Dumb decision, but we really just gotta build more homes mainly.
A good overview of why this is the best solution to homelessness: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...
A good overview of why this is the best solution to homelessness: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...
Well, what's the alternative? Do you believe all local laws such as "FooBar park closes at dusk" are federally unconstitutional, and that actually enforcing any of them is "cruel and unusual punishment" against people who desire to camp there overnight?
Remember: It's perfectly possible to say that certain situations are unlawful/unjust/immoral for other reasons, it's not like "I think it violates the 8th Amendment" is the only option.
However, "it violates the 8th Amendment" is was what got argued in the court, and I think the conclusion is reasonable: The entire category of local laws (which are not new) are generally and by default not-against-the-8th.
Here's a quick "unit test" to apply: Could I steal and eat all the food I want with total impunity, provided I am careful to ensure my wallet is always empty so that paying for it in that moment is never an option?
The majority’s justification that it is fair because it applies to those whom it will never apply to is particularly craven.
No, in this [court] case an entirely different question was brought before the judges. "City policy shoulda been this other thing instead" was never on the menu of potential answers.
The Supreme Court is--fortunately, for now--not some sort of King Solomon dictator that can jump the rails from "whose baby is this" to "all babies must be fingerprinted by midwives."
In that time homelessness has grown to 600,000. It's a pretty obvious correlation.
Having effective and readily available mental health programs is a more critical step IMHO.
Now plot post-War housing stock against population. We have more houses than ancient Egypt ergo supply and demand is fake isn’t an argument.
The issue has never been housing inventory in an effort to making housing more affordable. If the past 4 years have shown us anything it's that even with skyrocketing interest rates and new construction matching pre-2007 levels, homes are still 40% more expensive than they were in 2020.
Assuming by houses you mean the high-density housing people are actually saying would help alleviate the issue.
With the majority of homeless, the reason would be easier access to illicit substances.
And a large chunk of the homeless population are drug addicts with serious mental health problems. All the free housing in the world isn't going to help them. So what does an owner forced to rent his property to a homeless person do if that person trashes the place, doesn't pay rent, causes problems in the neighborhood, etc.? Evict them? That just means that some other homeowner is compelled to be a landlord for this person (in your system).
Interest rates have tripled, which should have dropped house prices. Construction is faster than it was before the 2007 Housing Crisis. Both of these factors should have drastically reduced housing costs, however, prices are still 40% higher than they were in 2020.
I'm not saying to confiscate homes. I'm not saying to force people to rent out their homes to homeless people.
>A large chunk of homeless people are drug addicts with serious mental health problems.
Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs. A vast amount of homeless people are veterans who have complex mental health problems from their service in the military, elderly people who are trying to survive off of insufficient SSI payments, or LGBTQ youth who were kicked out of their homes.
This isn't a problem that can be solved with some witty one-sentence solution. This is a problem that takes layers of support systems ranging from health services, to public transportation, to subsidized housing, to job placement programs.
You were corrected on this above and chose to repeat it.
Concluding price from supply only is nonsense. In your interval, the population and real incomes rose. They rose faster than new housing formation, particularly in the cities which have a homeless problem.
If you look at the places that people actually want to live in the US, there are housing shortages in every major US metro area (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...).
"My comment on this is that the statement "just build more homes" is not an effective solution to this problem. We have enough homes. The issue is that as homes are viewed as an investment, rather than as a necessity to live a decent life, they must maintain scarcity. If there is not a scarcity, then it will be created. Interest rates have tripled, which should have dropped house prices. Construction is faster than it was before the 2007 Housing Crisis. Both of these factors should have drastically reduced housing costs, however, prices are still 40% higher than they were in 2020.
I'm not saying to confiscate homes. I'm not saying to force people to rent out their homes to homeless people.
>A large chunk of homeless people are drug addicts with serious mental health problems.
Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs. A vast amount of homeless people are veterans who have complex mental health problems from their service in the military, elderly people who are trying to survive off of insufficient SSI payments, or LGBTQ youth who were kicked out of their homes.
This isn't a problem that can be solved with some witty one-sentence solution. This is a problem that takes layers of support systems ranging from health services, to public transportation, to subsidized housing, to job placement programs."
We don't have enough homes in the right places. That's the point of the report in the article I linked, which lays out the number of homes in the major metro areas that people actually want to live and shows that literally all of them have a shortage.
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.
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.
Enjoy your park.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
It's genuinely insulting to log onto this website and listen to people repeat travel magazine advice as their solution to homelessness.
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?
Now the city doesn't even have to offer bed space.
No it doesn't
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.
But fundamentally it seems to me that shelters are just that. Really bad psych wards that no sane homeless person would set their foot in.
Horseshit.
It's less than $50B, most of which goes to subsidized housing. The actual amount spent directly on homelessness is likely less than $20B.
> In most cities something like half the homeless refuse free shelter.
I guarantee you there aren't free shelter beds for half the US's homeless population.
These are just talking points.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At best a DA is an elected official deciding whether or not to enforce a law on the books.
Wha? No, that's literally not true: Taking a de facto situation and making it more intense doesn't magically transmute it into de jure.
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.
Shelter with strings attached shouldn't count as a shelter.
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.
You may want to review the Constitution on that one.
> 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