Grants Pass at the Supreme Court
Banning "Camping" Won't Change Anything
I’ve cheered for the Portuguese Model of dealing with addiction and homelessness. This involves harm reduction, treatment, health care, and humane engagement with the addicted, rather than punitive measures.
Now Grants Pass in southern Oregon shows we are continuing in the other direction. The Supreme Court just heard an appeal by the town of 40,000, which wants to enforce local ordinances against “camping” in certain places. The enforcement would involve tickets, fines, and ultimately jail, but was put on hold by an appeals court. On Monday the Supremes heard arguments, and a majority were clearly supportive of the right to enforce bans of this type.
Obviously, this is about more than Grants Pass—every town and city in America is effected by the desperate plight of the homeless, addicts, and mentally ill people—categories that often overlap. The lower court ruling was based on the idea that it was “cruel and unusual punishment” to ban camping, everywhere, at all times, by people with nowhere else to go.
This is about tradeoffs. Of course Grants Pass is overwhelmed by the destructive cycle of fentanyl and meth destroying lives and filling its green areas with tent encampments, overdose crises, and trash. You’ve seen the same problem where you live.
Solving that problem is a worthy goal—but this doesn’t solve it. It pushes it out of sight. Forcing people to move somewhere else (Outside town limits? Under bridges? In national forests? Changing locations every night?) is a temporary and cosmetic solution. Portland has done something similar, focussing almost all its street response teams downtown, clearing sidewalks and tent camps, and removing trash. I work downtown now, and it’s true, there has been an improvement in quality of life in the Pearl and other areas. But many people trapped by addiction have simply settled down in other, less central neighborhoods—including where I live in Southeast. There are literally zero outreach teams in the outer neighborhoods now, they all focus on downtown.
So you can make the problem go away. Just not very far away. They won’t move to another state, or just magically give up fentanyl.
We need long-term investment in mental health and drug treatment, and harm reduction for both those individuals and the communities we live in. The Supreme Court won’t do any of that when it eventually rules in favor of Grants Pass.
Citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/us/supreme-court-homeless-case-oregon.html
Yes... AND, once again, I strongly believe we need a nation-wide solution. Counties, like Multnomah County, with the [until recently] perfect trifecta of legalized small possession of drugs, lax camping ordinances, and minor penalties for shoplifting, end up being attractive places to those all over the country with mental health, and drug addiction. We can't solve this US-wide problem city by city, as those cities get slammed.