Homeless advocates warn that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a landmark case on camping bans will worsen the homelessness crisis and trap more people in a cycle of prison, debt and life on the streets.
On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Grants Pass, a small town in Oregon with a large homeless population. According to a lawyer for Grants Pass who spoke to USA Today, the Supreme Court said the town can go ahead with a ban on sleeping in public places, which would prohibit homeless people from living in public parks. Anyone who violates the ban would be fined and potentially face jail time.
In a 6-3 ruling, the justices said enforcement of the camping ban did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling overturned a lower court’s decision that had blocked enforcement of the camping ban.
“This is a pretty big blow, it’s devastating,” said Helen Crews, 49, who has served meals to homeless people in Grants Pass parks and has opposed the sleeping ban for years. She said she has been homeless for most of her adult life and was recently able to stay at the church where she volunteers.
After the sentence was announced Friday, Cruz told USA Today that the sentence is the worst outcome imaginable for hundreds of people living outside of Grants Pass.
“These people had nothing, they had a ray of hope, and now that’s been taken away. I just can’t understand how devastating it can be to people who have nothing,” Cruz said through tears.
Homeless advocacy groups across the country also said Friday that the court’s decision was a major disappointment.
“We are extremely disappointed and concerned about how quickly some cities will move to enact local ordinances that are now legal as a result of this ruling,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Since 2018, many Western U.S. cities have been unable to impose 24-hour bans on sleeping in public, a dilemma they said makes it difficult to remove large tent camps. Now, some of the cities with the largest unhoused homeless populations in the U.S. — Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle — are free to enact new laws banning people from sleeping outdoors.
Thean Evangelis, an attorney who handled the Grants Pass case, said Friday that the court’s decision provides “urgent relief” for cities struggling to manage homeless camps.
“I hope that years from now, people will look back on today’s landmark ruling as a turning point for homelessness in America,” Evangelis said in a statement.
Policy experts who supported Grants Pass in the case said the Supreme Court’s decision is a victory for local governments across the country.
“The Court made the right decision not to micromanage local homeless policies across the United States,” said Judge Glock, research director at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that supports individual liberty and the rule of law, which filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of Grants Pass.
In Oregon, homeless residents in Grants Pass and across the state will have some protections against 24-hour sleep bans under a 2021 state law, but cities can move forward with stricter camping rules after the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling on Friday.
Oral ArgumentWhat the judge said in court in Grants Pass v. Johnson
Grants Pass Mayor Sarah Bristol said she was pleased the Supreme Court ruled in the city’s favor and told USA Today that she would begin reviewing the decision and state law with the City Council to determine how to move forward.
“I am relieved that the city of Grants Pass will be able to reopen its parks for recreation,” Bristol said, adding that he recognizes homelessness is a “complex issue” and that the city is “looking for solutions.”
One solution would have been to open licensed campgrounds or create new shelters, but both were opposed by the city.
Ruth Sears, who owns a dance studio building next door to the proposed shelter in downtown Grants Pass, said the court’s decision won’t do anything to solve the city’s homeless problem.
“I don’t know how that really helps homeless people unless you think they’re going to go somewhere else, which is obviously not a really good answer for homeless people,” Sears, 72, said.
Legal experts representing the homeless plaintiffs in the case worry that as more cities pass similar bans, the number of jurisdictions where homeless people can legally live outdoors will decrease.
“What would happen if every jurisdiction passed these laws? It would probably spread across the country,” said David Peary, a Florida attorney with the National Coalition for the Homeless.
Oliva said fines imposed by bans on camping and sleeping rough only prolong homelessness, as debt and criminal records make it harder for people to secure work and housing.
“We know they can’t pay the fines,” Oliva added.
Homeless in Grants PassHow one woman’s experience of homelessness fits into the national conversation
The city of Grants Pass already imposed fines and enforced a law banning tents from being pitched in the same place indefinitely, but officials now have expanded powers to crack down on people living outdoors.
Eric Tarz, legal director of the National Homeless Law Center, said the Supreme Court’s decision will only make the homelessness problem worse.
“Harmful approaches like criminalization are an excuse to avoid addressing affordable housing issues,” Tarz said.
Similarly, Oliva said the camping ban is a “false solution” to the crisis occurring in homeless camps across the country.
Advocates say cities should focus on affordable housing
Oliva said Friday that mayors and city councils across the country must remember that they are responding to the needs of unhoused communities, not just housed constituents who want to solve homelessness.
Oliva said that rather than stepping up enforcement against people in encampments by passing new sleep bans, local elected officials should build more shelters and provide more services to homeless people through outreach efforts.
“Building more affordable housing while keeping people as safe and healthy as possible through shelter and outreach that’s focused on housing is the way forward,” Oliva said.
Tarrz described the court’s decision as “heartbreaking.”
“But our fight is not over yet,” he told USA Today.
What arguments did the Court make at oral argument?
During oral arguments on April 22, the justices addressed the question of whether homelessness is an inevitable situation or whether rough sleeping is a behavior that occurs as a result of a lack of housing.
The justices said it was more reasonable for local and state governments to make choices about homeless policies rather than for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the debate.
In April, some justices questioned whether the issue could be decided narrowly, saying Grants Pass’s sleep ban was not permitted under Oregon’s new law that bans 24-hour bans.
What is the Grants Pass incident?
Grants Pass vs. Johnson The movement has pitted homeless residents of Grants Pass, Oregon, a city of about 40,000 people, against local officials who want to regain control of a public park where about 600 homeless people live under tents and tarps and sleep on tables and benches.
Most of the homeless people living outside Grants Pass became homeless because of skyrocketing housing prices in recent decades, said Ed Johnson, the public defender who first tried the case and is no relation to the plaintiff in the case, Gloria Johnson.
The city wanted to remove people from the park permanently but said it couldn’t do that because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in 2022 that homeless people living in places without enough shelter beds have an Eighth Amendment right not to be punished for living outdoors and protecting themselves from the elements.
There are no city-run shelters, only church-run homeless programs, including shelters that require residents to work. A transitional housing facility in the form of a tiny house village opened in 2021, but it only houses 17 people. Service providers say turnover at the facility is low because of Grants Pass’s lack of affordable housing.
Grants Pass’s mayor and city council members have tried hard to open a licensed campground and a new shelter, but multiple plans have faced too much opposition from local residents and been thwarted. Bristol previously told USA Today that as of this spring, the town no longer had the funding to create the shelter space it needed for its homeless residents.
“We need to work together to establish places where people can legally sleep, but it’s a really uphill battle with a variety of challenges,” Bristol said in April.
To address the issue of homeless encampments in public parks, lawyers for Grants Pass asked the Supreme Court in April to overturn a 9th Circuit decision that protected homeless people from being punished for camping out.
“The Ninth Circuit has tied cities’ hands by constitutionalizing a policy debate about how to deal with growing encampments,” Evangelis said in April during arguments in Grants Pass County Supreme Court.
Contributing writer: Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY