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US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

bbc.com

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Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#221

Post by corinroyal »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #202
diogenescynic wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates. I suspect this is strongly skewed by half of all homeless living in California where they seem to be mostly from out of state and coming here for the weather, lenient drug laws, and many social benefits. You can just ask them and they will tell you--most of them are from red states where they'd be locked up for what they do here. As such, they came…

Your california bias is showing. Seattle and Vancouver BC (and Vancouver WA, the northern suburb of Portland OR, along with Portland) have even worse homeless issues than the bay area, and they don't have favorable climates for the unhoused. Try almost 300 days a year of rain, and winter temperatures that often dip to the 20s. Your arguments would imply that New Mexico, a poor blue state with a favorable south-wester…

> Your california bias is showing.

They weren't even right about California. Most people in CA are homeless near where they were last housed.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#222

Post by lesuorac »

skeledrew wrote: post #210
FireBeyond wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is truly de-jure illegal to be poor now, you'd be able to point at a law on the books which says that. Boise recently had to deal with this. Passed a law that said it was illegal to sleep on the streets or public property if a shelter bed was available. Problem? No shelter beds were generally available but two religious shelters said they were "always available", even when they had no actual beds. Ergo, polic…

If you staying in someone's house you generally have to follow their rules. Unless said rules are... over the top. Is attendance and - at least token - participation in religious activity considered over the top? What if it was a case of starvation instead of (or in addition to) the homelessness?

Can I set-up a homeless shelter on a farm and unless you pick strawberries you aren't allow to stay?

Shelter with strings attached shouldn't count as a shelter.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#223

Post by corinroyal »

floxy wrote: post #177
nimbius wrote: post #45

I feel like the outcome of this is unilaterally bad. Most homeless are elderly and mentally Ill. The solutions are institutionalization and retirement housing/pensions but no state did this after Reagan and instead made homelessness an issue to ignore. Faced with the ability to legally incarcerate nearly 600,000 people, states likely won't hesitate to do just that without a second thought. For a country that prides i…

>The solutions are institutionalization Isn't there a lot of rose-colored glasses around institutionalization of the mentally ill? The reason we got rid of it is because it is essentially imprisonment, with all sorts of abuses and not some sort of all-inclusive luxury resort.

They were absolutely torture palaces for society's undesirables, but that's not why Reagan got rid of them. He just didn't care. The psych ward is perhaps more oppressive than prison. At least in prison, you have an idea when you might get out, forced drugging is minimal, and no one pretends they're doing it for your own good. To hear today's tech workers talk, most would be happy to bring back the torture palaces if it made their commute more comfortable.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#224

Post by corinroyal »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #193
pseudalopex wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What cities say they have the resources to support other cities' homeless people?

On some level, the answer is likely none because there's not much in it for them. That said, cities declare themselves as "sanctuary cities" well enough so it's not unreasonable to think this could be extended - although immigrants provide more economic benefits than the unhoused. Still, it doesn't have to be ungrounded in numbers. Take GDP per capita for a city, normalize it by cost of living, and pass a federal law…

It's a myth that homeless people move to better cities. If we could do that, we wouldn't be homeless. People tend to be homeless near the last place they were housed.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#225

Post by toomanyrichies »

lwhalen wrote: post #48
Arrath wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we're set on expending resources. If we're going to spend the resources to incarcerate these folks, would not the resources be better spent (with much better potential RoI, no less) on assisting persons in obtaining living situations?

What do you tell the families who scrimped, saved, and generally busted ass to be able to afford their homes?

You tell them to count their blessings every day of their lives that they:

-don't currently suffer from a debilitating mental illness that prevents them from holding down a job or an apartment,

-weren't kicked out of their home by their parents for being LGBT,

-didn't incur a financially crippling medical debt which forced them to choose between housing or their lives

Or one of the myriad other reasons why someone might become homeless through no fault of their own in late-stage American society.

There but for the grace of God go all of us.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#226

Post by patrick451 »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #82
jp191919 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ultimately people stay where they want to stay, for a variety of reasons. With the majority of homeless, the reason would be easier access to illicit substances.

Only 26% of homeless people abuse drugs, find a new stereotype.

26% is a massive number and more than sufficient for the stereotype to fit. If 26% of x demographic had murdered somebody, a stereotype that x are murderers would be well deserved.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#227

Post by cvalka »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67
Terr_ wrote: post #21

To wit: > Held: The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

In part because the Eighth Amendment “prohibits certain methods a government may impose after a criminal conviction, but it does not ‘impose [any] substantive limits on what conduct a state may criminalise.’”

Exactly. The 8th amendment restricts the punishment and not the underlying crime.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#228

Post by SeanAnderson »

corinroyal wrote: post #224
SeanAnderson wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On some level, the answer is likely none because there's not much in it for them. That said, cities declare themselves as "sanctuary cities" well enough so it's not unreasonable to think this could be extended - although immigrants provide more economic benefits than the unhoused. Still, it doesn't have to be ungrounded in numbers. Take GDP per capita for a city, normalize it by cost of living, and pass a federal law…

It's a myth that homeless people move to better cities. If we could do that, we wouldn't be homeless. People tend to be homeless near the last place they were housed.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. I lived in a small town in northern Washington state and there were no unhoused people. I assumed it was due to the cold weather making it not very practical. I then moved to California to a similarly sized city (both 30-40k people) and suddenly there were people on the streets. Just anecdotal evidence though

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10511....

This suggests similarly?

"Indeed, 48% of the unsheltered homeless population is found in California and Florida alone, while just 15% of the United States population lives in these two states. Conventional wisdom among local officials and experts in cities with warm climates is that warm temperatures are major draws for homeless individuals.1

Similarly, research has generally affirmed that homelessness, and particularly the unsheltered type, is more common in warmer areas."

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#229

Post by nxm »

tsimionescu wrote: post #93
_heimdall wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't technically make being poor illegal. The sad truth is that plenty of people will living on the streets may now be breaking the law simply by having nowhere else to go, but that shit will roll up hill eventually. Courts and jails don't have the capacity to deal with charging everyone in that situation. Either cops will avoid arresting people for it or cities will eventually have to dramatically expand housi…

Something can be illegal even if cops are not resting everyone who does it. That's the worse situation in fact, when it becomes the sole discretion of individual police officers who to punish.

It's up to elected district attorneys.

Re: US Supreme Court allows cities to ban homeless camps

#230

Post by loeg »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #56
loeg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a vacuous argument. The vacant homes are largely either temporary (moving out before prepping to sell) or in the wrong places (no jobs). The homeless need more homes where they live and work (or seek work).

Have you seen the housing market in the past few years? Skyrocketing interest rates and construction levels not seen since before 2007, all which (to any economist who passed ECON 101 would say would lower housing costs) and homes are still 40% more expensive than they were in 2020.

And yet, construction still hasn't matched demand. Supply increased and demand increased more.
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