this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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As more people end up experiencing homelessness, they’re also facing increasingly punitive and reactionary responses from local governments and their neighbors. Such policies could become legally codified in short order, with the high court having agreed to hear arguments in Grants Pass v. Johnson.

Originally brought in 2018, the case challenged the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, over an ordinance banning camping. Both a federal judge and, later, a panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck the law down, saying that Grants Pass did not have enough available shelter to offer homeless people. As such, the law was deemed to be a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The ruling backed up the Ninth Circuit’s earlier ruling on the Martin v. City of Boise case, which said that punishing or arresting people for camping in public when there are no available shelter beds to take them to instead constituted a violation of the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause in the Eighth Amendment. That applied to localities in the Ninth Circuit’s area of concern and has led to greater legal scrutiny even as cities and counties push for more punitive and restrictive anti-camping laws. In fact, Grants Pass pushed to get the Supreme Court to hear the case, and several nominally liberal cities and states on the West Coast are backing its argument. If the Supreme Court overturns the previous Grants Pass and Boise rulings, it would open the door for cities, states, and counties to essentially criminalize being unhoused on a massive scale.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240223125412/https://newrepublic.com/article/178678/supreme-court-criminalize-homeless-case

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[–] [email protected] 147 points 9 months ago (3 children)

What’s gonna happen is they’re going to get arrested and sent to a private prison who will then profit off their free slave labor. And in states with three strike rules that’ll happen a couple times back to back and then you have permanent indentured servitude.

[–] Burn_The_Right 74 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

The desire to enslave people is a fundamental conservative trait.

In fact, there has never been a point in human history when conservatives were opposed to slavery, even a little bit.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Name a more iconic trio than capitalism, Christianity, and conservatism.

[–] Maggoty 15 points 9 months ago

Centrally organized religions in general. Let's not let the others off the hook. It seems like the second prayer gets away from it's community ideals it turns sour.

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[–] Maggoty 21 points 9 months ago

The last state, (I can't remember which red state it was), to pass an anti homeless law caught flack because they included it in stand your ground reasons. However also in that bill was a nice little pathway to felony for the homeless and a three strikes law.

So yeah. That's exactly it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

While I broadly agree with the sentiment of your post, three strikes laws usually only apply to felonies, and criminalized homelessness is typically misdemeanor stuff. Not a defense of three strike laws, they're fucking garbage, but the truth matters.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

And while I broadly agree with your point, it is far too easy for law enforcement to tack on additional charges like resisting arrest. And, yes, in most states resisting arrest is also a misdemeanor, but incidents can be raised to felony resisting arrest if they involve assault on an officer. Unfortunately, it is easy for any innocent physical contact with police to be interpreted as assault, if an officer decides to portray it that way. The truth matters, but so does ACAB

[–] Maggoty 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How many times do you let yourself be arrested non violently, knowing all of your stuff and money is going to be gone before you get back?

And by non violently we mean doing exactly what the cops say, when they say, no questions asked, mid conversation after they've declared they're arresting you. And hoping they don't beat you up and charge you anyways for annoying them or imagined disrespect.

Putting anyone in adverse contact with police routinely is creating a pathway to being a felon.

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Got a problem? Just make it illegal! Bam! Solved!

Next up: Not finding a job is going to become illegal, thus solving unemployment issues!

[–] cmoney 41 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

But that would make 3/4 of all politicians just disappear. Huh... come to think of it, we should do it!

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[–] chakan2 17 points 9 months ago

They did that already...they tied healthcare to being employed.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Conservatives can't understand why we did away with debtors prison.

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[–] GraniteM 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

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[–] ThePyroPython 79 points 9 months ago (5 children)

So the Supreme Court is willing to force states to provide shelter and food to homeless people?

I didn't know the Supreme Court justices were socialists.

[–] gAlienLifeform 45 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Oh, no no no, that would be protecting human rights, which conservatives really aren't about. They want to protect states' rights and local governments' rights to harass and brutalize humans. That's their idea of liberty.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

It's THEIR liberty -- not yours. You can go get fucked.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (6 children)

In fact, Grants Pass pushed to get the Supreme Court to hear the case, and several nominally liberal cities and states on the West Coast are backing its argument.

How do you explain the liberal cities and states on the West Coast, then?

[–] gAlienLifeform 37 points 9 months ago

Liberals be like

Their market worshipping ideology is barely an improvement over conservatism imo. What we need is progressivism and socialism, but so long as conservatives are turning into fascists I feel compelled to suppprt the liberal douchebags Citizens United has left us with (at least as far as my voting goes, anyway).

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago

No war but class war

[–] Burn_The_Right 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Liberal does not mean progressive.

The term liberal was used to refer to fiscal policies, until Republicans in the Reagan era began misusing the word as a pejorative for Democrats. Most Democrats (especially leadership) are not progressives. Most elected Democrats are neo-liberals, even in blue cities. Neo-liberals are conservatives.

We do not have a viable progressive party in the U.S. We have a conservative party and a more conservative party.

[–] reagansrottencorpse 16 points 9 months ago

Liberals are conservatives. That's how.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Much like doing genocide and supporting the police, there's a bipartisan consensus on inflicting violence on unhoused people.

[–] gAlienLifeform 11 points 9 months ago

"If they wanted their concerns to be taken seriously they should have made a donation to someone's campaign!"

[–] agent_flounder 11 points 9 months ago

Too many neolibs, not enough social Democrats and similar. A number of socialized programs would cut the homeless population. And we probably wouldn't have an opioid crisis if we had socialized healthcare (because pushing opioids was done for profits after all)

[–] agent_flounder 15 points 9 months ago

No see the idea is to force states to place homeless people in for profit prisons. Pure capitalism!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Landlords evicting people would also be liable since they directly caused a crime to be committed.

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[–] j4k3 74 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is my future. I was hit by a driver while riding a bicycle to work 2/26/14. I worked for a chain of bike shops as the Buyer. I left my supercharged Camaro at home and rarely drove. I was 29, no DUI, no reason to have to ride, I chose to ride and race and live. I only barely survived. In 3 days it is the 10 year anniversary of spending most of my days laying in bed. When my folks die, I'll be homeless as it stands now; just another one of more than 100k in the greater Los Angeles basin. If you think disability or social security are some kind of safety net, you are delusional. Most of those people out there are like me, like you, after one bad day at the hands of someone else doing something stupid and completely out of your control.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

I'm assuming you've already taken all the legal steps available in your area.

MOVE!

They're alive, so you have support, you have a roof, use the time now to find places that can help you. Make calls, write emails.

Social nets, the few that exist, are still running their programs with the bootstrap mentality. But social programs can and will help you. There are 100% free often national services that have people who's job it is to find programs, file applications, get you to appointments etc.

[–] chakan2 53 points 9 months ago

This is going to be the new war on drugs. The private prisons were being emptied, so they needed a new supply of bodies.

[–] paddirn 46 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If owning a home is a requirement for just being able to exist in society, then doesn't that mean that homeownership (or at least access to renting a home/apartment/etc) is a human right? Shouldn't prices then be regulated such that salaries/minimum wage actually guaranteed you had access to home ownership/rental? If they're setting home-ownership/rental as a responsibility to be able to live, then they need to guarantee home-ownership/rental is affordable for the majority of Americans.

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[–] fastandcurious 44 points 9 months ago (3 children)
  1. Make people homeless
  2. Criminalize homelessness
  3. Profit
[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

2.1) felony record then banning you from voting

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

A government sponsored slavery plan

[–] postmateDumbass 12 points 9 months ago
  1. buy up all residential real estate
  2. only rent for above market value
  3. pass laws making homelessness illegal
  4. profit
[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Next thing all the homeless people will be put in camps. That's pretty much the plot of that one DS9 episode. Let's just hope Sisko got the memo and makes an appearance.

[–] gAlienLifeform 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Hell, camps where they didn't have to worry about cops coming through and smashing up all of their stuff and telling them to find a different neighborhood would actually be an improvement over where we're at now

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[–] BradleyUffner 27 points 9 months ago

Just think of the prison industrial complex profits this is going to bring!

[–] SteefLem 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yeah, if that home is in prison, where you are conveniently exempt from the "no slavery" amendment.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

Going to need to build a whole lot more of those private, for-profit prisons in order to support this.

[–] Paragone 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

"Christians".

Here's their bible's directly instructing the most-devout of Christians to be homeless:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+6%3A7-13&version=AMPC


They'd better be ready to butcher any 2nd-coming of their Christ, in order to prevent him ( should he exist ) from pouring hell onto their fake-values religion that gaslights about being Christian.

What despicable evil.

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[–] blahsay 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've got this idea. Maybe all the homeless people should be rounded up and sent to an island somewhere.

We will call that place...Ustralia.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Arm your homeless neighbors.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

There are good arguments for both sides here. IMO the solution would require recognizing that homelessness is not a local problem and allocating funds at the federal level for assisting the homeless. I don't see any other way of avoiding the unfair situation created when homeless people quite reasonably choose to travel to cities that provide more assistance to them.

[–] Burn_The_Right 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

A conservative is not capable of charity. For a conservative to agree to give something to someone, there must be something in it for them.

For example, if a conservative's church does something nice for someone, they believe their "good deed" will be rewarded with eternal bliss. And the church gets the PR it needs to increase its profitable collections. They all get to call themselves "charitable" while not actually engaging in any charitable behavior.

To a conservative, there is no charity. There is only a transaction.

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