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It makes it, not just de facto, but de jure illegal to be poor. If someone can't afford a home, where are they meant to go? Just fuck off and die?
by delecti 2y ago
It makes it, not just de facto, but de jure illegal to be poor. If someone can't afford a home, where are they meant to go? Just fuck off and die?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PessimalDecimal 2y agoWhat about going to a homeless shelter, or to a municipality that does allow homeless encampments?
- squidbeak 2y agoHomeless people don't tend to have the mobility you imagine.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoThere is a charity run homeless shelter in the town where they were camping on public grounds.
- jjk166 2y agoWhich requires people staying there to attend religious services.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoThe horror. They can just go and...not pay attention? Just like most people who attend religious services.
- jjk166 2y agoGo to church or go to jail is not a choice we force people to make in this country.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoIt's not "church or jail". The shelter is just one option. They could also crash on a friend's couch, or go somewhere with a shelter that doesn't require religious service.
- jjk166 2y agoOr they could just stop being poor and buy a mansion. No one is sleeping outside because they don't want to sleep on a friend's couch. It's a government ultimatum to force people to attend religious services, plain and simple.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoNo, it's an ultimatum to not turn places intended for the public into your personal campsite. Even if your circumstances are bad.
- jjk166 2y agoThat's not what the word ultimatum means, and they are the public.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoYes. It is what ultimatum means, because they can no longer flout the law without punishment. They are "members of the public". That doesn't mean they can unilaterally dictate the laws of society. If they were "the public", then they could just change the law. I wonder why they can't? Because most people don't want anyone setting up their household in a public park.
- 2y ago
- wolrah 2y ago> There is a charity run homeless shelter in the town where they were camping on public grounds. That "charity" is a religious organization which requires all residents to abide by strict "Christian values" including immediate abstinence from all drugs (even nicotine) and sex, attendance to multiple daily sermons, etc. while also working for the organization. The group filed a brief with the court arguing for the ruling we got, stating that people were choosing to camp on the streets instead of go to the shelter as if that weren't an indictment of their offering that they believe a significant portion of their residents were only there because they would otherwise be arrested and not because it was actually a better choice than being on the street.
- tumult 2y agoArticle: "The homeless residents said those penalties violated the Eighth Amendment of the US constitution because the city did not have any public shelters."
- Xylakant 2y agoWhat if just all municipalities forbid homeless encampments? The result of this will be a race to the bottom, as more and more municipalities ban homeless camps, the negative effects will concentrate on fewer and fewer municipalities, making the issue worse and worse. This will in turn drive them to forbid camps as well.
- ydnaclementine 2y ago> as more and more municipalities ban homeless camps if that's a possible endgame, the law should have been to ban being homeless
- 0xcafefood 2y agoThis seems like a slippery-slope argument.
- crooked-v 2y agoOf course, eventually that will lead to a growing number of people just giving up and either accumulating tickets they will never be able to pay or actively draining city money by spending every other day in jail (which also happens to be temperature-controlled and have free food).
- Supermancho 2y ago> What if just all municipalities forbid homeless encampments? If all municipalities did this instantly and provided transportation to the homeless - either unincorporated parts of a state, or jail, most would choose jail. Nobody wants to try to survive in the wilderness.
- fragmede 2y agoYou might not, but nobody? There are those that do. There are even TV shows, multiple reality shows for watching people do just that. It’s not easy living for sure but getting a cabin out in the woods and trying to live off the land is totally a thing people do. For a real world example, you don’t go to the woods outside of Seattle because there are unhoused people living there and it's dangerous to go there.
- crooked-v 2y agoThere aren't even nearly enough homeless shelters. That holds the same basically everywhere in the US with a significant homeless population, except for those specific locations with a right to shelter law, like NYC.
- tedivm 2y agoBefore this case went to the supreme court, if a city offered someone on the street access to a homeless shelter then they were allowed to force the person to move. It was only when the city did not have shelter space that they were no longer allowed to criminalize the person for existing on public property. Now the city doesn't even have to offer bed space.
- gopher_space 2y agoThe shelters are full and other areas are in the same situation. When you see people living on the street that means the system is overloaded. The "visible" homeless are the tip of an enormous iceberg.
- Psillisp 2y agoBe sure to get your bus ticket to shantytown after you get out of jail for existing.
- thegrim33 2y agoI know you're not actually asking for answer but the US spends trillions of dollars a year supporting homeless and otherwise disadvantaged people. There are public programs that exist solely to provide these people the help they need. In most cities something like half the homeless refuse free shelter.
- engineer_22 2y ago> the US spends trillions of dollars a year supporting homeless and otherwise No it doesn't
- crooked-v 2y agoIn most cities, free shelter sucks. It's only available on a day by day basis (sometimes requiring waiting in line in a specific place as late as 7 or 8 pm to know if there will be any beds open), or it has weird hours that get in the way of working schedules, or it requires people to participate in religious activities, or it puts everyone in one big room with no safety measures, or it has no way to store even minimal possessions securely, or it has nowhere to plug in a phone charger, or it has all the spaces to plug in phone chargers in one heap where it's easy for someone to steal a phone as everyone's being made to rush out the door at 7 AM, or it doesn't allow even well-behaved animals, or... And on top of that, there's almost always a drastic shortage in shelter beds, so even people who jump through all the hoops only have a small chance of getting a spot. For example, Portland here, which is considered pretty homeless-friendly by a lot of people, only has enough shelter beds for about 1/5th of the homeless population. For a lot of people, even perfectly functional, non-mentally-ill people, this makes it a perfectly logical move to look at shelters as only a measure of last resort and otherwise sleep in a car or find somewhere out of the way that will let them put their energy into trying to improve their situation rather than into trying to satisfy a new shelter's rules every day.
- rightbyte 2y agoI don't think it is a good idea to run psych wards but without doctors and nurses and calling it something else to avoid moral responsibility. But fundamentally it seems to me that shelters are just that. Really bad psych wards that no sane homeless person would set their foot in.
- _heimdall 2y agoIt doesn't technically make being poor illegal. The sad truth is that plenty of people will living on the streets may now be breaking the law simply by having nowhere else to go, but that shit will roll up hill eventually. Courts and jails don't have the capacity to deal with charging everyone in that situation. Either cops will avoid arresting people for it or cities will eventually have to dramatically expand housing options for the homeless. In the meantime, yeah this is terrible for anyone who is homeless. It could very well do a disservice describing eh ruling as making being poor illegal though. The ruling only covers homeless camps, there are still a ton of poor people who do still have a roof over their heads that aren't breaking the law by being poor.
- tsimionescu 2y agoSomething can be illegal even if cops are not resting everyone who does it. That's the worse situation in fact, when it becomes the sole discretion of individual police officers who to punish.
- _heimdall 2y agoI totally agree. My point, though, was that being poor isn't illegal. The ruling keeps the jurisdictions for camping in public at the city level, it isn't specific to why someone is camping or broadly about being poor. If cops have to stop enforcing it the laws will eventually be overturned. If cops do enforce it courts and jails will back up, eventually the law would either be dropped or more support would be built out to help those in need. That's not to say I like the law. I would much prefer it didn't pass, and in general I disagree with a legal system that is focused on punishing citizens rather than helping them.
- tsimionescu 2y agoThe point is though that, at least in some jurisdictions, being so poor that you can't afford a house is now effectively illegal. Sure, the same law prevents the rich from camping outside, but that is irrelevant. The relevant thing is that there is no legal way to be homeless in those jurisdictions. And note that cops don't have to actually arrest people in order to enforce those laws. They can simply prevent them from sleeping, endlessly.
- Terr_ 2y ago> It makes it, not just de facto, but de jure illegal to be poor. Wha? No, that's literally not true: Taking a de facto situation and making it more intense doesn't magically transmute it into de jure. If it is truly de-jure illegal to be poor now, you'd be able to point at a law on the books which says that.
- FireBeyond 2y ago> If it is truly de-jure illegal to be poor now, you'd be able to point at a law on the books which says that. Boise recently had to deal with this. Passed a law that said it was illegal to sleep on the streets or public property if a shelter bed was available. Problem? No shelter beds were generally available but two religious shelters said they were "always available", even when they had no actual beds. Ergo, police made arrests because the shelters were available, even if, factually, there wasn't. That the shelters SAID there were was enough for the police to arrest. Adding to the problem was both of those shelters required both attendance AND participation in multiple religious ceremonies per day as a requisite of you being there, even if there did happen to be a bed. So now you had a situation where the police were able to arrest homeless for refusing to go to these shelters, which may not have beds available, and that forced religious participation to be there. That was a law that made it onto the books, until it was rightfully challenged. But the fact it made it to legislation in the first place is problematic.
- skeledrew 2y agoIf you staying in someone's house you generally have to follow their rules. Unless said rules are... over the top. Is attendance and - at least token - participation in religious activity considered over the top? What if it was a case of starvation instead of (or in addition to) the homelessness?
- lesuorac 2y agoCan I set-up a homeless shelter on a farm and unless you pick strawberries you aren't allow to stay? Shelter with strings attached shouldn't count as a shelter.
- FireBeyond 2y agoThe law, in its majestic equality, forbids both rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.