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notaustinpowers

It's now, effectively, illegal to just exist as a homeless person.

Sleeping in your car? Jail.

Sleeping under a bridge? Jail.

Sleeping on a park bench? Jail.

Sleeping in the woods? Jail.

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One city banned camping in public, it was challenged, SC said "yep, that's a fair law". After this decision other cities may also ban camping, while some cities may welcome public camping. The SC is leaving it to the lowest level of government to decide for themselves, upholding a democratic principle.

IDK man, I think arresting people for just existing in public who have nowhere else to go is a morally reprehensible act and has no right existing in a form of government that should operate under the best interest of it's citizens.

But that's just me I guess.

No problem, go to your municipal meetings and let them know you are in favor of allowing camping in public spaces in your municipality. If you vote in your local elections your representatives may also have similar opinions to yours. Talk to your friends and neighbors to ask how they feel about it too, maybe they agree.

Democracy.

People dying in the streets isn't something that should be up for debate or popular vote :)

> People dying in the streets isn't something that should be up for debate or popular vote

This is useless hyperbole.

If I cared I wouldn't have posted it.

The point isn't clear for you is it

Now now, that would require the suburbanites who are eager to tut-tut and scold city-dwellers to put their money where their mouth is.

There's no great answer here, unfortunately. Let's say the Supreme Court had ruled the other way and said "You cannot ban camping on public spaces if you don't have adequate shelter."

The effect would be that smaller towns with limited budgets would face a potential influx of homeless people, since they don't have the resources to build shelters and therefore cannot ban public camping.

Also, the proposed shelter constraint on the law is pretty dubious. Say a town builds a shelter and then it bans public camping. Does that law get nullified if a tornado destroys the shelter space? What if the shelter has 5 beds, but the homeless population grows to 100? At what point does that law become voided?

> who have nowhere else to go

I call BS, there's thousands of other places in the country aside from downtown SF or other areas where they decide to congregate

SC isn't banning homelessness nationwide, I highly doubt every municipality will ban it at once. It's just giving municipalities that suddenly get hordes of them showing up the ability to make them go elsewhere

3 of those things are simply trespassing.

Where should they sleep?

On property they own or property they have been granted permission to occupy.

Do you realize we are discussing people who own no property at all?

Why is that relevant? People who do own things do not get to trespass; people who do not own things, likewise, do not get to trespass.

How does one trespass on public land

A lot of public land has hours when it is closed. Every park in my city closes at 11, after that you are trespassing.

But where do they sleep?!!

It's relevant because there are people with nowhere to sleep. It's not possible for them to not sleep.

Is your solution to jail them all, so that they sleep in jail?

> On property they own or property they have been granted permission to occupy.

By definition, the homeless don't have that.

The homeless have permission to be in many places at many different times. If they are unhappy with the current place and time limitations then they should vote for representatives to change such limitations.

Let's see then. In order to vote, you will need:

Driver's License or State ID. In my state (Georgia) to get these you must also provide a birth certificate or passport, as well as two documents showing Georgia residency (I.E., utility bill/phone bill that must have your address listed on them.

Okay, so those are unavailable to the homeless as they most likely will not have their birth certificate or passport with them (as belongings are routinely confiscated by police during removals of homeless encampments). Nor will they have an address or a utility bill in their name. Oh, also, Georgia requires a residential address for these ID cards so while you can use a PO Box on the card itself, they still need proof of a residential address for their records.

So, how again are the homeless expected to vote when they, legally, can't even get a drivers license or state ID card? This isn't even getting into the $25 it costs to get a copy of your birth certificate or the $32 fee for get a state ID. $57 could potentially feed them for a week, and when you don't know when your next meal is going to be, what's more important to you in that situation?

Ok, but where exactly?

It's midnight, there are several thousand homeless people in the city, where do they sleep?

Would you rather they slept in the sewers?

Trespassing... on public goods?

To me, who grew up in Central Europe and is obviously biased, that is wild.

None of those are trespassing. You're permitted to be in your car, you're permitted to be on a park bench, you're permitted to be under a bridge, you're permitted to be in the woods. It's only when you need to be there that it's a crime.

Some parks have rules against smoking, grilling, flying kites, bringing dogs, playing lawn darts, being there after 9pm (that's the trespassing part), and yes, even camping. And those are all voted on by elected officials. If you don't like it, vote for different councilmen.

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