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Comment by skeledrew | Hacker News Reader

If you staying in someone's house you generally have to follow their rules. Unless said rules are... over the top. Is attendance and - at least token - participation in religious activity considered over the top? What if it was a case of starvation instead of (or in addition to) the homelessness?

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Should you be subject to arrest if you don't want to be subject to religious conditions?

You may want to review the Constitution on that one.

That isn't there case though. You're being subject to arrest for failing to use an available shelter. The religious conditions are a side effect. Similar to how taking a dump is a side effect of eating, and so if you want to avoid taking one, you'd have to avoid eating, but you have to deal with the prospect of death as a consequence. You don't die from not taking a dump (usually), but from not eating.

Well, it turned out it was the case, and as it wound through the appeals process, this was upheld, because when the City knows that this is happening and continues to enforce, it becomes a de facto situation, that the Court specifically called out in their decision:

> A city cannot, via the threat of prosecution, coerce an individual to attend religion-based treatment programs

-- Judge Marsha S. Berzon, for 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

Is a shelter a treatment program? Or a place where someone can get some rest for a night or few, hopefully some food as well?

Can I set-up a homeless shelter on a farm and unless you pick strawberries you aren't allow to stay?

Shelter with strings attached shouldn't count as a shelter.

Sure. I don't see a problem if the work is within reasonable parameters. This is a private entity offering use of their property under reasonable terms.

And a government saying that you're subject to arrest if you don't agree to those "reasonable terms".

Keep in mind this was also how a lot of jim crow laws worked.

ex. it's illegal to be unemployed (enforced against blacks) where unemployed included self-employment. So now you have a large population that is forced to work for any wage or get throw in prison where they're forced into work detail anyways.

Yeah, a shelter is only truly a shelter if you don’t pay for it. Paying for a home is the very definition of homelessness, after all.

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