There’s plenty to be concerned about with the recent Supreme Court decision that upholds a ban on camping in Grants Pass, Oregon. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision, saying that laws criminalizing sleeping in public places are not in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment protections. The case was brought by a number of houseless individuals in Grants Pass, some of them who experienced disabilities that meant living in shelters — or complying with the shelter’s work requirements — was not an option. Staying in the streets, meanwhile, resulted in fines. It’s an impossible place to be.
The Supreme Court decision tosses another policy-defining court decision, Martin v. Boise, out the window. With that case, cities in the 9th Circuit — which includes most of the West — were barred from removing people from encampments if adequate shelter capacity was not in place.
In response to the Grants Pass decision, the reaction has been mixed. Some have called it more confirmation of NIMBYism. Some predict it will result in more aggressive camp removals. Some say it continues the criminalization of disability, as some 52% of people in shelters in the U.S. reported having a disability as of 2021.
Over in Grants Pass, local leadership said it’s too soon to say how the ruling will ultimately affect its bans on camping and its attempts to adjudicate people staying on public property. It’s been six years since the plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the City of Grants Pass, and since then, Oregon has put some new laws into place that dictate how camps can be cleared, and what officials doing so must do with people’s property.
As the pundits are saying, the shift in mindset around how we treat homeless individuals could be massive around the West. But here in Oregon, the differences may be more subtle. For one, Oregon state legislators in 2021 codified what needs to be in place for the removal of people from public property. Those laws went into effect in 2023. Under those new laws, law enforcement officials must give a 72-hour notice of a camp removal and alert the service providers who work with houseless individuals that the notice has been posted. Any personal property that’s left after the removal gets stored for 30 days.
What’s more, one law, ORS 195.530, dictates, “Any city or county law that regulates the acts of sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and dry outdoors on public property that is open to the public must be objectively reasonable as to time, place and manner with regards to persons experiencing homelessness.”
What is “objectively reasonable” may be different in each town.
Here in Bend, the City has time, place and manner guidelines it follows for camp removals, and the City has never issued a citation, City Attorney Mary Winters told the Source Weekly. The City put its shelter program together in the interest of getting people housed, not necessarily because of the threat of lawsuits that could have come from the dictates of Martin v. Boise, she said. This is a different approach than the fines that Grants Pass has attempted to include in its own plan.
Right now, legal experts around the U.S., and especially in the West, are pondering what changes might come. Will the decision “likely result in municipalities taking more aggressive action to remove encampments, including throwing away more of homeless people’s property,” as ProPublica describes some legal experts saying?
Oregon seems to have put some safeguards in place to manage the many competing opinions around homelessness, giving those experiencing homelessness at least some rights as they are removed from a place they’re sleeping.
Yet some Oregon lawmakers who favor aggressive action on homelessness are already calling for changes to the new set of Oregon laws. Will they get their way?
Are we destined to listen to endless diatribes about criminalization versus compassion during this election season?
And, one day in the future, will cities like Bend decide to let budgets for shelters lapse, now that Martin v. Boise is no longer hanging over their heads?
In Oregon, we may not be facing down the immediate threat of harsh camp removals that result in people losing their belongings as well as their temporary homes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be a fallout.
This article appears in Source Weekly July 4, 2024.
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The bottom line on this is our government needs to step up and acknowledge the crisis of mental illness and addiction and in a compassionate but firm approach. People whom have mental illness and/or addiction usually don’t want the help that they need and quite frankly need to be forced to get the help. The homeless crisis despite what our city and county officials may proclaim is largely due to mental illness and addiction. In addition, addiction can cause mental illness and visa versa. In any event both need to be treated. We need medical facilities built in our communities all over this nation to address these issues. We need to address the root cause so that we don’t have this crisis. Having low barrier facilities and giving hand outs here and there only perpetuates the issues these folks endure daily. They need proper treatment facilities period. The houseless situation needs to be handled from a medical standpoint. And people choosing the houseless life style and of living in vans and buses on our US Forest Service lands and on our streets and communities here in Deschutes County should not be tolerated period. It is causing a lot of dis-ease in our communities and is not appropriate. There should be hard and strong rules created and ENFORCED. And the rules are not being enforced at all from my observations.
In her dissent on the Grants Pass decision Judge Sonia Sotomayor cited the case of a Nashville man compelled to wear a T-shirt with the words, “Please do not arrest me; my outreach worker is working on my housing.”
Fortunately Bend is not Nashville. Oregon is not (shudder) Tennessee.
An election season of “endless diatribes” foreseen in this astute editorial need not take place in Bend. Here we have an innovative and courageous City government which on a shoestring has partnered with nonprofits and the County to build numerous facilities for transitional housing, life-saving shelter, and safe parking.
As a result, the number of unhoused people living in Bend has declined, according to the 2024 Point In Time Count. A lesson is slowly emerging: The way to resolve the national crisis of homelessness lies in helping people, not criminalizing them.
Little remarked in the Grants Pass decision is the Catch 22 forced on Oregon, where people who might be increasingly impacted by the “crime” of homelessness because they are poor and older, no longer have ready access to a public defender. The Supreme Court took away 8th Amendment protections for unhoused people at a time when, practically speaking, 6th Amendment legal protections no longer exist.
FosterFell. Please don’t mislead our public. There is a continuous increase in Point in time count. 9% increase, not decrease . Low barrier perpetuates the situation. We need proper medical intake facilities that folks are forced into. You need to treat root cause. And tell your wife that perhaps they should tighten up on the STR’s and Transportation fees so elderly don’t find themselves being pushed out or worse homeless.
This is directly from the website: https://cohomeless.org/what-we-do/point-in…
Key takeaways from our 2024 Point in Time count completed on January 23, 2024.
2024 Point in Time Count shows a 9% increase in homelessness over last year
1,799 people experienced literal homelessness in Central Oregon on January 23rd, 2024
69% of people counted were unsheltered
66% of question respondents have lived in Central Oregon for 5 years or longer
68% of question respondents have been homeless for more than 12 months
10% of chronically homeless were age 65 or older
35% of chronically homeless were age 55 or older
18% of those surveyed were under the age of 25 (21% last year)
24% of those surveyed were POC, up 4 pct pts from 20% last year
Following is an innuendo-free response to the accusation I am misleading the public with a previous post. I did not misstate: Homelessness in Bend did, in fact, decrease. By 5%.
The number of homeless counted in Bend declined from 1,012 last year to 959 this year. Redmond’s count also fell.
As a Point In Time Count volunteer, I am completely aware of the 9% increase in unhoused individuals throughout Central Oregon. However, within Bend and Redmond, city governments have been forging partnerships with private entities to build a variety of facilities that seem to be reversing this trend. Availability of these new wrap-around villages, renovated motels, safe parking areas, and shelters has helped significant numbers find permanent housing.
This is only the beginning, but I fear that with the increasing likelihood of a second Trump term, Federal funding will dry up and the early stage improvement we are now seeing will stall.
I am happy to see that the commenter reported PIT results that show 66% of unhoused people with 5 years or longer residency in the region. The data I personally collected at China Hat and elsewhere as a PIT volunteer line up with this high number. These men, women, and children are, in fact, our long-standing neighbors.
A 2023 Pew Charitable Trust analysis shows high housing costs to be the biggest driver of homelessness. In the six metro areas highlighted in the study where homelessness rose sharply, rents increased faster than the national average. Over the same period, the four urban areas featured that experienced declines in homelessness saw low rent growth. I’d like to see a similar analysis applied to Central Oregon.