How do you think the SCOTUS will rule in Grants Pass vs. Johnson?

They should rule that it is not a good law. Living outside isn’t particularly good for society as a whole, but making it illegal isn’t the answer.

Suppose the police arrest the outside sleepers. What are they going to, put them in jail and feed them? I doubt it.
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Now – give the right-leaning Supreme Court, the decision will likely be to allow the local government to make this law. But that’s because the so-called conservatives (I call them the no-conscience members of the supreme court) are following party lines.

I would be surprised if the Court knocked down the law.

As for how is homeless handled here? In Atlanta, various homeless shelters and services are available in most of the metro counties. Get out into the boonies, no services at all.

This is an interesting case. It is all driven from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on Martin v City of Boise. In that decision that court had a very unique interpretation of the 8th Amendment saying it was cruel and unusual punishment to stop people from living wherever they wanted, pooping wherever they wanted, etc. Effectively they hobbled the entire western part of the country (and possibly more) with this ruling. It is this ruling that has led to SF turning into a disgusting mess with feces and hypodermic needles on the sidewalks and in the streets, rats carrying diseases we had once eradicated in this country, and all sorts of other public health issues.

The two sides seem to be that (a) the Ninth Circuit has overstepped its boundaries by misinterpreting and applying the 8th Amendment. It has taken away the rights of the states and local governments to govern in their areas as they see fit and to deal with public health concerns at all and (b) that homeless people are people too and need to have some place to sleep and live.

I see things somewhere down the middle. It is unfair to subject the entire populace of an area to the filth and crime the homeless encampments invariably bring. But homeless people are often homeless for some reason…mental health, economics, whatever. They do need somewhere to sleep. Not every little town has the money or facilities to support any number of homeless and not every big city has the facilities to support large numbers of homeless.

I think the court will likely side with the cities only because the 8th amendment cruel and unusual clause really applies to judicial punishments. You can’t stake someone over an ant hill for instance. It was never intended to provide federal control over decision making of state or local governments beyond that. But that decision won’t actually solve the problem.

I think one thing that has to happen is that the flood of illegal aliens into this country has to be stopped. We have cities struggling on where to put them, we have more homeless people on the streets than ever…adding more people just exacerbates the issues.

It’s a complicated issue that varies by city and town.

I personally don’t have faith in the system to handle the issue, because a bunch of other issues need to be resolved to start dealing the homeless.

Being in real estate is a gold mine right now. These people know they can raise the rent 700 dollars and get away with it and the fix for that won’t come anytime soon. You will definitely see more homeless if someone doesn’t stop this ridiculous flow of cash.

I don’t know the details, but I don’t think living outside should be ilegal, but I understand why the issue comes up. It is criminalizing poverty in my book, I agree with that interpretation.

The US needs to be better at controlling rents and at housing in general. It is ridiculously out of control, the prices are insane. Part of that is because the rise in buying real estate was insane and still is. Builders and sellers have made HUGE profits in recent years, it is not all cost of materials like people want to think. Land cost is one of the biggest factors, and then simple supply and demand and what the market will bear.

If society doesn’t want people on the street then society needs to provide housing. Something better than the shelters we have now, or an option for people who want a different option. I saw an article about tiny houses or 3D printed houses for the poor. That takes a lot of land space though.

Expect maximum cruelty.

One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of jellies are talking about criminalizing the homeless. Vagrancy has been a crime in most areas of the country (if not all areas) for many, many years. What changed is that the Ninth Circuit said no one could enforce those laws.

One of the problems of homelessness these days is how prevalent it has become. Even if the cities were allowed to arrest these folks it wouldn’t/couldn’t be done. They don’t have enough jail space. But the ruling of the Ninth Circuit does more than stop the arrest of homeless people.

Let’s say a homeless guy puts up a cardboard box in front of your house, out on the tree lawn. He likes it there. It’s quiet, there’s a tree for shade, whatever. You don’t like it and ask him to leave. He decides he wants to stay. He tells his friends about it and pretty soon you have a tent city in front of your house and growing down your street. You call the cops and the cops tell you there is nothing they can do about it because of the ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court. The homeless have the right to live wherever they want. You’ll just have to live with the feces on your driveway and in your yard, the people leaving hypodermic needles where your kids walk, and if rats come, well you’ll just have to deal with it. That’s the effective ruling that is currently in place.

The situation is untenable. In some cases, such as in California, the government contributed the problem with excessive taxation. When people can’t afford to move away and can’t afford to live there, they are stuck. But that isn’t the sole cause of homelessness. On the other hand, other people in the area are being treated with the cruelty that @ragingloli speaks of, though not with the intent that was meant, I’m sure. These citizens are the ones that are being punished right now. They are the non-homeless ones getting hit with the consequences of the homeless encampments.

The idea seems to be that if you make being homeless in your city unpleasant enough (as if living on the streets is not already unpleasant), they will pack up and leave for another city. Most “solutions” to homelessness simply involve shuffling them around. It’s no different here. Many homeless people in San Jose, for example, camped in a no-man’s land near the airport (an area that can’t be developed because of its location in the flight path). The city decided to clear that area, so now those homeless people have relocated onto local bike/recreational paths. One of those paths is about to be cleared, so I’m sure they’ll find another spot. At no point is housing (and I don’t mean temporary) an option on the table. Just more musical chairs.

People like to talk about homeless people being brought here from out-of-town, but the vast majority of homeless people in the Bay Area fell into homelessness while living here. Of course there will always be some homeless people who are in that state because of mental illness and/or drug addiction that prevents them from holding down a job, but the significant increase in homelessness in recent years is due to a lack of affordable housing, especially those living in RVs (and many homeless people develop drug problems after becoming homeless).

There are solutions for the problem of having homeless people living on the streets, if the homeless people want to do them. There are shelters in most cities. You could set up a specific section of the city just for homeless people. You could set up porta-potties in these areas or install actual bathrooms. You could take over old abandoned buildings and repurpose them for the homeless to use. Of course these are all band-aids and don’t actually address the causes of homelessness at all.

The problem that has been created by the Ninth Circuit starts with the idea that nothing says the homeless have to use any solutions presented. The ruling is that local or state legislatures cannot do anything about moving homeless people if they don’t want to move.

I think it’s a tough issue to deal with because there are no black and white answers. Theoretically, if someone wants to sleep out in the woods or something where they’re not bothering anybody, they should be able to without a problem. However, it’s when large quantities of people are sleeping and living in areas where they are in front of restaurants and other places, where people want to feel safe walking and may not feel so safe with people asking for money or stuff like that.

Someone in my family lives and works in NYC, and she works for a major Wall Street firm which is right around the corner from a soup kitchen. The soup kitchen doesn’t have a bathroom for the people to use so they will go to the bathroom where they can. One day my relative was walking to work and she saw a person taking a shit between two cars, this was in the morning, work hours. It becomes a potential quality of life issue. If I was walking with my daughter when she was younger, would I want to have her seeing someone shitting in the street, or a guy with his dick out taking a piss?

It’s a tough call with no easy answers.

Maybe the problem can be solved by civil disobedience. Homeless people lliving on the street plead guilty when taken to court. They refuse to pay any fines. Eventually the state will provide food and a place for the homeless to lve inside a prison. If the conditions in the prison cell are really bad, they can go on a hunger strike.