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,”
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.
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.
Same place where tobacco taxes, opioid settlements, lottery money and any other money-raising idea states come up with go- anywhere but where they’re supposed to.
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.
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
It will help a whole lot with any private prison which is having trouble making a profit. So there’s that.
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.
The only way this question makes sense is if you’re one of millions of sociopathic Americans (not entirely most of their fault, they were encouraged to be so through for profit media and simply fell for the ego stroking lies of “you’re better than them, so enjoy the suffering they obviously deserve for some reason”) that don’t consider homeless Americans to be human at all, want them out of their eyeline, and literally despise suffering people far worse off than them for…🤮… “lowering their property values.”
Literally the same market capitalist deluded useful idiots that want public schools defunded into further ruin because they themselves don’t personally currently have a child that attends public school.
The people hurting almost everyone with their basically infinite resources, private shareholder capitalist sociopaths, managed to convince it seems like most Americans that the reason the economy works against them despite perpetual record profits for said private shareholders are those people down the street living in an old tent in the park starving and dying of exposure to the elements.
Don’t be homeless or I’ll give you three squares and a cot is an odd threat.
