The high court’s ruling is already having a ripple effect on cities across the country, which have been emboldened to take harsher measures to clear out homeless camps that have grown in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Many US cities have been wrestling with how to combat the growing crisis. The issue has been at the heart of recent election cycles on the West Coast, where officials have poured record amounts of money into creating shelters and building affordable housing.
Leaders face mounting pressure as long-term solutions - from housing and shelters to voluntary treatment services and eviction help - take time.
“It’s not easy and it will take a time to put into place solutions that work, so there’s a little bit of political theatre going on here," Scout Katovich, an attorney who focuses on these issues for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the BBC.
"Politicians want to be able to say they’re doing something,”
To whoever wrote the headline: How can it possibly help?
Not saying I agree with this position, but I’ll pass along the argument that CA’s governor makes.
CA has a lot of empty shelter beds, and they couldn’t clear some camps unless they had enough beds to house everyone. It was all or nothing. They couldn’t say “we have enough beds in the county for half of the encampments, so we’ll only clear the half that have the largest public health and safety problems.”
Basically, CA only wants to jail people if a bed exists and isn’t being used. Problem is, some states / counties will look at this broad ruling and will just people in jail, bed or not.
Also, this ruling doesn’t account for shelter quality. Sometimes the street is actually safer than a shelter, and arresting a person for prioritizing safety is pretty shitty.
I know it sounds rational but that’s not a good faith argument from the governor. What he wants is to be able to force people into subpar living conditions instead of making shelters and temporary housing actually work.
It’s just another way for them to use the police while telling everyone they’re really actually helping.
Doesn’t California notoriously have an extreme shortage of shelter beds? I’ve heard it compared unfavorable to New York this way plenty of times.
Overall the state has a major shortage of beds. Cities and counties across California reported in 2023 a little more than 71,131 beds in either an emergency shelter or transitional housing. The state would need more than twice that number to accommodate everyone.
http://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-crisis-explained/
Yes. CA only has enough beds for half of the unhoused population, but significantly less than half of the unhoused population is claiming a bed.
For example, even though San Francisco and Oakland have fewer beds than unhoused people, last year SF had 10% of its beds empty and a few years before that, Oakland was coming in at 36% vacant. I don’t know what the current numbers are.
I don’t agree with this policy, but CA wants to jail people when there is a vacancy and someone is refusing to take the bed. Before this court ruling, CA could not do that.
Ah, I understand now. Ya, that’s not good. And I know what you mean about some shelters being less than the streets. Like, not personally, but I’ve heard stories about lots of thefts in those places, or things like that.
Yeah, IMHO, the high court should’ve said that you need a safe place for someone to stay if you’re going to force an individual off the street. If you don’t have nearly enough shelter beds for your entire homeless population, and a 1/3rd of your shelter beds are not being used, then there is something about that shelter system that probably needs to be fixed.
And that said, at least CA is trying to fill vacancies. There are places that are going to arrest people even if no bed exists. And that is just going to continue to push more and more unhoused people to coastal states that are less cruel.
Was it written by a human with no sense or by an AI (also with no sense)? 🤔
It’s the BBC, so I’m giving the benefit of doubt that it was just written by a really out of touch human. The actual article is pretty good coverage and highlights why it’s such a terrible decision.
The only thing in the article that even slightly implies “help” is this line:
Jailing the homeless? ‘At least I’ll have a bed’
So, headline seems to be intentionally click/rage bait even though the article itself is pretty sound.
It’s a headline intended to illicit a response and it seems to have worked.
Exactly
I was homeless through some pretty terrible circumstances but it turns out it’s illegal to be homeless, so I decided not to be homeless anymore /s
It’s clearly rage-bait 🙄 congrats, you’re their target demographic
While we’re at it, maybe we can solve the healthcare crisis by punishing sickness!
Don’t we already, with what amount to astronomical fines for getting sick?
I think the 2025 people reading this just got an idea. You can’t be sick if it’s illegal. Thanks for giving them ideas.
Cancer diagnosis? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
We already punish mental illness. Might as well.
Jesus. How could locking up homeless folk make things better? The headline is bad, and the article is not informative.
They have to fill the prisons since a bunch are getting out from old cannabis charges.
It puts more people in prison, making private prisons’ income better. This kind of shit is never about helping anyone but the lobbyists.
And then prisons rent out these people’s labor to corpos for slave wages. It’s a win-win.
Not just private prisons but also public prisons. More inmates means bigger budgets and more power.
Is it not obvious? You put them to work. US prisons are slave camps
I can only speak to Portland, but entirely too many people here refuse shelter for a variety of reasons, #1 being they can’t bring their drugs and alcohol with them.
What this does is strongly encourage people to accept the help when offered.
You know what actually strongly ecourages people to accept help? Housing-first policies.
Yeah, because that works out so well…
that anecdote sure does contradict statistical evidence! if it doesn’t work perfectly the first time it’s not worth doing
Wow, one person was the victim of a crime therefore housing isn’t the solution to homelessness.
That’s just the most recent example. Just giving people housing brushes the problems under the rug and concentrates them, it doesn’t solve them.
As opposed to concentrating and housing them in jail at 10x the cost of normal housing only to kick them right back onto the streets? What a solution.
The goal is to convince them to enter treatment. If the alternative is prison, that’s a strong incentive to get treatment.
No, what this actually does is simply provide more slaves for the prison labor market.
What this does is strongly encourage people to accept the help when offered.
Because people have the FREEDOM to choose.
I would think that fundamental right would be fucking obvious.
When they’re doing fentanyl and pissing and shitting in the streets they’ve abdicated personal freedom.
Then deal with the drug problem. But I’ll tell you right now that most homeless people do not have the money or time to do drugs unless they’re homeless because of drugs. The majority of homeless people work as many hours as they can and are constantly trying to become not homeless.
Oh, we are NOW. Finally! It took a repeal of our drug legalization law first. That was when the problems started:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Oregon_Ballot_Measure_110
Yeah they did that policy completely backwards. The Portugal experiment works, but you have to actually do what they did and Oregon did none of the follow up work the Portuguese did.
But you shouldn’t be punishing homeless people for that, at best it’s some sort of venn diagram and critics want to make it look like a circle.
Oregon’s problem was assuming the drug addicted want assistance. They don’t. All they wanted was clean needles.
If you think this problem started in 2021, you must be new to the area.
It definitely accelerated after 110 passed.
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I’m sorry, but yes. They clearly can’t care for themselves anymore.
“…entirely too many people here refuse shelter for a variety of reasons…”
Have you ever spent time in a shelter? Like tried to sleep there? Undoubtedly no. Because if you had you’d know that the only way they are tolerable and the only way you can block out that they are obviously unsafe, noisy, and completely not conducive to good sleep is to dull your pain with drugs or alcohol.
You are better off on the street.
The street, which is obviously unsafe, noisy, completely not conducive to good sleep, and open to the elements.
The street, which is obviously unsafe, noisy, completely not conducive to good sleep, and open to the elements
It seems to me that this is not something with which you’ve had personal experience. Yours is a reasonable speculation but it’s at odds with the reality for most people who have been homeless. I grant my own experience is limited to two shelters, but both were horrendous and I’ve never once heard a good word about any of them.
Here, I found a random article explaining why: https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s-homeless-shelter-beds-sit-empty-each-night-rats-roaches-bedbugs-mold
Storming the Bastille was done (in part) to free prisoners who were being indefinitely held for reasons related to being poor. I’m mostly just bringing that up because history has lots of interesting themes we should all be considering in our decision making during daily life.
Hurt. No question.
You aren’t thinking this through and all the wonderful possibilities.
Just imagine if we let private prisons “loan” out low risk prisoners to local businesses.
BAM! Now you get to spread the cost savings of prison labor to the wider economy.
And that’s just me spitballing. I got so many good ideas on what we can do with our newly enslaved poors, err… I mean criminally homeless deviants.
Now now. It’s all in how you frame it. If the crisis was homeowners having to see people living in poverty and on the edge of society, this is a big win.
The fuck is wrong with America?
$$$,$$$,$$$,$$$,$$$
Late-stage capitalist oligarchic shithole.
It will hurt. Terrible idea.
Aurora Colorado used Cannabis profits to build a sweet homeless shelter a few years back. Where does all this revenue go in other states?
Politicians pockets.
Nations with their citizen’s health as an actual priority have (mostly) solved these problems. The US is not a developed nation, nor a humanitarian one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First
Finally we can put these homeless people under a solid roof with their own bed where the government will pay for all their meals and ensure they have time for recreation and socializing.
As long as it’s prison.
How can u even punish homelessness?
What you gonna do, put them in a home??
Kinda…. :/
“It’s not easy…”, sure it is. Ban corporations from owning residential housing for rent, real estate prices drop, buy the cheaper houses, give homeless a permannent roof, done.
Politicians want to SAY they are doing something without actually DOING anything to help homeless people.
Jfc this country is falling apart
