Supreme Court to rule on whether homeless people can be fined
The US Supreme Court will rule on Monday on whether cities can fine people who set up homeless camps in public spaces.
The test case, involving the town of Grants Pass in Oregon, is being followed by cities across the country including Phoenix, Seattle and Los Angeles as they struggle to cope with pop-up “tent cities” within their boundaries.
Grants Pass, a town of 40,000 with around 600 homeless people, passed a law in 2013 banning anyone from using a blanket, pillow or box while sleeping outside.
It led to a wave of fines in a crackdown which has been condemned by groups campaigning for the homeless.
Helen Cruz was hit with a series of fines totalling more than $5,000 under the law.
“I was holding down two jobs when I was down here,” she told ABC News.
“It was still not enough to rent a place. In terms of low-income housing here, it’s a thousand dollars a month and that’s not workable either.”
However, in 2020 a court struck down the law, which included a potential 30-day jail term for repeat offenders.
It ruled that fining the homeless for sleeping rough when they had nowhere to go was “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.
In September 2022 the ruling was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, which covers a swathe of cities and states in the western United States.
Grants Pass has now asked Supreme Court justices to overturn the ruling, in what is seen as the most significant case involving the homeless in four decades.
According to the latest figures compiled by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, there were more than 653,000 homeless people in the United States in January last year.
The crisis has been exacerbated by soaring rents, a mental health and drug crisis, and a raft of Covid relief programmes expiring.
Residents in many cities have complained of a surge in anti-social behaviour, with some inhabitants of homeless camps urinating and defecating in the street.
Grants Pass won support from politicians from both parties. Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic Governor, has said the ruling “tied the state’s hands” in tackling the problem.
Meanwhile, Grants Pass police chief, Warren Hensman, said his officers were stuck in the middle.
“We have community members in Grants Pass who are afraid to come to our parks. We have had shootings in our parks, we have had fights in our parks, chronic drug use in our parks.”