The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) estimates that 18,000 people lose their homes in the United States each week. Most have never been homeless before.
“People become homeless because of the choices of our leaders, not the choices of the individuals who become homeless,” NAEH’s website says. “Homelessness is a policy choice.”
The U.S. Supreme Court, in June, made such a choice in Grants Pass v. Oregon, in which the conservative super-majority agreed that localities have a right to arrest, fine, or jail people for sleeping or lying in public spaces. The ruling, in effect, denies people living on the streets, in cars, or sleeping on park benches, under bridges, or in doorways the Constitutional protections that are afforded to others.
In response to the Court’s decision, fifteen housing groups formed the National Coalition for Housing Justice to push lawmakers to end criminalization policies and bring about real solutions to the growing affordability crisis.
These solutions include securing funding for affordable housing vouchers and other rent subsidies, renovating and repairing dilapidated public housing, and creating a nationwide network of robust eviction and displacement prevention programs.
According to the Coalition, these policies will cost $356 billion.
Antonia Fasanelli, executive director of the National Homelessness Law Center, calls this sum a “down payment” to address the immediate housing needs in this country. “The way to solve the homelessness crisis is with housing provision,” Fasanelli tells The Progressive. “Municipalities cannot fine, arrest, or ticket their way out of it.”
Some Congressional champions have already emerged to support the Coalition’s demands, including Representatives Maxwell Frost (Democrat of Florida), Cori Bush (Democrat of Missouri), and Maxine Waters (Democrat of California).
Stopping criminalization is key, but the coalition is also trying to secure funding to provide free legal representation for people who are facing legal penalties.
“In many places, public defender services are so underfunded that staff have had to focus on representing people facing the most serious charges,” Fasanelli explains. “Misdemeanors for sleeping outdoors are often not prioritized. Nonetheless, these arrests can have a terrible impact on unhoused people since, over time, they can rack up thousands of dollars in fines. This level of debt can make it impossible to get a job or find shelter.”
Steve Berg, Chief Policy Officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, says that the Alliance is not only working to stop criminalization, but is also zeroing in on minimizing the fallout from the Grants Pass decision. “Just because the Supreme Court says that localities can invoke criminal penalties on people who sleep outdoors does not mean they should,” he adds. “It also does not mean that criminalization is good for communities.”
Instead, the Alliance is working with local lawmakers and advocates to get people living outside into housing and provide them with the support services necessary to keep them sheltered. For the Alliance, this means using a strategy called housing first, which moves people indoors with no strings attached.
“Housing first is a systematic approach that coordinates all the different programs that keep people housed,” Berg explains. “You get people inside and then give them access to other things they might need, like medical care, counseling, psychiatric help, or addiction treatment. There is a proven correlation between getting people off the streets and accepting treatment and recovery.”
Nonetheless, they know that stopping criminalization is a linchpin for other reforms, and they are pressing members of Congress to end law enforcement’s involvement in these practices.
The demand began to garner traction even before SCOTUS issued the Grants Pass decision.
A letter from the Poverty Task Force of the House Democratic Caucus to President Joe Biden, sent last winter, reported an incident that highlights the dangers criminalization can pose: “In May 2023, U.S. Forest Service police officers shot and permanently paralyzed Brooks Roberts, an unhoused man living in a camper in Payette National Forest, during a raid coordinated with Bureau of Land Management officers,” the letter reports.
Their conclusion was clear and unequivocal: “Criminalizing homelessness and using law enforcement to punish the unhoused is the most expensive and least effective way of addressing the problem.”
“Criminalizing homelessness and using law enforcement to punish the unhoused is the most expensive and least effective way of addressing the problem.”
A second letter, sent after the decision was handed down, demanded that the government convert unused federal properties into housing, declare unsheltered homelessness a public health priority, and strengthen relationships between homeless service providers and public health agencies.
“It is cruel and cynical to impose penalties on people who may be facing real human challenges like unaffordable rent, financial emergencies, or health and mental health” crises, the letter states. The document also reminds the Biden Administration that the shortage of affordable rental housing—and the criminalization of unhoused people—disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.
They know they face an uphill climb: Already, nearly three in four U.S. cities have enacted laws that allow police to arrest or fine unhoused people. Many of those arrested have had personal items, including ID cards and other documents, discarded during encampment sweeps, a police practice Fasanelli calls “cruel and heartless.”
Housing advocates are in agreement: Making homelessness illegal does nothing to end it, and criminalization stands in the way of bringing about the solutions we need.