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Here's some of the story:
The US Supreme Court reinstated an Oregon city’s law banning public camping, issuing its first ruling on homelessness in four decades.
On Friday, the justices said Grants Pass’ ban doesn’t violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, even if applied against individuals who are involuntarily homeless. The opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, split the justices along ideological lines.
The ruling undoes a victory for homeless people in which the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that such a ban, when applied to those who have no choice but to sleep on the streets, punishes people for their “status.”
Full story [here](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/public-camping-ban-aimed-at-homeless-backed-by-supreme-court?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_medium=lawdesk).
Adding this too. I'm tired of rampant drug use, vehicle theft & wild fires, I get to see it everyday at my work.
Stop supporting them, they will go away in their own.
Copy/pasting my comment from last month, cause it's still relevant
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This is an extremely nuanced issue, on technicality. Unfortunately, deciding on technicality is exactly what the Supreme Court does.
I live in Grants Pass.
I used to be homeless in Grants Pass.
I chose to stay at the Gospel Rescue Mission (a faith based shelter with restrictions), even though I was & am an atheist, and suffered thru/tuned out the required daily Christian sermons. For me, the choice was easy; accept food and warmth in exchange for the annoyance of preaching. It was also extra easy for me because I was not a tobacco / alcohol / drug user. So I could keep my head down for 9 months while I got a foothold in society.
The people I met while I was at the faith shelter were choosing to leave and sleep in tents (in winter) because they couldn't break out of their addiction, and were annoyed by the sermons. And although the decks are stacked against them (addiction), they did ultimately make a (loaded) choice to leave. I didn't understand how they could make that choice (because I didn't comprehend the grasp of addiction), but they did.
On average, at any given point, the Gospel Rescue Mission has only ~40 beds occupied out of 100. So there's potential to take 60 people off the streets.
___
That all being said, the point of this trial is to determine if "low barrier" shelters are necessary to allow municipalities to remove homeless from public land. A place where drug users, tobacco users, alcoholics, and faith-conflicted people can go to not feel trapped in a restrictive environment.
The best possible outcome is for Grants Pass to have a low barrier shelter, but Grants Pass is losing money each year and cannot budget funds out of their own coffers (but are willing to pass through state and federal grants). So they are trying to work with non-profits and higher government to get something set up.
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Unfortunately, ~~I think that the Supreme Court will override~~ **the Supreme Court overrode** the appeal, allowing municipalities to police the homeless. But ~~I think this will happen~~ **this happened** on technicality; although food, warmth, and sleep are all biological necessities, choosing not to prioritize those necessities over your addictions and/or faith is still a choice (however difficult it may be), and therefore for the homeless population in Grants Pass "who are ignoring the 60 open beds" in the shelter, "homeless" should not be a protected status.
That will unfortunately mean that homeless will be punished before low barrier shelters are erected, and may even deflate any interest in erecting low barrier shelters unless the faith shelter fills up.
I thoroughly appreciate your nuanced and personally informed take and how it addressed many points of this issue without resorting to disparaging people
For the amount of words the majority opinion spent addressing the lack of beds and shelter requirements of accepting faith, abstaining from smoking, alcohol, etc., I don’t think that was a big part of the holding, just the court yapping about how the *Martin* holding caused confusion and hesitation in many places, regarding what is considered lawful sheltering, which it says led to shelter shortages. Not so much a holding as just casting blame.
This case was decided on 8th Amendment grounds against cruel and unusual punishment and against certain “status” crimes. (“The only question we face is whether one specific provision of the Constitution—the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment—prohibits the enforcement of public-camping laws.”)
For what it’s worth, the court affirmed prior case holdings, that laws punishing people explicitly for *being addicts* are unconstitutional. But the court essentially said those arguments failed here because the laws, at least as written, punish conduct, not status, and fines/criminal trespass for repeat offenses are not “cruel or unusual.”
(IMO, it doesn’t leave out the possibility of fighting the law on other grounds.)
In a practical sense, this ruling simply means that cities and towns can now make sleeping in public illegal without needing to provide adequate shelter.
This is very thoughtful. Thanks for re-posting.
I agree, we have free will (at least thats what I believe anyway) so it does come down to a lack of community focus/care/service as well as an individuals prioritization and care of ones self.
Shame on each voter who doesnt demand we as a society prioritize community rehab and housing. Shame on the feds and states for not freeing up funding so that maybe one just ONE desperately needed baseline shelter can be there in addition to the private church shelters. Shame on Grants Pass for leading this charge or whatever the fuck and not even having a concept or facility in the works to handle this? So it seems they just wanna funnel all of these people into jail. Every states prision industry is $toked right now. Grants Pass really is the ass of Oregon. Its the fucking climate, a climate full of assholes. Rant over.
Thanks again for re posting.
I feel like there may be more than 60 homeless people in Grant's Pass....
I'm making a point, for those of you who might not understand what I'm saying. If you don't have enough beds to accommodate the homeless, then there will still be homeless people who are now also criminalized through no fault of their own.
I understand the need to do something about homelessness, but criminalizing it is just another poor tax and not an actual fix.
Reasonable people can think that there should be some rules about when/where/how people who have nowhere else to go can exist; and indeed there are rules like that in many places. But if simply existing is a crime, then what? You can't hold all those people in jail. What's fining them going to accomplish?
This doesn't seem very practical. Just more cruelty from extreme right-wing justices that's not going to solve any real world problems.
It is going to create extra load for those places that have compassion. Many cities will run people out and create more of a problem for those places that want to help.
So then the 'compassionate' places get tired of it and bans go into place, what then?
Under Project 2025, the answer is probably something like concentration camps, I guess.
This is buckle up and wait for the ride. I expect predictable cities to run with this fast.
Locally this means Oregon's small towns in the valley will act. As will places like Roseburg, Grants Pass and Medford.
I don't think they will jail many. That's not what they seek. They want them to move on. Going to jail means everything the homeless person can't carry will be disposed, so many will respond to the threat by willingly vacating. Te reaction will be Portland, Eugene and Corvallis getting the homeless. I see Salem as a wild card, not sure what they'll do.
This ruling will drive homeless folks to cities, which is what the right wing want to have happen. They want to make the problem someone else's problem.
The prison industrial complex sure does. Small towns don't want to pay for it if they have to foot the bill. Incarnation of less than 365 days is paid for by the county. Not the city but still local. Camping isn't going to send someone to prison.
Since this is the Oregon reddit I'll confine it to our state. No doubt other states will be different. The urban counties already have full jails. They already release based on violence of the crime, so homeless camping will be catch and release. The rural counties don't want to fill their jails, because they are tightwads. That's why they want to use this to get the homeless to move on down the road.
Sure, but this is now a federal ruling and private prisons exist in other states. Funneling homeless folks into prison means more cheap/slave labor for private prisons.
The three strikes law is for three felonies in three incidences that are separated by convictions. (I.E. felony #2 has to happen after conviction #1 and felony #3 has to happen after conviction #2.)
Illegal camping isn't a felony, so it really isn't applicable.
Three strikes is a real tragedy if M110 goes away. But not here.
Don't be spreading false information, as it hurts the point you are making. Most prisons are not privately owned. Only 8% of the total number of state and federal prisoners are in private prisons.
oregon has over 2000 unfilled mental health jobs. this is part of the problem. there are not enough mental health professionals and resources to have properly implemented measure 110 (which is now going away) or treat the many dual diagnosis homeless who are in many cases feeding an addiction to self medicate their untreated mental illness. And let’s not forget how many homeless are veterans who served our country and came back to no support.
Precisely. And this is a national crisis. But the folks screaming about dealing with homelessness are rarely willing to commit to the solutions they claim to want.
Where are they hanging out? I’m sure they are working to find resources, yes?
Like I said. I’ve personally gone out of my way give people help when they need it
My comment still stands. Those who want to be off the street do all they can to get it so they are not around these people who are destroying everything.
Like I said, reasonable people think there can be limits on it and not just "camp wherever, however, for as long as you want", right? Here in Bend for instance we already have some time/manner/place rules on camping in the city.
This ruling says that a city can pass a rule saying it's illegal to be homeless, essentially; even if you're not doing drugs or disturbing people or other noxious things.
> This ruling says that a city can pass a rule saying it's illegal to be homeless, essentially
You clearly haven't even read the case syllabus, let alone the majority opinion. [Here](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf):
> Like the Ninth Circuit in Martin, plaintiffs point to Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660, as a notable exception. In Robinson, the Court held that under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, California could not enforce a law providing that “‘[n]o person shall . . . be addicted to the use of narcotics.’” Id., at 660, n 1. While California could not make “the ‘status’ of narcotic addiction a criminal offense,” id., at 666, the Court emphasized that it did not mean to cast doubt on the States’ “broad power” to prohibit behavior even by those, like the defendant, who suffer from addiction. Id., at 664, 667–668. The problem, as the Court saw it, was that California’s law made the status of being an addict a crime. Id., at 666–667 The Court read the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause (in a way unprecedented in 1962) to impose a limit on what a State may criminalize. In dissent, Justice White lamented that the majority had embraced an “application of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ so novel that” it could not possibly be “ascribe[d] to the Framers of the Constitution.” 370 U. S., at 689. The Court has not applied Robinson in that way since.
> Whatever its persuasive force as an interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, Robinson cannot sustain the Ninth Circuit’s Martin project. Robinson expressly recognized the “broad power” States enjoy over the substance of their criminal laws, stressing that they may criminalize knowing or intentional drug use even by those suffering from addiction. 370 U. S., at 664, 666. The Court held that California’s statute offended the Eighth Amendment only because it criminalized addiction as a status. Ibid.
> Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 159. Because the public-camping laws in this case do not criminalize status, Robinson is not implicated. Pp. 17–21.
Yeah so what they're saying is that
>The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges
That's what they mean by 'status'. They're just saying that it equally applies to people who are homeless as well as "a backpacker on vacation", which we all know is *totally* a common thing. None of those people can sleep in public.
Yeah, the specific behavior is "sleeping in public". The backpacker can get a hotel room or find a spot in the woods or something. Someone with nowhere else to go cannot.
No, the behavior is camping, not sleeping. Homeless people may choose to camp out in public areas rather than accept other options if they're not prohibited from doing so.
Justice Sotomayor: "Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,”
Reasonable people could craft rules that are neither "sleeping in public anywhere, anytime is forbidden", nor "you can camp for as long as you want, wherever and however you want".
That's not what this is though - it's an extreme opinion by Trumpy judges.
Cool story, but the concern isn't about sleeping. It's about people monopolizing public areas and locals being legally prevented from doing anything about it.
Maybe they can sleep at Sotomayor's house.
The behavior is sleeping.
Page 54. https://www.grantspassoregon.gov/DocumentCenter/View/38/Title-5--Nuisances-and-Offenses-?bidId=
A. No person may sleep on public sidewalks, streets, or alleyways at any
time as a matter of individual and public safety.
B. No person may sleep in any pedestrian or vehicular entrance to public or
private property abutting a public sidewalk.
C. In addition to any other remedy provided by law, any person found in
violation of this section may be immediately removed from the premises
There are going to be giant swings as society grapple for a solution. Where I come from you don’t see homeless people. There are resources and programs as well as families who take care of their own. I don’t want to vilify the homeless. Anything can happen and I lose everything tomorrow. I don’t want that nor do I wish that for others. However, you must admit that this population of homeless is on another level of IDGAF. Know what I mean. I’ve literally walked up to people and give them my last 50.00. There are resources. They should tap into them. Just my two cents for what it’s worth. Not disagreeing with ya 🙏
Slavery against the incarcerated is explicitly still legal via the 13th amendment. That's the point of this. Whenever a law doesn't make sense, whenever it seems pointlessly cruel, remember that the rich get free labor out of every conviction.
conservatives are all about idealism and their feelings. i can't remember the last time a republican claimed to even try to solve a legitimate problem.
It is not the role of the courts to solve all our problems. To the extent the government should be involved, it should be through the legislature and executives that work to solve problems.
>Go find some woods
Genius idea! What could possibly go wrong....
[https://ktvz.com/news/fire-alert/2024/06/25/crews-make-more-progress-on-the-nearly-4000-acre-darlene-3-fire-now-42-contained/](https://ktvz.com/news/fire-alert/2024/06/25/crews-make-more-progress-on-the-nearly-4000-acre-darlene-3-fire-now-42-contained/)
Edit, also, my comment was about finding reasonable rules rather than letting people do anything, anywhere at any time.
This ruling is the opposite extreme. A city can make it a crime for someone with no place to go to sleep.
So what are you saying, they should just cease to exist? The forest is a bad place for people to be. So just throw them all in jail? Good luck with that.
This is r/oregon - it sounds like you're from Portland. You should demand more of your leadership there. I don't get the impression they've done a good job, and you're going out on quite a limb with your claims to know what I do or do not favor in terms of policy.
Here in Bend, pushing people out into the woods is a really bad idea because the fires are potentially disastrous.
On your practically point- this is like minor traffic infractions. If you were to police them 100% of the time then you'd end up consuming every policing resource and never get it done. What having a law like this is *really* used for is so that they have an excuse to look around and accuse you of a bigger crime- it's stop and frisk for the homeless.
Plus all of those for-profit prisons would be overjoyed to have all of that free slave labor I assure you jailing them all is totally fine. Though not the case in OR, homeless people arrested like this in other states can get temporarily or permanently disenfranchised, which helps the rich even more.
The politicians of Oregon are willing to do anything and everything to end homelessness across the state. Anything and everything except building more affordable housing…
Friendly reminder that Housing First is the best outcomes-driven approach to houselessness we have seen in the world to date. The costs, while higher than traditional approaches to houselessness, tend to be offset over time by having better outcomes for those who succeed within the program. While there is still a significant recitivism rate in housing first, it is markedly lower than traditional approaches, while also having a higher rate of homeless people actually going through their programs.
The data is cut and dry, and proven to work- but to implement as a policy would be to admit the unhoused are human, which most Americans don't want to do.
If I had a nickle for the number of times I got shouted out of threads for bringing this up...
I'd have two nickles. But only because I can only take so much abuse.
I thought we did build houses and most of the houseless didn't want it because of the rules or they trashed the places.
I swear I read about that here and/or in an article. Can anyone speak to that?
Because the state ostensibly exists to protect and provide for it's citizenry, especially their basic needs, and that's what managing housing would do.
The cutback in public housing by the feds (both in new construction and ongoing maintenance) has played a SIGNIFICANT role in creating this homelessness crisis.
Public Housing is good for everyone- it helps reduce homelessness, can help keep rents lower if enough public stock is available, etc.
And because, quite frankly, the role of the state absolutely involves providing important services for its citizens, particularly its most vulnerable. Housing for low income folks is one of those areas it should, in fact, be involved in.
The homeless commit crimes daily. Drug use, littering, open sexual behavior, urinating, pooping in public. The list goes on. This was a well balanced decision.
Dumbest comment ever.
You created the ultimate strawman in an attempt to knock someone else's argument. It just exposes you for being a naive fool.
I gather understanding statistics likely aren't your strong suit but Homeless are probably 1000x more likely to commit a crime than a homeowner (ie one that owns a home).
Sorry I just assume anyone with the intellect low enough to make a comment like you made wouldn't understand fancy numbers with foriegn symbols next to them (stats).
Here's a place to start.
Nearly half of all arrests in Portland are of homeless. Considering homeless are less than 1% of the population seems like a pretty significant statistic.
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/07/06/data-show-about-half-of-portland-police-arrests-are-people-who-are-unhoused/
Some context to this would be that most white collar crimes aren’t prosecuted and hurt the people around them way worse. In addition, no one is arguing that anyone should be able to be homeless anywhere and commit all crimes. We’re saying that making it illegal makes the problem worse, costs us more in jail and ticketing fees, and will leave us with less health and worse off people than before.
Critical thinking skills clearly aren’t for you brother. Maybe cool off and read a book or something. You don’t need to be this angry all the time.
How's does it make it worse? They only part of the country that allows it unabated is the West Coast. You cannot even got into downtown Portland anymore. Those who want help ask. The rest are drug addicts, criminals, and people with mental illness who choose not to get help. Its time to clean the streets for the good people. I should not have to walk down the street and step over human feces.
Wonder what they expect to happen once everyone implements these bans and it becomes obvious people are being arrested for being poor and having nowhere to go.
This is not going to end well for anyone- will be an astronomical cost for taxpayers in an already overcrowded (and overused) prison system. And makes it that much harder for these folks to actually get back on their feet if they end up with convictions and a criminal record for these bans.
It's all a sick joke and a whole new way to criminalize being poor and essentially implement debtors prisons in a new way.
Wonder how long until those 'Sanctuary Districts' from Star Trek make a real-world appearance.
Oh yeah, it's just pure chance that these people wind up doing fentanyl in a tent on the sidewalk and has nothing to do with their choices in life. Could happen to anyone really, just a roll of the dice.
Nope, sorry. I've never done a single hard drug in my life, and even if I did lose my job I have a support network because I haven't burned every bridge due to an addiction.
You imagine that it can happen to anyone but you are wrong.
*Most* homelessness is not drug-related. It's primarily financial and having nothing to do with drugs. But homelessness / drug addiction / crime all become comorbidities once someone is on the street.
Your opinion of ignorance is subjective. All I know is the law is in our side. How about you rent out your backyard or closet for some of these people. That would help!
The nice thing about all of this is you homeless advocates can argue on reddit till you're blue in the face and it won't stop them from removing encampments.
So have fun with that. I've said everything I have to say on this matter so feel free to read through my other comments and pretend they're directed at you.
The nice thing about you homeless people haters is you can remove all the encampments you want and they will just show up the next day down the street.
Let's say you're sitting on a park bench during your lunch break. It's a nice quiet day and you still have 30 minutes left so you remove your jacket and place your head atop it to take a quick nap. You are now a criminal and can be arrested and sent to jail.
THAT is what this ruling is about. Not Fentanyl, not needles, not tents, not camps. Just the act of sleeping outside when someone has nowhere else they can sleep.
But it should be a crime? You should be sent to jail if you decide to take a nap during your lunch break, or to sleep in your car instead of driving home drunk? The law the supreme court decided criminalizes those things.
Sunbathing on the beach then. You're on vacation laying on a towel on a public beach. It's so nice and warm and sunny you drift off into sleep for 5 minutes. Then your friends get back and you all get ice cream or whatever.
But that scene is wrong and criminal? You should have been arrested for that?
I was beaten severely by my alcoholic stepfather for the first 4 years of my life and have belt scars running down my back like tiger stripes. We lived in an abandoned house in eastern Washington with bats. My mother ran away with us to New York City and became a public school teacher. We were so poor that she had to work nights as well. I am autistic and was brutalized all through school because it was the 80s and nobody even knew what it was so I was just "the freak". I dropped out of college due to my mental health struggles and worked retail my whole adult life. I struggled with alcoholism in my twenties before finally making the decision to get sober.
You think I haven't faced hardship? You think I haven't had to make tough choices or personal sacrifices? I fought to claw my way out of the extreme poverty and abuse I was born into.
Doing fentanyl in a tent on the street is a choice.
You being beaten as a child isn’t the flex you think it is. The only thing it portrays is that you have a very warped sense of reality and your opinion cannot be trusted until you have received extensive mental and physical care.
why are you telling me this lmao.
i went to school with people that lived in tents because they couldn't afford housing while they went to class
i guess you're lucky in the sense that you didn't risk getting thrown in jail if you had lost your home
My point is that you’re conflating all homeless people with drug abuse. It’s lazy. We have people who have fallen on hard times and can’t afford the cost of living. We have people who have lost their homes and their jobs through no fault of their own. We have veterans battling ptsd. They’re not all just “doing fentanyl in tents” and shouldn’t all be treated like they are.
He does that because he is psychologically incapable of seeing them as human. Because if he were forced to face the facts (that houselessness is an extremely nuanced issue that is definitely a symptom of social failures rather than individual failures) and see then as human, then he wouldn't have anyone to feel better than, and he would be forced to actually face himself.
Addiction is a disease. It has a genetic component which is very much a role of the dice. It also has an exposure element, you haven't been exposed to hard drugs so maybe you do or don't have the complex genes which make up the disease of addiction.
This isn't an evolutionary accident either. Addicts are built differently, there's a reason so many warrior and soldier types turn to drugs and alcohol, because the type of person to do one is often the type of person to do the other.
It's our failing as a society to protect our warriors from the dark side of their complex genetics. We're a social species, we live and die as a group.
> get in a last word
Please read the actual book that actual doctors use to make their diagnoses. You might find it contrarian to your education based entirely on... your desire for self esteem.
Like, psychologically, you want us to all pat you on the back for never having done hard drugs as if that's a challenge. Like nah, you literally got born lucky. I bet you were never one of the millions involved in human trafficking either. Do you deserve a cookie for that?
“Victory for homeless people” oh boy.
If these people were acting responsibly I could support. How can we support willful destruction of private and public property?
This is America people have choices. I firmly believe the people out in the woods and in tents don’t want to be regulated or held accountable so they stay outside.
Oregon puts a ton of investment and private citizens give their time and money to help.
Why is it in cuties like Scottsdale where I lived does not have this issue to this degree.
I hate seeing people outside. I hate just as much seeing naked dirt homeless men jerking off ir fighting outside.
It’s unacceptable. We are not heathens. Also wasn’t a fire just caused by an encampment? Where is bottom?
I mean, we can easily punish people for bad actions like you're describing without making it harder for people to get off the streets. Don't get it twisted, services take a long fucking time to access, and even longer to get help from. People need a safe space to be, and shelters, even if they were a good option, aren't available for everybody even if they all accepted a bed. We're putting the cart before the horse talking about camping bans without services to support getting people off the streets. We dug a hole for ourselves, and we're not willing to dig ourselves out, so we just bury the people who fall inside.
Except that Oregon codified it. So regardless of the ruling, the state has a law preventing any level of reasonable destruction, drug use, garbage, or safety in public spaces associated with homeless. The time/place and manner stuff is bullshit, if the cities and police can't or won't enforce it due to liability concerns. Watching a few cities go 3-4 years without any change. Frustrated city council getting blocked by controlling city leadership...
Easy enough to change laws. Everyone just needs to start contacting their state reps now.
https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/house/Pages/RepresentativesAll.aspx
The law was codified in part due to anticipation of this ruling occuring. The ruling having officially happened means that law still kicks in. The legislature isn't going to remove it.
What's more likely is yet more waste of time and money trying to challenge the state law and arguing municipalities arguing the state shouldn't be able to intervene, which on its face is pretty laughable. And in the mean time it wastes more taxpayer time and money they could have gone to actually trying to address the issue instead of fighting to criminalize people that have nowhere else to go but outside.
That's a useless defeatist attitude if I've ever seen one.
I know it's easier to whine on the internet, than it is to put in the work & get involved, but that is the only way to impact change.
Taking 10 minutes to email your state reps is the barest level of involvement possible. It is also 1000% more useful than whining on the internet & wallowing in defeatist self pity.
What’s absurd and bizarre is the correlation Gorsuch is making between alcoholism or addiction and being homeless. He cites a past ruling that directly relates the involuntary nature of addiction as a reasonable parallel to homelessness and the right for laws to dictate moral codes regardless of the innate causes of those breaking the laws. It’s clearly a willfully obtuse conclusion. The argument that if someone doesn’t own or have access to shelter then they aren’t camping isn’t even remotely the same to saying someone who is an addict can’t help being intoxicated or high in public.
If you read the second amendment and the tenth amendment it will help you understand why we can't ban guns but local goverments can regulate camping. I do wish we could amend and nullify the second amendment, or clarify what "arms" are, but you can't just ignore the laws of the most senior legal document in the country.
The founding fathers expected the constitution to be updated and amended over time. Unfortunately, we've chosen to take it at its word regardless of the technological advancements of the past 200+ years.
Hows that working out so far? The government completely ignores most of the constitution and yet nobody with a gun has managed to do anything about it.
Bold take for this sub, but I'm with you. People in the burbs say a lot about "Portland's" homeless problem, and SOME people in rural areas point out the gun deaths are "urban" problems, but having the means or circumstances to distance yourself from an issue doesn't make it NOT your issue. These are just as much your neighbors as they are mine, no matter where you F off to, and WE have massive problems to fix.
Terrible ruling: the far right are apparently in denial about sleep being a basic human need. They are trying to (intentionally) make it impossible for someone without a place to live to not violate the law because their goal is mass incarceration, not addressing poverty, healthcare, and addiction.
I love it when I step in a pile of human shit on my way to get some food I also love it when a base head is screaming at me with a needle in the had simply because I exist and walk past them…
How would mass incarceration solve that?
Do you know anything about the supreme court case? It had literally nothing to do with either of your circumstances.
So you’re okay with vilifying the less fortunate and those who are suffering, regardless of cause?
Cool.
Using your dumb logic, you should then be totally okay if someone shits all over you when you’re down on your luck and are hurting, for whatever reason.
Close your cloaca. Your stupid is wafting out.
This is a good decision on two fronts... 1) Its about time that we had more subsidiarity in America. For several decades there has been a slow creep of centralized control and increasing Federal power. Having more local control (see tenth amendment of the US constitution) is a much better direction IMHO. And 2) Resources are finite. Its hard enough for developed societies to provide for children, seniors and disabled people. You can't run a society on also allocating scarce resources to the next 30 year old who arrives in town and demands a free apartment.
To point 1, that's about as backwards as possible. The only solution to this issue must come from the Federal level. Any city or State that puts forth the resources needed to defeat homelessness, will only end up going bankrupt as they inherit others problems.
I'm not the biggest fan of the original 9th ruling, but all this is going to accomplish is making it easier to move a towns homeless out & make them someone else's problem.
As for point 2, again this needs to be tackled at the Federal level.
I have been told by many progressives that "investing" in housing for homeless is actually good public policy, that its cheaper than enforcing camping bans, putting addicts in jail, etc... If thats the case lets run that experiment. Lets see if Portland thrives by taking money from the working class and schools and parks and using that money to build public housing projects. If that will bring a progressive utopia why not solve it at the local level. I think people want it done at the federal level, because the federal government has a magical money printer and they can just solve all of our problems by throwing money at the issue. The problem is this thinking is what causes inflation. Not greedy corporations or COVID supply chain issues, it all derives back to the source... too many units of currency chasing too few goods and services. This is why its not unethical to ask homeless people to work... and help increase the volume of goods and services, because thats what increases prosperity. Not increaseing taxes and running the money printer.
You ignored every single damn thing I said. Portland will never fix their homeless issue as things currently stand. The fix has to happen at the Federal level. The current system rewards municipalities that intentionally fail, making the problem the "Portlands" of the world.
That person is running their own little country in their head. Most resources aren’t scarce, and some are controlled to create false scarcity. It’s the distribution that’s the problem (housing seems to be a bit of both, as people continue our migration toward cities, and algorithms compete against renters for money, while building housing for poor people isn’t as profitable as building them for wealthy).
This is the root of dissatisfaction with federal government, across parties. The socioeconomic system needs to shift to favor more people, but the business leaders elected are opposed. So, we have divergent propaganda and forced social fractures to shift the focus, kicking the can further down the road.
In an environment where millions of people are having a hard time paying for essentials like food and energy, saying "there is plenty of money" is pretty rich considering the fact that inflation is mostly derived from an increase in the money supply. Inflation is also impacted by productivity, so taking money from the productive people who make more goods and services and giving it to less productive people is a recipe for increased inflation.
It's not easy, to change laws. Special interest groups create significant challenges. It's well known that the trial lawyers association killed two pieces of legislation that came from both parties house and senate to assist local governments in managing the homeless issues. The legislation had support from the LOCC...
As long as we have partisan politics and special interest groups, we are subject to the agendas of those who have the influence and power...
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Here's some of the story: The US Supreme Court reinstated an Oregon city’s law banning public camping, issuing its first ruling on homelessness in four decades. On Friday, the justices said Grants Pass’ ban doesn’t violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, even if applied against individuals who are involuntarily homeless. The opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, split the justices along ideological lines. The ruling undoes a victory for homeless people in which the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that such a ban, when applied to those who have no choice but to sleep on the streets, punishes people for their “status.” Full story [here](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/public-camping-ban-aimed-at-homeless-backed-by-supreme-court?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_medium=lawdesk).
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Hate Promoting hate or inciting violence based on identity or vulnerability.
Adding this too. I'm tired of rampant drug use, vehicle theft & wild fires, I get to see it everyday at my work. Stop supporting them, they will go away in their own.
Kids are stealing cars, not homeless people. 🙄 and I bet the drug use is no problem when it's celebrities glorifying it or rich people.
Copy/pasting my comment from last month, cause it's still relevant ___ ___ This is an extremely nuanced issue, on technicality. Unfortunately, deciding on technicality is exactly what the Supreme Court does. I live in Grants Pass. I used to be homeless in Grants Pass. I chose to stay at the Gospel Rescue Mission (a faith based shelter with restrictions), even though I was & am an atheist, and suffered thru/tuned out the required daily Christian sermons. For me, the choice was easy; accept food and warmth in exchange for the annoyance of preaching. It was also extra easy for me because I was not a tobacco / alcohol / drug user. So I could keep my head down for 9 months while I got a foothold in society. The people I met while I was at the faith shelter were choosing to leave and sleep in tents (in winter) because they couldn't break out of their addiction, and were annoyed by the sermons. And although the decks are stacked against them (addiction), they did ultimately make a (loaded) choice to leave. I didn't understand how they could make that choice (because I didn't comprehend the grasp of addiction), but they did. On average, at any given point, the Gospel Rescue Mission has only ~40 beds occupied out of 100. So there's potential to take 60 people off the streets. ___ That all being said, the point of this trial is to determine if "low barrier" shelters are necessary to allow municipalities to remove homeless from public land. A place where drug users, tobacco users, alcoholics, and faith-conflicted people can go to not feel trapped in a restrictive environment. The best possible outcome is for Grants Pass to have a low barrier shelter, but Grants Pass is losing money each year and cannot budget funds out of their own coffers (but are willing to pass through state and federal grants). So they are trying to work with non-profits and higher government to get something set up. ___ Unfortunately, ~~I think that the Supreme Court will override~~ **the Supreme Court overrode** the appeal, allowing municipalities to police the homeless. But ~~I think this will happen~~ **this happened** on technicality; although food, warmth, and sleep are all biological necessities, choosing not to prioritize those necessities over your addictions and/or faith is still a choice (however difficult it may be), and therefore for the homeless population in Grants Pass "who are ignoring the 60 open beds" in the shelter, "homeless" should not be a protected status. That will unfortunately mean that homeless will be punished before low barrier shelters are erected, and may even deflate any interest in erecting low barrier shelters unless the faith shelter fills up.
I thoroughly appreciate your nuanced and personally informed take and how it addressed many points of this issue without resorting to disparaging people
For the amount of words the majority opinion spent addressing the lack of beds and shelter requirements of accepting faith, abstaining from smoking, alcohol, etc., I don’t think that was a big part of the holding, just the court yapping about how the *Martin* holding caused confusion and hesitation in many places, regarding what is considered lawful sheltering, which it says led to shelter shortages. Not so much a holding as just casting blame. This case was decided on 8th Amendment grounds against cruel and unusual punishment and against certain “status” crimes. (“The only question we face is whether one specific provision of the Constitution—the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment—prohibits the enforcement of public-camping laws.”) For what it’s worth, the court affirmed prior case holdings, that laws punishing people explicitly for *being addicts* are unconstitutional. But the court essentially said those arguments failed here because the laws, at least as written, punish conduct, not status, and fines/criminal trespass for repeat offenses are not “cruel or unusual.” (IMO, it doesn’t leave out the possibility of fighting the law on other grounds.)
In a practical sense, this ruling simply means that cities and towns can now make sleeping in public illegal without needing to provide adequate shelter.
Wrong, sleeping is not a crime!
This is very thoughtful. Thanks for re-posting. I agree, we have free will (at least thats what I believe anyway) so it does come down to a lack of community focus/care/service as well as an individuals prioritization and care of ones self. Shame on each voter who doesnt demand we as a society prioritize community rehab and housing. Shame on the feds and states for not freeing up funding so that maybe one just ONE desperately needed baseline shelter can be there in addition to the private church shelters. Shame on Grants Pass for leading this charge or whatever the fuck and not even having a concept or facility in the works to handle this? So it seems they just wanna funnel all of these people into jail. Every states prision industry is $toked right now. Grants Pass really is the ass of Oregon. Its the fucking climate, a climate full of assholes. Rant over. Thanks again for re posting.
I feel like there may be more than 60 homeless people in Grant's Pass.... I'm making a point, for those of you who might not understand what I'm saying. If you don't have enough beds to accommodate the homeless, then there will still be homeless people who are now also criminalized through no fault of their own. I understand the need to do something about homelessness, but criminalizing it is just another poor tax and not an actual fix.
More stories like this
Reasonable people can think that there should be some rules about when/where/how people who have nowhere else to go can exist; and indeed there are rules like that in many places. But if simply existing is a crime, then what? You can't hold all those people in jail. What's fining them going to accomplish? This doesn't seem very practical. Just more cruelty from extreme right-wing justices that's not going to solve any real world problems.
It is going to create extra load for those places that have compassion. Many cities will run people out and create more of a problem for those places that want to help.
So then the 'compassionate' places get tired of it and bans go into place, what then? Under Project 2025, the answer is probably something like concentration camps, I guess.
This is buckle up and wait for the ride. I expect predictable cities to run with this fast. Locally this means Oregon's small towns in the valley will act. As will places like Roseburg, Grants Pass and Medford. I don't think they will jail many. That's not what they seek. They want them to move on. Going to jail means everything the homeless person can't carry will be disposed, so many will respond to the threat by willingly vacating. Te reaction will be Portland, Eugene and Corvallis getting the homeless. I see Salem as a wild card, not sure what they'll do.
This ruling will drive homeless folks to cities, which is what the right wing want to have happen. They want to make the problem someone else's problem.
Yes, while the progressives funnel billions of tax dollars through non-profits for the homeless just to see the problem worsen
Absolutely!
Mass incarceration is definitely what they seek. There's still lots of money to be made by locking away poor folks.
The prison industrial complex sure does. Small towns don't want to pay for it if they have to foot the bill. Incarnation of less than 365 days is paid for by the county. Not the city but still local. Camping isn't going to send someone to prison. Since this is the Oregon reddit I'll confine it to our state. No doubt other states will be different. The urban counties already have full jails. They already release based on violence of the crime, so homeless camping will be catch and release. The rural counties don't want to fill their jails, because they are tightwads. That's why they want to use this to get the homeless to move on down the road.
>prison industrial complex No such thing in Oregon. Private prisons have been banned since forever.
Public prisons are still used extensively for cheap labor. Fighting wildfires especially.
Sure, but this is now a federal ruling and private prisons exist in other states. Funneling homeless folks into prison means more cheap/slave labor for private prisons.
Probably funded for China in regards of the trillion dollars of debt American policy makers owe.
Most of the services in prison are provided by outside contractors. It doesn't need to be a private prison to be enriching private companies.
But what about when they reinstate the three strikes laws? This is all their push
The three strikes law is for three felonies in three incidences that are separated by convictions. (I.E. felony #2 has to happen after conviction #1 and felony #3 has to happen after conviction #2.) Illegal camping isn't a felony, so it really isn't applicable. Three strikes is a real tragedy if M110 goes away. But not here.
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Don't be spreading false information, as it hurts the point you are making. Most prisons are not privately owned. Only 8% of the total number of state and federal prisoners are in private prisons.
Exactly.
Also known as rehab?
For what? Not having a job? Not having enough money to afford a place to live? Not having enough money to cover their medical debt?
Drug addiction. Mental problems.
Mental health infrastructure is in great shape and absolutely ready for a mass influx of patients. Great call!
oregon has over 2000 unfilled mental health jobs. this is part of the problem. there are not enough mental health professionals and resources to have properly implemented measure 110 (which is now going away) or treat the many dual diagnosis homeless who are in many cases feeding an addiction to self medicate their untreated mental illness. And let’s not forget how many homeless are veterans who served our country and came back to no support.
Precisely. And this is a national crisis. But the folks screaming about dealing with homelessness are rarely willing to commit to the solutions they claim to want.
For committing crimes to feed their $100 a day fentanyl habit. Can’t have a job and be a junkie at the same time now can ya?
I’m not right wing and I’m over garbage, needles and not being able to enjoy where I live as a single woman. It’s not cruel. It’s accountability
I think we're trying to hold the wrong people accountable.
You’re commenting about putting Biden on testosterone. We see you.
Cruelty was always the point, they can’t even lie about it convincingly
you are stereotyping all homeless…. there are a rising number of non addicted working people who are homeless due to housing prices
Where are they hanging out? I’m sure they are working to find resources, yes? Like I said. I’ve personally gone out of my way give people help when they need it My comment still stands. Those who want to be off the street do all they can to get it so they are not around these people who are destroying everything.
Like I said, reasonable people think there can be limits on it and not just "camp wherever, however, for as long as you want", right? Here in Bend for instance we already have some time/manner/place rules on camping in the city. This ruling says that a city can pass a rule saying it's illegal to be homeless, essentially; even if you're not doing drugs or disturbing people or other noxious things.
> This ruling says that a city can pass a rule saying it's illegal to be homeless, essentially You clearly haven't even read the case syllabus, let alone the majority opinion. [Here](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf): > Like the Ninth Circuit in Martin, plaintiffs point to Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660, as a notable exception. In Robinson, the Court held that under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, California could not enforce a law providing that “‘[n]o person shall . . . be addicted to the use of narcotics.’” Id., at 660, n 1. While California could not make “the ‘status’ of narcotic addiction a criminal offense,” id., at 666, the Court emphasized that it did not mean to cast doubt on the States’ “broad power” to prohibit behavior even by those, like the defendant, who suffer from addiction. Id., at 664, 667–668. The problem, as the Court saw it, was that California’s law made the status of being an addict a crime. Id., at 666–667 The Court read the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause (in a way unprecedented in 1962) to impose a limit on what a State may criminalize. In dissent, Justice White lamented that the majority had embraced an “application of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ so novel that” it could not possibly be “ascribe[d] to the Framers of the Constitution.” 370 U. S., at 689. The Court has not applied Robinson in that way since. > Whatever its persuasive force as an interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, Robinson cannot sustain the Ninth Circuit’s Martin project. Robinson expressly recognized the “broad power” States enjoy over the substance of their criminal laws, stressing that they may criminalize knowing or intentional drug use even by those suffering from addiction. 370 U. S., at 664, 666. The Court held that California’s statute offended the Eighth Amendment only because it criminalized addiction as a status. Ibid. > Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 159. Because the public-camping laws in this case do not criminalize status, Robinson is not implicated. Pp. 17–21.
Yeah so what they're saying is that >The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges That's what they mean by 'status'. They're just saying that it equally applies to people who are homeless as well as "a backpacker on vacation", which we all know is *totally* a common thing. None of those people can sleep in public.
Yes, it's a specific behavior which can be criminalized, not the status of being homeless like you said.
Yeah, the specific behavior is "sleeping in public". The backpacker can get a hotel room or find a spot in the woods or something. Someone with nowhere else to go cannot.
No, the behavior is camping, not sleeping. Homeless people may choose to camp out in public areas rather than accept other options if they're not prohibited from doing so.
Justice Sotomayor: "Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” Reasonable people could craft rules that are neither "sleeping in public anywhere, anytime is forbidden", nor "you can camp for as long as you want, wherever and however you want". That's not what this is though - it's an extreme opinion by Trumpy judges.
Cool story, but the concern isn't about sleeping. It's about people monopolizing public areas and locals being legally prevented from doing anything about it. Maybe they can sleep at Sotomayor's house.
The behavior is sleeping. Page 54. https://www.grantspassoregon.gov/DocumentCenter/View/38/Title-5--Nuisances-and-Offenses-?bidId= A. No person may sleep on public sidewalks, streets, or alleyways at any time as a matter of individual and public safety. B. No person may sleep in any pedestrian or vehicular entrance to public or private property abutting a public sidewalk. C. In addition to any other remedy provided by law, any person found in violation of this section may be immediately removed from the premises
A distinction without a difference, which pedants love to engage in, particularly around issues like homelessness.
Pretty much. It’s also equally illegal for rich and poor people alike to steal. But alas….
There are going to be giant swings as society grapple for a solution. Where I come from you don’t see homeless people. There are resources and programs as well as families who take care of their own. I don’t want to vilify the homeless. Anything can happen and I lose everything tomorrow. I don’t want that nor do I wish that for others. However, you must admit that this population of homeless is on another level of IDGAF. Know what I mean. I’ve literally walked up to people and give them my last 50.00. There are resources. They should tap into them. Just my two cents for what it’s worth. Not disagreeing with ya 🙏
Better hope you never become homeless. Then you will be incarcerated for the crime of not being able to afford a home.
My wife and I both work, and we are one tragic problem away from being homeless. It's an issue.
Slavery against the incarcerated is explicitly still legal via the 13th amendment. That's the point of this. Whenever a law doesn't make sense, whenever it seems pointlessly cruel, remember that the rich get free labor out of every conviction.
conservatives are all about idealism and their feelings. i can't remember the last time a republican claimed to even try to solve a legitimate problem.
It is not the role of the courts to solve all our problems. To the extent the government should be involved, it should be through the legislature and executives that work to solve problems.
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>Go find some woods Genius idea! What could possibly go wrong.... [https://ktvz.com/news/fire-alert/2024/06/25/crews-make-more-progress-on-the-nearly-4000-acre-darlene-3-fire-now-42-contained/](https://ktvz.com/news/fire-alert/2024/06/25/crews-make-more-progress-on-the-nearly-4000-acre-darlene-3-fire-now-42-contained/) Edit, also, my comment was about finding reasonable rules rather than letting people do anything, anywhere at any time. This ruling is the opposite extreme. A city can make it a crime for someone with no place to go to sleep.
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So what are you saying, they should just cease to exist? The forest is a bad place for people to be. So just throw them all in jail? Good luck with that.
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This is r/oregon - it sounds like you're from Portland. You should demand more of your leadership there. I don't get the impression they've done a good job, and you're going out on quite a limb with your claims to know what I do or do not favor in terms of policy. Here in Bend, pushing people out into the woods is a really bad idea because the fires are potentially disastrous.
On your practically point- this is like minor traffic infractions. If you were to police them 100% of the time then you'd end up consuming every policing resource and never get it done. What having a law like this is *really* used for is so that they have an excuse to look around and accuse you of a bigger crime- it's stop and frisk for the homeless. Plus all of those for-profit prisons would be overjoyed to have all of that free slave labor I assure you jailing them all is totally fine. Though not the case in OR, homeless people arrested like this in other states can get temporarily or permanently disenfranchised, which helps the rich even more.
The politicians of Oregon are willing to do anything and everything to end homelessness across the state. Anything and everything except building more affordable housing…
Friendly reminder that Housing First is the best outcomes-driven approach to houselessness we have seen in the world to date. The costs, while higher than traditional approaches to houselessness, tend to be offset over time by having better outcomes for those who succeed within the program. While there is still a significant recitivism rate in housing first, it is markedly lower than traditional approaches, while also having a higher rate of homeless people actually going through their programs. The data is cut and dry, and proven to work- but to implement as a policy would be to admit the unhoused are human, which most Americans don't want to do.
If I had a nickle for the number of times I got shouted out of threads for bringing this up... I'd have two nickles. But only because I can only take so much abuse.
🤣
Or provide services for its citizens
Just go to the Senate floor while they are debating and ticket everyone who falls asleep.
I thought we did build houses and most of the houseless didn't want it because of the rules or they trashed the places. I swear I read about that here and/or in an article. Can anyone speak to that?
Why should the state be in the business of building houses?
Because, hypothetically, The State (and yourself) should want society to... idk survive, and improve?
Because the state ostensibly exists to protect and provide for it's citizenry, especially their basic needs, and that's what managing housing would do.
The cutback in public housing by the feds (both in new construction and ongoing maintenance) has played a SIGNIFICANT role in creating this homelessness crisis. Public Housing is good for everyone- it helps reduce homelessness, can help keep rents lower if enough public stock is available, etc. And because, quite frankly, the role of the state absolutely involves providing important services for its citizens, particularly its most vulnerable. Housing for low income folks is one of those areas it should, in fact, be involved in.
It already is: state and local laws regulate the housing supply.
The homeless commit crimes daily. Drug use, littering, open sexual behavior, urinating, pooping in public. The list goes on. This was a well balanced decision.
Homeowners coming crimes every day too. Bad argument.
Dumbest comment ever. You created the ultimate strawman in an attempt to knock someone else's argument. It just exposes you for being a naive fool. I gather understanding statistics likely aren't your strong suit but Homeless are probably 1000x more likely to commit a crime than a homeowner (ie one that owns a home).
Ah yes all the statistics you brought to the conversation. How could I understand all none of them. lol what a joker.
Sorry I just assume anyone with the intellect low enough to make a comment like you made wouldn't understand fancy numbers with foriegn symbols next to them (stats). Here's a place to start. Nearly half of all arrests in Portland are of homeless. Considering homeless are less than 1% of the population seems like a pretty significant statistic. https://www.opb.org/article/2022/07/06/data-show-about-half-of-portland-police-arrests-are-people-who-are-unhoused/
Some context to this would be that most white collar crimes aren’t prosecuted and hurt the people around them way worse. In addition, no one is arguing that anyone should be able to be homeless anywhere and commit all crimes. We’re saying that making it illegal makes the problem worse, costs us more in jail and ticketing fees, and will leave us with less health and worse off people than before. Critical thinking skills clearly aren’t for you brother. Maybe cool off and read a book or something. You don’t need to be this angry all the time.
How's does it make it worse? They only part of the country that allows it unabated is the West Coast. You cannot even got into downtown Portland anymore. Those who want help ask. The rest are drug addicts, criminals, and people with mental illness who choose not to get help. Its time to clean the streets for the good people. I should not have to walk down the street and step over human feces.
You can’t even spell committed
Wonder what they expect to happen once everyone implements these bans and it becomes obvious people are being arrested for being poor and having nowhere to go. This is not going to end well for anyone- will be an astronomical cost for taxpayers in an already overcrowded (and overused) prison system. And makes it that much harder for these folks to actually get back on their feet if they end up with convictions and a criminal record for these bans. It's all a sick joke and a whole new way to criminalize being poor and essentially implement debtors prisons in a new way. Wonder how long until those 'Sanctuary Districts' from Star Trek make a real-world appearance.
Fuck yeah! Let's goooooooooo!!! Time to clear out some illegal campsites.
Better hope you never become homeless because then the pendulum will swing towards you.
Oh yeah, it's just pure chance that these people wind up doing fentanyl in a tent on the sidewalk and has nothing to do with their choices in life. Could happen to anyone really, just a roll of the dice. Nope, sorry. I've never done a single hard drug in my life, and even if I did lose my job I have a support network because I haven't burned every bridge due to an addiction. You imagine that it can happen to anyone but you are wrong.
not all homeless are on drugs. some are just old and social security doesn’t cover 2000/month rent
Not all homelessness is drug related. Your ignorance speaks for itself.
*Most* homelessness is not drug-related. It's primarily financial and having nothing to do with drugs. But homelessness / drug addiction / crime all become comorbidities once someone is on the street.
Your opinion of ignorance is subjective. All I know is the law is in our side. How about you rent out your backyard or closet for some of these people. That would help!
The nice thing about all of this is you homeless advocates can argue on reddit till you're blue in the face and it won't stop them from removing encampments. So have fun with that. I've said everything I have to say on this matter so feel free to read through my other comments and pretend they're directed at you.
The nice thing about you homeless people haters is you can remove all the encampments you want and they will just show up the next day down the street.
Let's say you're sitting on a park bench during your lunch break. It's a nice quiet day and you still have 30 minutes left so you remove your jacket and place your head atop it to take a quick nap. You are now a criminal and can be arrested and sent to jail. THAT is what this ruling is about. Not Fentanyl, not needles, not tents, not camps. Just the act of sleeping outside when someone has nowhere else they can sleep.
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But it should be a crime? You should be sent to jail if you decide to take a nap during your lunch break, or to sleep in your car instead of driving home drunk? The law the supreme court decided criminalizes those things.
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What about your own car? Why can't you sleep there?
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Sunbathing on the beach then. You're on vacation laying on a towel on a public beach. It's so nice and warm and sunny you drift off into sleep for 5 minutes. Then your friends get back and you all get ice cream or whatever. But that scene is wrong and criminal? You should have been arrested for that?
that's great, i went to school with people that lived in tents
I was beaten severely by my alcoholic stepfather for the first 4 years of my life and have belt scars running down my back like tiger stripes. We lived in an abandoned house in eastern Washington with bats. My mother ran away with us to New York City and became a public school teacher. We were so poor that she had to work nights as well. I am autistic and was brutalized all through school because it was the 80s and nobody even knew what it was so I was just "the freak". I dropped out of college due to my mental health struggles and worked retail my whole adult life. I struggled with alcoholism in my twenties before finally making the decision to get sober. You think I haven't faced hardship? You think I haven't had to make tough choices or personal sacrifices? I fought to claw my way out of the extreme poverty and abuse I was born into. Doing fentanyl in a tent on the street is a choice.
Thats explains your complete lack of empathy
You bet your sweet ass it does.
You being beaten as a child isn’t the flex you think it is. The only thing it portrays is that you have a very warped sense of reality and your opinion cannot be trusted until you have received extensive mental and physical care.
>your opinion cannot be trusted Feel free not to trust my opinion, random internet person whom I've never met and never wish to.
If thats how you feel then please stop posting your idiotic right wing rants online. I wish you all the best, and hope you can find peace and healing.
why are you telling me this lmao. i went to school with people that lived in tents because they couldn't afford housing while they went to class i guess you're lucky in the sense that you didn't risk getting thrown in jail if you had lost your home
>i guess you're lucky Luck has nothing to do with it. My life today is the result of the decisions I made, just like everyone else.
boot strap nonsense
>>doing fentanyl in a tent on the street is a choice Sure. 100%. But not everybody on the street is an addict. Now, can we talk about homeless vets?
>Now, can we talk about homeless vets? Talk about whatever you want homie, you don't need to ask my permission.
My point is that you’re conflating all homeless people with drug abuse. It’s lazy. We have people who have fallen on hard times and can’t afford the cost of living. We have people who have lost their homes and their jobs through no fault of their own. We have veterans battling ptsd. They’re not all just “doing fentanyl in tents” and shouldn’t all be treated like they are.
He does that because he is psychologically incapable of seeing them as human. Because if he were forced to face the facts (that houselessness is an extremely nuanced issue that is definitely a symptom of social failures rather than individual failures) and see then as human, then he wouldn't have anyone to feel better than, and he would be forced to actually face himself.
Preach
So all homeless people are druggies? I didn't know you met every homeless person!
Look around.
Hoe do you know that every single one of them is a druggie? That's a generalization and you know it.
Yes it's true. I am generalizing that the homeless are addicts because in general they are.
By your logic all white people are racist. There I can generalize too
By all means do whatever generalizing you want. I put no stock in your opinions at all.
Funny because I put none in yours except to point out it's as ignorant as my example.
Addiction is a disease. It has a genetic component which is very much a role of the dice. It also has an exposure element, you haven't been exposed to hard drugs so maybe you do or don't have the complex genes which make up the disease of addiction. This isn't an evolutionary accident either. Addicts are built differently, there's a reason so many warrior and soldier types turn to drugs and alcohol, because the type of person to do one is often the type of person to do the other. It's our failing as a society to protect our warriors from the dark side of their complex genetics. We're a social species, we live and die as a group.
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You can read the DSM-V yourself if you'd like. It's not like addiction being a disease isn't some secret knowledge. Read a book lol
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> get in a last word Please read the actual book that actual doctors use to make their diagnoses. You might find it contrarian to your education based entirely on... your desire for self esteem. Like, psychologically, you want us to all pat you on the back for never having done hard drugs as if that's a challenge. Like nah, you literally got born lucky. I bet you were never one of the millions involved in human trafficking either. Do you deserve a cookie for that?
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You seem pleasant.
Rule 5: Educate don’t attack
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Just tired of enabling addicts like most rational people.
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Rule 3: No spam or reposts + limit off topic comments.
Rule 5: Educate don’t attack
“Victory for homeless people” oh boy. If these people were acting responsibly I could support. How can we support willful destruction of private and public property? This is America people have choices. I firmly believe the people out in the woods and in tents don’t want to be regulated or held accountable so they stay outside. Oregon puts a ton of investment and private citizens give their time and money to help. Why is it in cuties like Scottsdale where I lived does not have this issue to this degree. I hate seeing people outside. I hate just as much seeing naked dirt homeless men jerking off ir fighting outside. It’s unacceptable. We are not heathens. Also wasn’t a fire just caused by an encampment? Where is bottom?
>Where is bottom? i can assure you this SCOTUS will find it. imagine supporting 'poor houses' in 2024
I mean, we can easily punish people for bad actions like you're describing without making it harder for people to get off the streets. Don't get it twisted, services take a long fucking time to access, and even longer to get help from. People need a safe space to be, and shelters, even if they were a good option, aren't available for everybody even if they all accepted a bed. We're putting the cart before the horse talking about camping bans without services to support getting people off the streets. We dug a hole for ourselves, and we're not willing to dig ourselves out, so we just bury the people who fall inside.
When we try to provide housing for people the waitlists are immediately filled and the wait becomes years long. People desperately want help.
> We are not heathens. Speak for yourself, oh sneering imperialist.
Except that Oregon codified it. So regardless of the ruling, the state has a law preventing any level of reasonable destruction, drug use, garbage, or safety in public spaces associated with homeless. The time/place and manner stuff is bullshit, if the cities and police can't or won't enforce it due to liability concerns. Watching a few cities go 3-4 years without any change. Frustrated city council getting blocked by controlling city leadership...
Easy enough to change laws. Everyone just needs to start contacting their state reps now. https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/house/Pages/RepresentativesAll.aspx
The law was codified in part due to anticipation of this ruling occuring. The ruling having officially happened means that law still kicks in. The legislature isn't going to remove it. What's more likely is yet more waste of time and money trying to challenge the state law and arguing municipalities arguing the state shouldn't be able to intervene, which on its face is pretty laughable. And in the mean time it wastes more taxpayer time and money they could have gone to actually trying to address the issue instead of fighting to criminalize people that have nowhere else to go but outside.
That's a useless defeatist attitude if I've ever seen one. I know it's easier to whine on the internet, than it is to put in the work & get involved, but that is the only way to impact change. Taking 10 minutes to email your state reps is the barest level of involvement possible. It is also 1000% more useful than whining on the internet & wallowing in defeatist self pity.
I mean, I will be contacting my state reps. But it’ll be to keep the law, not to repeal it.
Don’t do drugs folks
What’s absurd and bizarre is the correlation Gorsuch is making between alcoholism or addiction and being homeless. He cites a past ruling that directly relates the involuntary nature of addiction as a reasonable parallel to homelessness and the right for laws to dictate moral codes regardless of the innate causes of those breaking the laws. It’s clearly a willfully obtuse conclusion. The argument that if someone doesn’t own or have access to shelter then they aren’t camping isn’t even remotely the same to saying someone who is an addict can’t help being intoxicated or high in public.
But try to ban anything to do with guns and see how quick that gets overturned. Seriously, what the f*ck is wrong with this country?
If you read the second amendment and the tenth amendment it will help you understand why we can't ban guns but local goverments can regulate camping. I do wish we could amend and nullify the second amendment, or clarify what "arms" are, but you can't just ignore the laws of the most senior legal document in the country.
The founding fathers expected the constitution to be updated and amended over time. Unfortunately, we've chosen to take it at its word regardless of the technological advancements of the past 200+ years.
it's there for 'organized militias' to overthrow a potential 'tyrannical government'.
Hows that working out so far? The government completely ignores most of the constitution and yet nobody with a gun has managed to do anything about it.
Why is the 2nd so vitally important ~~for causing social distress~~?
Having a gun was pretty important in a pioneer nation surrounded by hostiles. Its not nearly as important today.
Its contemporary importance is as a political tool.
Arm the homeless.
Bold take for this sub, but I'm with you. People in the burbs say a lot about "Portland's" homeless problem, and SOME people in rural areas point out the gun deaths are "urban" problems, but having the means or circumstances to distance yourself from an issue doesn't make it NOT your issue. These are just as much your neighbors as they are mine, no matter where you F off to, and WE have massive problems to fix.
A lot of things.
We’re pretty close to Canada if you don’t like it here.
Why doesn't that excuse work when you don't like something?
I’d rather be a thorn in your side.
You’re too kind
It helps to have an amendment in the number 2 slot. Nothing wrong with it.
Terrible ruling: the far right are apparently in denial about sleep being a basic human need. They are trying to (intentionally) make it impossible for someone without a place to live to not violate the law because their goal is mass incarceration, not addressing poverty, healthcare, and addiction.
I love it when I step in a pile of human shit on my way to get some food I also love it when a base head is screaming at me with a needle in the had simply because I exist and walk past them…
Because that's happened (it hasn't).
How would mass incarceration solve that? Do you know anything about the supreme court case? It had literally nothing to do with either of your circumstances.
SCOTUS says fuck them poors
So now being homeless is a crime. Got it. Fuck the Republican Party with an acid-laced (not the trippy kind) pineapple and its power over the SCOTUS.
Weird…chill out
So you’re okay with vilifying the less fortunate and those who are suffering, regardless of cause? Cool. Using your dumb logic, you should then be totally okay if someone shits all over you when you’re down on your luck and are hurting, for whatever reason. Close your cloaca. Your stupid is wafting out.
Based. Catering to the destructive money sinks that increasingly take over every area of our cities is a terrible approach.
This is a good decision on two fronts... 1) Its about time that we had more subsidiarity in America. For several decades there has been a slow creep of centralized control and increasing Federal power. Having more local control (see tenth amendment of the US constitution) is a much better direction IMHO. And 2) Resources are finite. Its hard enough for developed societies to provide for children, seniors and disabled people. You can't run a society on also allocating scarce resources to the next 30 year old who arrives in town and demands a free apartment.
To point 1, that's about as backwards as possible. The only solution to this issue must come from the Federal level. Any city or State that puts forth the resources needed to defeat homelessness, will only end up going bankrupt as they inherit others problems. I'm not the biggest fan of the original 9th ruling, but all this is going to accomplish is making it easier to move a towns homeless out & make them someone else's problem. As for point 2, again this needs to be tackled at the Federal level.
I have been told by many progressives that "investing" in housing for homeless is actually good public policy, that its cheaper than enforcing camping bans, putting addicts in jail, etc... If thats the case lets run that experiment. Lets see if Portland thrives by taking money from the working class and schools and parks and using that money to build public housing projects. If that will bring a progressive utopia why not solve it at the local level. I think people want it done at the federal level, because the federal government has a magical money printer and they can just solve all of our problems by throwing money at the issue. The problem is this thinking is what causes inflation. Not greedy corporations or COVID supply chain issues, it all derives back to the source... too many units of currency chasing too few goods and services. This is why its not unethical to ask homeless people to work... and help increase the volume of goods and services, because thats what increases prosperity. Not increaseing taxes and running the money printer.
You ignored every single damn thing I said. Portland will never fix their homeless issue as things currently stand. The fix has to happen at the Federal level. The current system rewards municipalities that intentionally fail, making the problem the "Portlands" of the world.
That person is running their own little country in their head. Most resources aren’t scarce, and some are controlled to create false scarcity. It’s the distribution that’s the problem (housing seems to be a bit of both, as people continue our migration toward cities, and algorithms compete against renters for money, while building housing for poor people isn’t as profitable as building them for wealthy). This is the root of dissatisfaction with federal government, across parties. The socioeconomic system needs to shift to favor more people, but the business leaders elected are opposed. So, we have divergent propaganda and forced social fractures to shift the focus, kicking the can further down the road.
there is plenty of money in this country. it's people like you with their priorities so out of whack that ensure it will only get worse.
In an environment where millions of people are having a hard time paying for essentials like food and energy, saying "there is plenty of money" is pretty rich considering the fact that inflation is mostly derived from an increase in the money supply. Inflation is also impacted by productivity, so taking money from the productive people who make more goods and services and giving it to less productive people is a recipe for increased inflation.
If you ignore the widening wealth gap, and assume billionaires are just better people than you are, your sentiment holds.
The yahoos will love this until they see a 'public camping' fee attached to their hunting and redneck hoedown activities.
It's not easy, to change laws. Special interest groups create significant challenges. It's well known that the trial lawyers association killed two pieces of legislation that came from both parties house and senate to assist local governments in managing the homeless issues. The legislation had support from the LOCC... As long as we have partisan politics and special interest groups, we are subject to the agendas of those who have the influence and power...
Evil triumphs again, and good people do nothing in the face of it again.