In The News - 4/22/2024
The Wall St. Journal
(Paywall, contact dsimonson@mac.com for full text)
Liberal Cities, Conservative Towns Seek Supreme Court’s Help on Homelessness
Local leaders claim power to keep parks and sidewalks clear, but a lower court said punishing people who have nowhere else to go is unconstitutional
The court on Monday will hear arguments on how far municipalities can go in prohibiting camping on public property, laws that police employ to clear homeless people from parks and streets. A federal appeals court in San Francisco has found such measures unconstitutional when enforced against those with nowhere to go, prompting an appeal backed by many of the cities facing housing crises, including Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; and San Francisco.
Monday’s case originated far from the urban centers typically associated with homelessness. It comes instead from Grants Pass, Ore., where in March 2013, officials convened a community roundtable over “vagrancy problems” afflicting the small city along the Rogue River. “The point,” said one city councilor, “is to make it uncomfortable enough for them in our city so they will want to move on down the road.”
That comment caught the attention of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which years later cited it when ruling that Grants Pass violated the rights of “involuntarily homeless” people by outlawing camping on public property or in vehicles when no shelter beds were available. A court injunction currently forbids the city from expelling homeless people from all but one of its 20 parks, says Mayor Sara Bristol.