Hacker News Reader

Comment by PessimalDecimal | Hacker News Reader

What about going to a homeless shelter, or to a municipality that does allow homeless encampments?

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.

This seems like a slippery-slope argument.

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).

> as more and more municipalities ban homeless camps if that's a possible endgame, the law should have been to ban being homeless

> 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.

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.

tens of thousands of what? On Naked and Afraid, they are literally naked with only one tool.

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?

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.

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.

Homeless people don't tend to have the mobility you imagine.

There is a charity run homeless shelter in the town where they were camping on public grounds.

Which requires people staying there to attend religious services.

The horror. They can just go and...not pay attention? Just like most people who attend religious services.

Go to church or go to jail is not a choice we force people to make in this country.

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.

No, it's an ultimatum to not turn places intended for the public into your personal campsite. Even if your circumstances are bad.

That's not what the word ultimatum means, and they are the public.

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.

Enjoy your park.

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 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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com