1y ago

Can homeless people be fined for sleeping outside? A rural Oregon city asks the US Supreme Court

The scenes were emblematic of the crisis gripping the small, Oregon mountain town of Grants Pass, where a fierce fight over park space has become a battleground for a much larger, national debate on homelessness that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The town’s case, set to be heard April 22, has broad implications for how not only Grants Pass, but communities nationwide address homelessness, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public. It has made the town of 40,000 the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis, and further fueled the debate over how to deal with it.

“I certainly wish this wasn’t what my town was known for,” Mayor Sara Bristol told The Associated Press last month. “It’s not the reason why I became mayor. And yet it has dominated every single thing that I’ve done for the last 3 1/2 years.”

Officials across the political spectrum — from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, which has nearly 30% of the nation’s homeless population, to a group of 22 conservative-led states — have filed briefs in the case, saying lower court rulings have hamstrung their ability to deal with encampments.

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1y ago

Can homeless people be fined for sleeping outside? A rural Oregon city asks the US Supreme Court

apnews.com /article/grants-pass-oregon-supreme-court-homeless-encampments-a8dcddb518bd76b11d409666c06701b8

117 comments

What the fuck? They're homeless. Sleeping outside is their only option. Shelters are often dangerous, very restrictive on who they let in and there aren't anywhere near enough of them in the places they need to be.
Sleeping in public places isn't a fucking crime. It's not like they'd choose the park over an apartment if they had one.
- Yes, but if it's criminalized you get to remove the eyesore of struggling poor people with the added benefit of fines and imprisonment.
  
  Also prisoners are slave labor thanks to the 13th amendment so if you can take people off the street and chuck them in jail, you get free labor. Yay capitalism. /s
  
  How effective do they expect fining homeless people to be?
- Not to mention you get kicked out of the shelter in the morning and can’t return until the evening, assuming you’re back in time to get a bed.
- @Neato @girlfreddy
  Rhonda Sanchez just signed a bill in Florida outlawing sleeping in public. Florida is run by shit stains.
- Also a lot of them are ran by Christians. Can't imagine they treat gay people equally
  
  After the way I was treated today, I can imagine much worse than "not equally".
- It's tricky, because allowing it to happen creates massive public health and environmental disasters:
  https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2023/07/natural-sites-in-east-portland-hardest-hit-by-homeless-camps.html
  https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/07/hidden-toll-of-homeless-crisis-portlands-prized-natural-areas.html
  https://nbcmontana.com/news/nation-world/city-breaks-up-homeless-camp-pulls-out-150-stolen-cars-tons-of-trash-live-pigs-big-four-corners-natural-area-portland-oregon-housing-crisis-damage-neighbor-george-donnerberg-park-and-rec-environmental-impact
  https://www.koin.com/local/multnomah-county/portland-waterways-streets-cleared-of-over-100-derelict-boats-thanks-to-take-back-program/
  These aren't the "oh, poor innocent homeless, down on their luck" portrayed by advocates, they are drug addicts and thieves, leeching off society, and actively making life worse for themselves and everyone else.
  
  Perhaps if they had housing and sufficient social nets so they didn't have to steal to eat and places they could get managed drug doses (you can't just quit, especially without resources) then this wouldn't be a problem.
  It's not like people choose to be problems and homeless. Almost all Americans are one or two bad turns away from joining them.
  
  Studies show the majority of homeless people have jobs. Furthermore they didn't have one big reason for going homeless. They just couldn't afford housing and eventually they are unable to pay. People report sliding into homelessness over the course of years as the cost of housing kept rising without pay rising.
  Trying to depict all homeless people as junkies is disingenuous at best.
  
  May be, but we've gotten rid of entire classes of housing that these kind of people would be living in otherwise.
  
  Fuck off
  
  Some, you assume, must be good people though, right?
  You should build a wall.
It's getting to the point that you can't sleep anywhere legally unless you're paying someone for the space you're occupying. Most of the cities near me have destroyed the woods that homeless people lived in, forcing them to move and leaving behind a weird ass looking stand of trees.
I used to work with homeless people and as much as being outside sucks, shelters can be worse. We had people in their 70s who went to shelters and slept on the floor, their heads almost touching their neighbors. They had their meds stolen and had to sleep on top of their belongings to keep them safe. A lot of people chose to sleep outside in the summer because they felt safer.
- It’s getting to the point that you can’t sleep anywhere legally unless you’re paying someone for the space you’re occupying.
  This is the point of enclosure and it's been true for hundreds of years now. This is the concept the stole the planet from the people.
A fine on existing.
- No, no, no. We wouldn't think of fining people for existing. Just for existing while poor.
- I believe that would include my monthly tribute to my landed lord.
You can be sure that these jailed homeless people will end up being forced into labor - enslaved - because you can't let dirt-cheap labor go to waste, and you can't let a poor person look like they're getting something for nothing - mooching, free-riding - even if it's not their choice. Handouts are legitimately only for the rich and their corporations after all. If someone's fined+jailed and won't work for some capitalist exploiter, what will be done? I would guess some kind of torture will be employed to change their minds, but wouldn't be surprised if they're simply executed, especially if they're non-white.
- You have an outlandish view of county jail in the US. None of that shit happens.
  
  Yeah, you're right, they'll just tied you down and torture you for fun.
  https://globalnews.ca/news/2949072/how-an-ohio-womans-night-of-drinking-ended-in-being-pepper-sprayed-in-a-restraint-chair/
- "Just stop being poor!" - that town
  
  Just reach into your wallet and pull out the money is not rocket science
  
  More likely, "go be poor somewhere else!"
- Personally, if I was homeless and found out I'm now in debt from the greedy-fuckers who put me there...
  I would just take the law into my own hands at that point.
Sounds like we’re running out of orphans for the orphan-crushing machine.
Reference
- Oh no they still work. They just can't afford to live in a building.
I didn't think they'd actually start setting up Sanctuary Districts in 2024, but it looks like that's their eventual goal...
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots
Too bad we don't have a Gabriel Bell.
- Be the change you want to see in the world.
  
  Maybe our version is Gabby Belle.
This lawsuit is idiotic considering the federal courts already ruled that you can't apply penalties against sleeping outside unless there are enough shelter beds for everyone. That ruling was in our federal district covering Oregon...
- Yes but this is the new "What the Fuck is a Precedent?" United States Supreme Court
  
  Wonder if we could use Kickstarter to crowdfund bribes for the supreme court to give us our rights back.
Fines will teach those people who have no money to get more money.
We keep eroding the social support network and complain about the homeless problem.
We keep changing the environment and complain about the new weather.
This all ends… so well.
Open up the governor's mansion so they can sleep indoors
- Churches
  
  Those too
The federal government needs to take over homeless support. Establish federally managed shelters.
- I'm wary about this being the solution. I mean... [Gestures wildly at the federal government] Just wait until the republicans get a supermajority again and see what they do with camps full of homeless people under federal control.
  
  Yeah, but giving the homeless bus tickets to another state isn’t the answer either. I know that wasn’t referenced earlier- but it happens. Without federal level support, Republicans’ solution is to remove their burdens to someone else’s plate. Then they unironically point at the “failures” of Democratic states, “look at all the encampments.”
  Making homelessness illegal is just another arrow in their quiver towards the same goal (target).
- HUD could do a lot by just literally buying buildings or developing new projects and renting them for just enough to cover costs. Put an anchor into the real estate markets.
  
  Wait, a reasonable solution that could actually affect the problem? Nonsense! Those unoccupied buildings are very important and should remain empty.
  
  Isn’t that what HUD used to do?
- And impose property taxes on rich people to pay for it. Allow those same taxpayers to vote to.have that tax go to permanent housing for the homeless in their zip code and such a vote is also consent to override all local laws in the process and make it lawsuit immune
- Eminent domain land
  Use the army core of engineers to build free public housing 200 miles outside of a metro location
  run high speed rail from that to the metro.
"Can blood be squeezed from a stone? A rural Oregon city asks the US Council of Monarchs."
- Plasma can.
  Just wait until those individual sleeping pods can harvest electricity...
With this lineup, the SC is going to make execution the punishment for not having gainful employment. Only half sarcastic.
I’d have to laugh if the people backing this proposed law become homeless after it is passed.
- Does anyone want lab-grown Aperture Science lemons?
Yall call this civilization? What a joke.
Yes, let's waste money on fining people, who will tell you they have nothing, but it's no problem, because you will get them sooner or later once you have their address... Oh.
- Fine them for having nothing, then jail them for not paying fines. Now you have an address for them. QED
have filed briefs in the case, saying lower court rulings have hamstrung their ability to deal with encampments.
Think it's more about this, than actually collecting fines from homeless people that have no money.
You know, after Putin will be finally sent to Hauge(or die) Russia can solve its demographic problem(you know, hundreds of thousands people becoming fertilizer) by simply making flying to Russia free.
Or that is just another stupid idea and we should focus on education, healthcare, pensions, welfare and public transport instead. This should be even easier and have bigger results.
I was wondering if it would be legal to just run over rich people. You what I mean? Let's say you are driving to work and Elon musk is walking from the parking lot to the Starbucks. Could you just drive him over? What about a ticket? Can we give rich people a ticket? Sure it's not like driving over them, but it could work!
Clearly, we need more space tourism.
I can’t speak for Oregon, but here in California the problem is that we have a LOT of beds that are not being used. And cities and states can’t force people into shelter and care if the area doesn’t have enough beds for everyone that is unhoused.
The ask is to be able to shelter some people with the beds that are available. Right now CA is forced to wait until it could theoretically give every unhoused person a shelter bed at once.
- If the shelters aren't being used then maybe ask why they aren't being used instead of trying to force people into them.
  
  Safety, hygiene, and convenience are often reasons why many people opt for a tent over the local shelter.
- That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard so I 100% believe the government would be stuck on exactly that.
- Theft, overcrowding and assault are some reasons I've heard many homeless people say in CA as to the reason why they avoid shelters unless it becomes worse outside than inside.
- Is that some sort of misguided antidiscrimination law?

117 comments