Local bans on homeless people sleeping in public earn Supreme Court review

[ThatRobGuy]

Local bans on homeless people sleeping in public earn Supreme Court review

The Supreme Court said Friday it would consider whether local laws prohibiting homeless people from sleeping on public property is cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Constitution. Th…

thehill.com

The Supreme Court said Friday it would consider whether local laws prohibiting homeless people from sleeping on public property is cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Constitution.

The Oregon city of Grants Pass asked the high court to review a lower court’s decision to block it from enforcing its public camping ordinance, writing that the decision “cemented a conflict” with California courts that have upheld similar ordinances.

Grant Pass’s request for the Supreme Court to take up the case was backed by officials in San Francisco and Phoenix, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and 20 Republican state attorneys general.


Some interesting things to consider in this case.

On one hand, I can see the argument for it being somewhat "cruel & unusual", to fine a person who's broke, homeless, and has nowhere else to go.

On the other hand, without some sort of precedent for local autonomy, it allows for some localities (or the state government) to indirectly pawn off the bad end results of their own policies onto other localities, and those other localities having no recourse to deal with the problem or keep the problem out of their own neighborhoods that they didn't create.

In the case of Grants Pass, it sounds like it could be a combination of factors (some of which were out of their control, some of which was their own fault), so the latter doesn't completely apply.

For instance, there were a few Church-based orgs in that area that offered to step up and assist with their homeless population (which is estimated to be ~600-800 at any given time, in a city of under 40k people...that's a big number...to put it in perspective, Cleveland Ohio has around 1300 homeless in a city of 385k)

However, some people didn't like the stipulations they have in place (which were admittedly rigid and heavily religion-based.) and even started petitions targeting them, however, with regards to private charity, beggars can't be choosers as the saying goes, and if the city & state government aren't addressing the problem, and church-based organizations are willing to house ~200 (the church groups got together and purchased a few building that, combined, could sleep 200 people) of their 600 homeless, it's their prerogative if they want to have rules like "no alcohol or drug use, no sex out of wedlock, and no homosexual activity"
--obviously those aren't the kinds of stipulations I'd put on charity if it was my money, but it's their money, and if the city's not doing anything about it, unless someone else is willing to put their money where their mouth is, they can't really throw stones.