Being Homeless Is NOT A Crime: Tell The Supreme Court
“It is cruel and unusual punishment to arrest or ticket people for sleeping outside when they have no other safe place to go”
The Supreme Court plans to hear the case of Johnson v. Grants Pass about criminalizing homelessness. The case will decide whether cities are allowed to punish people for things like sleeping outside with a pillow or blanket, even when there are no safe shelter options… An adverse ruling would not only do nothing to end homelessness, but it would also punish people for existing in public in a country that has failed to ensure that everybody has a safe place to sleep. – Johnson v. Grants Pass
Being homeless is not a crime. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Yet all too often in America, society’s least fortunate are deemed criminals and treated as such. The National Homelessness Law Center offers pro bon legal support for those experiencing (or at risk of experiencing) homelessness. The Center collected personal accounts from the homeless to provide a perspective that globe trotting Supreme Court Justices may not be aware of.
Voices of the homeless: ‘We’ve lost our humanity’
“Across the country people are making laws to find and arrest people for sleeping outside. What do you think about that? I think they’re not addressing the true issue. And we’ve got a serious problem all across the United States not just here in Boise, but all across the United States of America. And that’s not helping the situation. It’s actually hindering. You’re giving, you’re giving tickets to people that can’t afford to pay rent. Can’t afford to eat. How do you expect them to pay these tickets? And then you’re taking away the very barrier that they need to stay warm in the winter? Yeah. I don’t understand where we’ve lost our humanity?
Honestly. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take away a sleeping bag and a tent of a person who had nothing left in this world. Take away the very last possession that they have to keep them, the barrier that keeps them from the winter cold. I don’t quite comprehend the logic, but that’s where I am with it.”
We’re only as good as the lowest people in our nation
“We need to stop punishing the unfortunate. We need to stop ticketing. We need to stop paying for people, public officials, people in government, people on the police force. We need to stop paying these people to punish people that are already at the lowest point in their life. We’re handing them tickets. And if they are not being ticketed for, you know, for sleeping in public, then they find other creative ways of ticketing us anyway. And I’ve heard that people have tickets in the triple digits and that, that’s not, that’s not, what’s the word I’m looking for? That’s not policing the area. That’s punishing someone for being unfortunate.
That is pure harassment. And we’ve got to do something about that. We’ve got to find, honestly, and I’m using this term again, our collective humanity. We’ve got to find it somewhere. We’ve lost it somewhere along the way. And if we really want America to be the nation that people admire, we’ve got to wake up and take care of the least fortunate of us. Because like I said, we’re only as good as the lowest people in our nation, and right now we’re failing them.”
National Homelessness Law Center (NHLC)
The National Homelessness Law Center seeks to cultivate a society where every person can live with dignity and enjoy their basic human rights, including the right to affordable, quality, and safe housing.
Every year more than 3.5 million people find themselves homeless. NHLC believes housing is a human right and fights hard to hold the U.S. accountable to international standards, to prevent homelessness for renters, and to create homes and communities for homeless people using surplus government property. The NHLC works hard to prevent economically vulnerable domestic violence survivors from becoming homeless. Read their report “Housing Not Handcuffs“
TakeAway: One day you’re doing well. The next through a quirk of fate you’re homeless. It can happen to anyone. And if the Supreme Court overturns Johnson v. Grants Pass, you could find yourself in jail for being homeless.
Deepak
DemLabs
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Image Credit: Matt Collamer on Unsplash
Thomas ruling helped real estate billionaire Harlan Crow
While billionaire real estate mogul Harlan Crow was lavishing Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas with luxury gifts, Thomas voted to strike down federal tenant protections that might hurt the profits of Crow’s company.
Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas voted to end federal tenant protections that his billionaire benefactor’s company says threatened its real estate profit margins, according to corporate documents reviewed by the Lever. Thomas did not disclose his relationship with real estate billionaire Harlan Crow, nor did he recuse himself from the 2021 case, despite its potential impact on Crow Holdings. – Jacobin
Should Clarence Thomas with close ties to Harlan Crow, a real estate billionaire be ruling on a case involving the homeless? Or should re recuse himself?
“Bloomberg reported, Thomas did not appear to recuse himself in a 2005 Supreme Court case involving Trammell Crow Residential, in which Crow Holdings owned a minority stake. In the coming months, the rent control issue flagged by Crow Holdings could be before Thomas and the high court. A group of New York landlords are preparing to petition the Supreme Court to overturn the city’s rent stabilization laws after losing a recent case. Such a ruling could endanger rent-control laws nationwide.” – Lever News
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Reposted from Democracy Labs with permission.
