immediate housing construction.
in LA, mayor garcetti tried pushing through the construction of shelters in each of the council districts and got so much push back that only like 2 have gotten anywhere. we need to put local political pressure on the mayor and the council. the federal government is not the right political body for this effort.
Prosecute what? Simply being homeless? I'd rather buy the homeless some apartments/shelters than put them in jail. Jail is more expensive. It's dangerous. It prevents them for working their way out of homelessness.
Jailing people for the crime of being too poor for your tastes is shitty policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...
Also, what is prosecuted is a crime. The homelessness crisis is not a crime per se (as established again by this very ruling), so it cannot be prosecuted--only actions that are actually crimes.
The best solution is probably to redirect a number of the homeless to their tony neighborhoods. We would likely have rulings overturning shit decisions like this one in days.
Regardless of if they are annoying you, you shouldn't try to treat this like a pest-control situation.
I urge you to re-think your position, with the understanding that they are real in the same way you are.
Homelessness should be combated with compassion and understanding. We have a responsibility to provide shelter, food, and ways out of homelessness for people.
Vagrancy on the other hand should be met with something else. We have the right as a society to ensure that our cities and public spaces work for everyone.
Considering there are more than half a million homeless in the United States, the sound of that many people furiously masturbating must truly be deafening!
Not to mention the vast underground supply chains necessary to keep that many people constantly high and on drugs. For next to no money! How efficient!
I might spend a few weeks in the US to witness this unbelievable spectacle when I use up the remainder of my paid leave.
No one has a right to live where they want at whatever price point they want. This is the strongest economy of all time. Unemployment is at an all time low. And there are many locations where someone can do a job (not necessarily the one they want) and earn a living, instead of picking the more desirable locations. I believe every jurisdiction should be able to set its own rules governing where/when people can sleep. And taxpayers should not be obligated to pay for someone else's life due to their lack of personal responsibility.
The refusal to hear the challenge here is simply enabling the permanently-nomadic to take over land they do not own at no cost and with no consequence.
Indeed, and this court ruling doesn't say that. The limitations of the circuit court ruling are described in the article, which I'm sure you've read. Second paragraph.