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The Supreme Court just denied cities the right to combat homeless encampments

eman623 said:
Well this is too bad. Things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get better.
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Maybe they were just saying that citizens must commit a crime before we can jail them.
 
Mr Person said:
Well, where are they supposed to go?

I know a good portion of the political spectrum would prefer they go die somewhere out of sight but would never openly admit it because what kind of person actually thinks that way. But if we're not going to provide housing and we're not going to institutionalize the ones with severe mental illness that refuse treatment, where in the precise **** are they supposed to go?

Would you perhaps like them to commit crimes simply to get a roof over their head? There's already some of that going on but if they couldn't even stay anywhere outside, what exactly do you expect?

All we do is move them around from place to place.





I'm not particularly interested in the legal rationale for the decision, but rather with anyone's idea that this is in some way a bad ruling. You don't want to pay for safety net programs sufficient to keep them off the street. You don't want to pay for providing housing. And you don't want to have to see the homeless. So what, exactly, should happen? And what did you expect?

Contrary to the common right wing fantasy, there are many ways to end up poor then homeless that are not the individual's fault.
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Alright, Here are my proposals. For the vast majority of homeless people, we can break down homeless people into three main categories, with varying degrees of overlap among them:

First category: Honest people who, through a terrible run of bad luck and misfortune have ended up on the streets. For them, pay for temporary homeless shelters and housing in order for them to find work, or permanent housing if they are permanently disabled or too elderly to work.

Second category: The insane. For them, we need to re-draft state and federal legislation bring back state mental healthcare hospitals to provide institutionalization for those unable to care for themselves so that they can get medical care and shelter.

Third category: criminal vagrants. These are typically (but not entirely) hard drug addicts who have burned down all their bridges with friends, family and their employers in order to feed their habits and have wound up on the streets. They are those who without intervention will continue beg, borrow and steal in order to feed those habits until they wind up as complete burn-outs (in the Second Category) or dead (and may end up taking others with them if they are violent). For them, I would recommend incarceration followed by drug court and job placement programs. Those who fall back into their drug habits and start robbing, grifting need to remain incarcerated as they present a danger to society.

It is important that people not confuse or merge these three categories together, as some moralists on the political left do, or as some on my side of the aisle do. Not all homeless are honest, decent people who have had monstrously bad luck. Not all homeless are insane. Not all homeless are criminals. But almost all homeless fall into at least one of these categories and distinct solutions must be provided for each category of homeless person.
 
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Barnacle said:
Nope; liberals dragging prior court decisions to the Ninth Circus Appeals Court made it all possible.

“The Ninth Circuit’s decision misapplies and radically expands this Court’s precedent, creates conflicts with five other circuit or state supreme courts, and stretches the Eighth Amendment beyond recognition,” the lawyers representing Boise wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court. “In doing so, it eliminates the ability of state and local governments to protect the health and safety of their residents.”
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The Supreme Court ruled on the issue over a decade ago and refused to review the case so the lower court decision held because it was the same decision as before, a precedent which doesn't merit judicial review by a higher court.YOu can claim liberalism all damn day long it doesn't change the Constitution.
 
if we give the rich more money from the treasury, it will magic away homelessness.
 
Moonglow said:
Allow the building of affordable shelters.
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Where do you stand on drug use in these shelters? That will largely determine how many takers you get.
 
Moonglow said:
They may take all the aspirins they like.
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So how about that ones that won't participate because they are addicts and want to be near their source?

In the LA area, something like 60% of homeless refuse to go to the shelters, in large part because they refuse to conform to the rules.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Maybe they were just saying that citizens must commit a crime before we can jail them.
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You are wrong. Things like loitering, defecating in public, using drugs and blocking doorways are all against the law.
 
Irredentist said:
Requiring cities to offer actual services for the homeless rather than simply treating them as undesirables seems quite reasonable to me.

My personal preferred solution would be the establishment of designated and purposefully cleared areas for homeless encampments, with basic services such as water and sanitation available. Let them pitch their tents there, instead of on the street. Aside from that, just let them do whatever it is they do.
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That would be nice - assuming the bums choose to go there. Apparently the 9th's ruling is that they can choose to pitch their tents anywhere they like if there are too many rules at the tent camps.
 
eman623 said:
That would be nice - assuming the bums choose to go there. Apparently the 9th's ruling is that they can choose to pitch their tents anywhere they like if there are too many rules at the tent camps.
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Then don't have rules at the tent camps. Or at least, only the bare minimum. It doesn't need to be paradise, just a space for the homeless to exist that's not in everybody else's way.
 
eman623 said:
You are wrong. Things like loitering, defecating in public, using drugs and blocking doorways are all against the law.
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What words did the SCotUS use when they said that cities are unable to fine and arrest people for defecating in public, using drugs, and blocking doorways?

Fwiw, I don't think loitering laws are enforceable anymore.
Here's something from the SCotUS from twenty years ago
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...dinance/787fe5ea-aefa-4227-a840-95dd87bf9256/
:shrug:
 
Felis Leo said:
Alright, Here are my proposals. For the vast majority of homeless people, we can break down homeless people into three main categories, with varying degrees of overlap among them:

First category: Honest people who, through a terrible run of bad luck and misfortune have ended up on the streets. For them, pay for temporary homeless shelters and housing in order for them to find work, or permanent housing if they are permanently disabled or too elderly to work.

Second category: The insane. For them, we need to re-draft state and federal legislation bring back state mental healthcare hospitals to provide institutionalization for those unable to care for themselves so that they can get medical care and shelter.

Third category: criminal vagrants. These are typically (but not entirely) hard drug addicts who have burned down all their bridges with friends, family and their employers in order to feed their habits and have wound up on the streets. They are those who without intervention will continue beg, borrow and steal in order to feed those habits until they wind up as complete burn-outs (in the Second Category) or dead (and may end up taking others with them if they are violent). For them, I would recommend incarceration followed by drug court and job placement programs. Those who fall back into their drug habits and start robbing, grifting need to remain incarcerated as they present a danger to society.

It is important that people not confuse or merge these three categories together, as some moralists on the political left do, or as some on my side of the aisle do. Not all homeless are honest, decent people who have had monstrously bad luck. Not all homeless are insane. Not all homeless are criminals. But almost all homeless fall into at least one of these categories and distinct solutions must be provided for each category of homeless person.
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These are good ideas, but with the best will in the world they would take time to implement. In the meantime these people still need a place to go. I agree that a multi-pronged approach is the best way to go. It would require a lot of commitment, money and determination but it is doable. The question is: Do we have the will to get it done?
 
bluesmoke said:
OK. What could be done for things to get better for the residents?
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Not having people sleeping, defecating and doing drugs on the sidewalks and in the parks they pay taxes to build and maintain and where they take their kids to play.
 
eman623 said:
Boise has enough shelters, but they still can't shoo bums off the sidewalks because the 9th circuit ruled, "local shelter providers’ rules and religious orientation made them inadequate to the needs of some of the local homeless population."

I don't even know what that means. But seriously, what happened to "beggers can't be choosers"? Apparently now they CAN be choosers.
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I would say its a "natural rights" issue.

Like 2nd amendment folks talk about the right to defend oneself.

If you do not sleep you will go crazy and die.

But here in America, sleep is a privelege that must be paid for by someone. At a rate of 30% or more of gross output for ones entire productive life, according to capitalism.

Prior to the advent of the landlord, no human being anywhere expended 30% of their total effort to provide themselves with shelter alone. It takes force to get that. A state to apply that force.

Speculation has driven housing costs far above any reality.

When I was younger, you rented because you couldn't afford to pay a mortgage. Now, in many (most?) places rent IS a mortgage payment, plus insurance. What the mortgage would be, based on current market value, even when owned outright.

It is a feeding behavior, largely parasitic. Rentals have a place. But I would argue that "peasants instead of pensions" is a dead end practice.
 
Moonglow said:
Allow the building of affordable shelters.
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Hate to break this to you, but you cannot house people who will NOT voluntarily follow a program which benefits them. Speaking of mentally ill and drug addicts.
 
Mr Person said:
Well, where are they supposed to go?

I know a good portion of the political spectrum would prefer they go die somewhere out of sight but would never openly admit it because what kind of person actually thinks that way. But if we're not going to provide housing and we're not going to institutionalize the ones with severe mental illness that refuse treatment, where in the precise **** are they supposed to go?

Would you perhaps like them to commit crimes simply to get a roof over their head? There's already some of that going on but if they couldn't even stay anywhere outside, what exactly do you expect?

All we do is move them around from place to place.





I'm not particularly interested in the legal rationale for the decision, but rather with anyone's idea that this is in some way a bad ruling. You don't want to pay for safety net programs sufficient to keep them off the street. You don't want to pay for providing housing. And you don't want to have to see the homeless. So what, exactly, should happen? And what did you expect?

Contrary to the common right wing fantasy, there are many ways to end up poor then homeless that are not the individual's fault.
Click to expand...

Most of the poor and homeless these days are there by choice or the choices they made. Very few are there because of inability.
 
PirateMk1 said:
Most of the poor and homeless these days are there by choice or the choices they made. Very few are there because of inability.
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What is the point of lying? Throwing out completely false bull**** with nothing to back it up. Oh, that's what you tell yourself to feel better about yourself, but in the end, its still bull****
 
Unemployment compensation for simply being unemployed on an at-will basis in our at-will employment State is more equitable and ensures equal protection of the laws.
 
Sampson Simpson said:
What is the point of lying? Throwing out completely false bull**** with nothing to back it up. Oh, that's what you tell yourself to feel better about yourself, but in the end, its still bull****
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Most people who are homeless are drug or alcohol addicts. Thats a fact. Comparatively few of them are insane or unable to care for themselves through no fault of their own. Fewer still are there because of economic circumstance of a catastrophic nature. The last typically get help to get off the streets relatively quickly. The former are there by choice induced by addiction. The insane and incapable where let down by the system. The numbers almost everyone throws around show these statements to be facts.
 
danielpalos said:
lol. that is like saying employers don't hire anyone who asks, because of the choices they make.
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I am not sure what you are trying to communicate.
 
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