Selections from a message from the director of Hygiene for All in Portland, Oregon
https://www.h4apdx.org/
The Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in favor of Grants Pass threatens whole community health and wellbeing across the United States.
See below for What the case was about? How will it impact unsheltered Americans’ human rights & civil rights? Why it harms efforts to end skyrocketing rents, housing insecurity, & homelessness, and threatens our health & wellbeing and WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PROTECT OREGONIANS?
What was the case about?
Grants Pass faced a significant housing shortage leading to a high rate of homelessness among its residents. The city lacked affordable housing options, forcing hundreds of individuals into homelessness, who were previously homeowners and workers in Grants Pass.
Grants Pass has nearly zero resources for homeless individuals, with only one private transitional housing program that did not accept people with physical or mental disabilities and required its clients to work for free and pray several times a day. This left a large portion of the homeless population no shelter alternative except staying on the streets.
In response to these circumstances
Grants Pass, first tried to get rid of homeless residents by buying them bus tickets to other jurisdictions. The other jurisdictions sent people back, asking Grants Pass to stop foisting Grants Pass’ policy failures onto their communities.
Then Grants Pass tried extreme enforcement of existing laws to serially displace and harass houseless residents.
Unsuccessful, the city passed stricter ordinances imposing a 24/7 city wide sleeping ban, stipulating homeless residents leave the city or face fines or jail … even if merely using a blanket, sleeping, or resting within City limits. Police told those with nowhere to sleep except on public property, or in a car on public property to relocate outside City limits to a place called Devil’s Spill or face criminal penalties.
The ordinances targeted activities they creatively defined as “camping,” but in fact specifically prohibited and made even the use of a blanket a criminal offense- claiming using a blanket constituted making a temporary living arrangement/ or” camping.”
The enforcement of these ordinances effectively criminalized the basic activities of sleeping/ staying warm with a blanket all people must exercise in order to avoid dying. Police and City Council members were clear, however, that the law should be enforced if and only if residents did not have an apartment or house. In essence this made the mere act of existing within the city limits of Grant’s Pass while homeless a criminal act, subject to fines, and jail time.
Why H4A & Our Lawyers Argued Against Grants Pass
Lawyers argued the case very narrowly - asserting that fining or jailing someone using a blanket to stay warm if (and only if) they were houseless, was cruel, unusual, and unequal punishment.
Our lawyers argued against Grants Pass on the grounds
That the punishments inflicted were grossly disproportionate to the “offense.”
That for unhoused residents, such ‘offenses’ were utterly unavoidable for human survival
That without a home, a person has literally no other choice than to meet their bodily human needs on public property.
That the law was only applied to those without housing; with those internations openly described by those passing the ordinance and those enforcing it
The Legal & Policy Implications
The Supreme Court rejected the arguments outlined above, ruling instead that Grants Pass was within its rights to pass and enforce its ordinances. The SCOTUS’s misguided decision has ramifications for states, towns, and other localities across the nation, in that it:
Gives our local governments carte blanche to enact laws that violate basic human rights to life,
Permits our cities to violate our most vulnerable neighbors’ civil rights to equal protection and treatment under the law,
Incentivizes towns to invest in practices proven to increase houselessness and steepen barriers to resecuring housing;
Encourages our elected officials to divert and reduce the investments in housing and services we need to staunch and reverse the flow of people from the safety of housing to untold hardships on the streets.
This decision allows localities to enact ordinances that make it illegal for houseless people to simply exist within their borders. It opens the way for cities to pass the buck on their housing failures to surrounding states, cities, towns, communities. It allows cities to abdicate actually solving growing homelessness through the proven homelessness reduction strategies of increased affordable housing, in favor of hiding homelessness from the public eye.
With this ruling, more cities and states will adopt sundown laws. This will incentivize neighboring jurisdictions to do the same in cascading fashion. The end result could very well be that those without housing find themselves unable to legally sleep, rest, or keep warm anywhere in the United States if area shelter is full or unavailable; a situation which will condemn them to a life of endless incarceration and fines.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PROTECT OREGONIANS?
1. Write your elected representatives in Portland and the State Legislature asking them to protect HB 3115 - which mandates that local governments wishing to regulate encampments and prohibit people from sleeping or living in certain places at certain times ensure those restrictions are “objectively reasonable” taking into account the totality of the circumstances, including the impact on people who are experiencing homelessness.
https://www.portland.gov/contact-elected-official
https://gov.oregonlive.com/legislators/
-> Tell them you support HB 3115 which protects civil and human right
-> Encourage elected officials to commit to the evidence backed solutions for ending homelessness - investing in truly affordable housing, purchasing apartments and units, long term rental assistance, and the services to help people get back on their feet and into housing.
-> Urge them to reject wasting tax dollars on policies shown to prolong and increase homelessness . (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G8SUYEHEIOZ5Mtz6Fgtmi_dPl1KxPbmjWhXBWcXorCw/edit?pli=1)
-> Ask them to invest public dollars in the rental assistance, apartment building purchases, and new unit construction that actually create the additional 68,317 units of extremely affordable housing that households making $23,700/year REQUIRE to remain housed and safe.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PuP00Fb4abH9gjyew_jT9gr9vwXZtLg8xcAscMhwo0I/edit
https://welcomehomecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/EnglishLanguageRegionalAffordableHousing101.pdf
2. Write, talk to and vote for City, County, Metro, & State candidates/ elected officials championing affordable housing investments and services that will end houselessness.
https://www.portland.gov/elections/city-office-candidacy/2024-city-candidates
https://www.multco.us/elections/candidate-filings-metro-and-multnomah-county-may-2024-primary
https://www.oregonmetro.gov/regional-leadership/metro-council
https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_State_Senate_elections,_2024
-> Urge them to pursue new revenue to continue the successes of Portland Housing & Metro Housing Bonds which have opened up 6,500 new low income housing units produced by the ( 1359 more units than promised, and still slated to create more) . These funds are set to run out of funds in the near future, leaving a still massive gap that must close if our most vulnerable households are to find relief from paying 50% and more of their earnings to keep a roof over their heads.
https://welcomehomecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/EnglishLanguageRegionalAffordableHousing101.pdf
3. Challenge and reject candidates who favor flushing money down the toilet punishing your homeless neighbors and keeping them unhoused.
-> Ask them why they’re pursuing punishment shown to increase homelessness by over 2 -percent year upon year and fail to reduce the numbers ending up on the streets for the first time
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G8SUYEHEIOZ5Mtz6Fgtmi_dPl1KxPbmjWhXBWcXorCw/edit
-> Tell them all evidence shows the only way to reduce homelessness is increasing housing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0APR7dt-uZ8
Talk to your friends, neighbors and family & ask them to take action and vote in favor of candidates that want to end homelessness rather than pander to haters and conceal systemic inequities.
For a deep dive: Here is an edited transcript of Q and A between Ryan Downer (Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs) and Kelsi Korkran (Co-counsel in Grants Pass V. Johnson) click HERE [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wNsPFmHvd5fIaCsSdASY_3OZDct6DVxyV_yy4tVdASw/edit]. For a video of the conversation click HERE [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLZB_jF46dw]
#Portland #Oregon #PDX #PortlandOr #Housing #HousingIsARight #SCOTUS
#HousekeysNotHandcuffs
https://kolektiva.social/@anarchademic/112871727147534459
Just Bob
emeritrix
California Politics Huddle
