Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/17/supreme-court-will-decide-on-whether-its-a-crime-to-sleep-outside-if-no-inside-space-is-available.html
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In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
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What a failure of “civilization” that such a thing needs to be decided by courts.
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If sleeping outside is criminal, it seems like housing should be a guaranteed human right.
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one grim political cartoon notion: five out of nine justices with piles of ‘gifts’ behind them insist on detailed legal precedent/definitions of the words: “inside”, “space”, “available”, oh and what the hell “sleep” -sigh- (“So, for example, if there’s ‘space’ under a tree in a national park somewhere…” --justice samuel anthony alito jr)
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My favorite quote I learned in law school. Anatole France, just to give credit where credit is due.
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Sorry folks, if you don’t have sufficient money, you simply don’t have the right to exist! I mean, it’s a basic tenet of capitalism, and I’d not be surprised if this Supreme Court explicitly came out and said it. (That we have more empty housing than homeless people in this country is the grotesque icing on the obscene cake.)
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Sounds like these MFers want to outlaw going camping.
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Just wait until they try to tell those who “don’t deserve to exist” to eat said cake.
To those chomping at the bit to flag anyone they dislike: we have already settled the issue of whether it is appropriate to post guillotine images or not.
It is a WARNING to avoid repeating history; NOT a wish.
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This is such a goddamned failure of our society.
Housing
First
It works.
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Interesting take on that. Housing first works most of the time.
A randomized controlled trial conducted in Santa Clara, California, found that providing chronically homeless folks with permanent housing and voluntary supportive services had an 86% success rate in terms of keeping them from returning to living on the streets. This and similar findings by other studies have been hailed by advocates as a slam-dunk validation for the housing first approach to tackling homelessness. But, Gong says, it also suggests there’s still a sizable population — the remaining 14 percent — that need more than just housing and access to what’s currently available to them for services. In a state like California, which has a massive population of chronically unhoused people, an 86% success rate suggests there would still be thousands of people living on the streets.
86% success rate is nothing to sneeze at, but it is not a cure all. It would certainly be a start, though.
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I fully expect the “originalists” on the court will find a way to think our founding fathers wouldn’t approve of “sleeping outside on public land”, despite that the first colonists were basically squatting and building shanty towns.
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Of course it’s not a cure all, but it’s really, really hard to successfully deal with other issues, whether they’re addiction or other mental health issues or whatever, when you don’t know where you’re going to be sleeping that night or if it’s going to be a safe place. Too many temporary and permanent housing programs still have zero tolerance policies when it comes to drug and alcohol usage, and that’s really just backwards of how it should be. So sure, housing alone isn’t going to solve homelessness for everyone, but it’s almost certainly a necessary step for everyone.
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one thing that the randomized trial can’t account for is the social connections. people who have been without housing for significant time tend to create community where they are at.
i think housing first is the right solution, but being able to keep your community ties can be important too. and i can only imagine that there’s both some guilt and some pressure when some of the people who you counted on are now housed and you’re not; and vice-versa.
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I mean… I don’t know about where you live, but in my city it’s been basically cops playing whack-a-mole shuffling human beings around when people complain.
I’ll take 86%. That’s pretty damn good.
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Who would have thought that Deep Space 9 would be correct…
I mean, the people who created the Sanctuary District at least pretend to care about people. Here in the real world, only cruelty runs rampant.
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I got the t-shirt and the bumper sticker to prove it!
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Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good, especially in a complex and multidimensional problem like homelessness.
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Put people in houses. That’s what we should do. Offer universal healthcare. Offer public education up through higher ed.
We can do all that if we taxed the rich and cut down on our imperial ambitions. We choose not to fix these problems, in favor of enriching a few assholes.
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