In April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a major case that could reshape how cities manage homelessness. The legal issue is whether they can fine or arrest people for sleeping outside if there’s no shelter available. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has deemed this cruel and unusual punishment, and this case is a pivotal challenge to that ruling.
The high court declined to take up a similar case in 2019. But since then, homelessness rates have climbed relentlessly. Street encampments have grown larger and have expanded to new places, igniting intense backlash from residents and businesses. Homelessness and the lack of affordable housing that’s helping to drive it have become key issues for many voters.
The case, Grants Pass v. Johnson, could have dramatic implications for the record number of people living in tents and cars across the United States.
Oh good. With this SCOTUS, I assume they’ll declare it open hunting season on homeless people.
I fucking hate it. I mean read this shit-
FINE people who can’t even afford a home when they have NO CHOICE but to sleep outside. And this even reaches SCOTUS? It wasn’t immediately laughed out of court? Not in America.
I live some distance out of town near a highway. I have to drive over a small bridge to get into town. The bridge is still not in town, there’s farm fields next to it. But there’s a sign next to the bridge, in English and Spanish, that says ‘no trespassing.’ To be clear, this isn’t some person putting it on their land, this is an official county government sign. And yes, before the sign went up, people were sleeping under there.
These people have nowhere to go. You can’t even argue that they’re wanted as bodies for the industrial prison system, because they usually aren’t arrested, just chased off. And apparently given fines they can’t afford now.
I honestly have no idea what cities and counties expect these people to do.
Die.
They expect us to die.
I spent half of my 20s homeless in Canada and was outright told by a cop that he would have preferred to come deal with my dead body. “Why don’t you kill yourself? Make my life a lot easier so I wouldn’t have to come and tell your lazy ass to move and get a fucking job. Get out of here. If I see you back here again then my boots won’t and might walk into you.”
Most cops were spiteful and vindictive but wouldn’t outright say anything like he did. Most of the time I would ask for help. Like where should I go? Always afraid. Always nervous. I didn’t want to be homeless. I was terrified. I wanted to be okay again. But everytime I asked for help they would shrug and say “That’s not my job.” Meanwhile the people whose job it would be? They’re not funded.
They just want us to die.
I can absolutely believe that, but driving people out of wherever they settle isn’t going to achieve that either. It seems like they think as long as they treat homeless people like shit, the problem will solve itself, despite that having been shown to be demonstrably untrue for, oh, I don’t know… centuries?
They just don’t care. As far as they’re concerned the problem cannot be solved. If it’s existed for centuries then it’s because it doesn’t have an answer, right? They’re looking for the cheapest solution at this point because they “know” they’ll have to do it forever anyway so find the most cost effective solution.
There are two.
The first is to get them out of your city. Typically this is just done with a bus ticket. Relatively cheap but a lot get sent back or there ends up being problems with the other towns.
The second is to kill them. There’s no one to pay out the money to most of the time and the cost of a paupers grave is considerably cheaper than housing or prison.
It’s just purely financial. To people making these decisions, our lives are not worth the financial cost of sustaining them. It’s considered a drain on resources. It’s a complete depersonalization which is accepted by most of society because most of society depersonalize homeless people themselves either out of fear of unwarranted and random attack (which is rare as FUCK) or because it’s a reminder that their own lives could go very badly. Then there’s the propaganda people buy into and say that they either put themselves in this position with drugs or are dangerous.
To the vast majority of society we are not even considered human beings. To businesses and the government we aren’t considered human beings. We’re just a statistic.
I read the news a lot, especially local news. My city has seen unprecedented levels of homelessness in the past few years.
Who does the local media interview the most about this? Homeless people? Non-profits organizations trying to help despite lack of resources? Homeless shelters? Addiction services?
Nope; the local chamber of commerce. The focus is always on “oh no the poor people are affecting our businesses!” and never on the people literally dying on our streets. It’s disgusting.
This is the most telling part of what I said in that we aren’t considered people. The News reporting on it affecting everyone other than the people it affects because the news is for people, not for disgusting animals. Unless you can water ski and are a dog.
“Let’s cut some taxes for us to help us keep our businesses running.”
The whole thing just makes me sick. And these people also claim to love Jesus, of course. It’s amazed there are any Christians left after observing century after century of hypocrisy.
Or they want to arrest them to increased the slave population.
That’s what a baseball bat and dumpster are for.
There are a bunch of common sense principles that you’d think would be obvious to anyone but apparently aren’t reflected in any laws. One of those principles is that nobody should ever be penalized for something beyond their control.
They would just find some way to claim that it wasn’t beyond their control because they didn’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps or whatever.
It wouldn’t totally solve homelessness, but it would go a big way towards it if we offered housing, a UBI, and medical, rehab and psychological care free of charge. But this is America.
Their purpose is to serve as a visible (but not too visible) threat to force people to sell their lives in exchange for the money needed to avoid that fate.