On the sidewalk, I would think most cities would already have laws against blocking a sidewalk, whether it be with a vehicle, bicycle, or a person. If they want to sleep off of the sidewalks on the grass, IDK. Quite honestly, there are a lot of homeless shelters, help, and support if the people wanted it......but the ones you see on the street don't, they just want to get high.

Our society is why we have this huge homeless (and drug) problem compared to much poorer countries like those in Central America. In Central America nobody gives homeless people money at stop lights. Very few people help homeless or drug addicts. There aren't shelters and food banks and things like that. So you see very few people in those countries, that are drug addicts and don't work at all and just squatting and living off of hand outs.

Move them to the door steps of the dnc and the 9th circuit.

This was very much a topic of the recent Boise mayor election. In a poll of Boise residents more than 60% supported the practice. There are shelters here to help, but maybe due to the reputation of not tolerating it and the fact it gets cold here in the winter keeps the problem somewhat in check and presumably them staying in the bigger and warmer west coast cities. But as stated, pending how this is ruled on, cities should just bus the homeless by the 10's of thousands to the DC area and see how they deal with them sleeping on the steps of the courts and other buildings. Having to step over the unwashed masses would no doubt offend them.
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How Far Can Cities Go to Police the Homeless? Boise Tests the Limit

A decade-old legal fight shapes a mayoral race and offers the Supreme Court a chance to weigh in.

BOISE, Idaho — During a recent mayoral debate at a Boise homeless shelter, after disposing of icebreakers like the candidates’ favorite Metallica album, the moderator turned to something more contentious: a decade-old lawsuit, now a step away from the Supreme Court. The case, Boise v. Martin, is examining whether it’s a crime for someone to sleep outside when they have nowhere else to go.

The suit arose when a half-dozen homeless people claimed that local rules prohibiting camping on public property violated the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The plaintiffs prevailed at the appellate level last year, putting the city at the center of a national debate on how to tackle homelessness. Now Boise — after hiring a powerhouse legal team that includes Theodore B. Olson and Theane Evangelis of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher — has asked the Supreme Court to take the case, a decision that could come within days.

Nobody at Interfaith Sanctuary, a shelter for 164 with bunk beds in neat rows, needed a primer. They had been talking about it for weeks. Before the debate, Dawn Whitson, a shelter resident making $12 an hour as a hotel receptionist, said she wanted to know why the city was spending potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the suit instead of putting the money toward more shelter beds or homeless services.

In the course of the one-hour event organized by the shelter, the two candidates, competing in a runoff election on Tuesday, heard plenty more about the issue. One person said there was a misconception that all homeless people are drug addicts. A veteran said he had $771 left over from his disability check each month but couldn’t find a room for less than $500, and asked what he was supposed to do.

Even before the answers, everyone knew who the room was for. Lauren McLean, the City Council president and top vote-getter in an inconclusive November election, opposes the city’s quest for leeway in policing the homeless. She says the solution should come from tackling poverty.

“Each of us, no matter our situation, has to sleep,” she said. “We need more beds. We need to create homes for our residents.”

Her opponent, Mayor David Bieter, seeking his fifth term, was unapologetic about fighting the lawsuit, despite the shelter crowd. Echoing the position of various Western cities that support Boise’s stand, Mr. Bieter argued that the ability to issue citations for sleeping outside is a little-used but necessary tool to keep homelessness in check.

“I’m really concerned when I see Seattle or Portland or San Francisco,” he said. “I go there and I see a city that’s overwhelmed by the problem, and people tell me all the time, ‘Don’t allow us to be like those other cities.’”

On the surface, Boise, a city of about 230,000 whose modest downtown does little to obscure the mountain views, is an odd point of origin for such a debate. Its annual homeless count has found about 50 to 100 unsheltered people for the past seven years. A drive around town turned up a handful of people sleeping outside, a far cry from the blocklong tent cities in California.

But the city’s decision to appeal Boise v. Martin has elevated homelessness to a focus of an increasingly ugly campaign. Third-party mailers have put Ms. McLean’s picture next to a homeless encampment with the words, “Lauren McLean’s Future Boise.” She recently posted on Facebook that someone in a pickup truck was putting tents and sleeping bags next to “McLean for Boise” yard signs.

The city’s relatively modest homeless problem is cited by both candidates to bolster their positions. Each is essentially campaigning on the idea that rapid growth needn’t produce streets of destitution as it has in California — but the two diverge on the role that law enforcement should play.

To Mr. Bieter, the homeless crises in Los Angeles and San Francisco prove that the city’s power to issue citations and shoo sleeping people off sidewalks is needed to prevent larger camps from forming.

Ms. McLean calls for a different approach. “I think other cities got to the point where it was too late,” she said in an interview. “So let’s say right now we’re actually going to get to work to prevent homelessness instead of hanging our hat on getting the right to ticket people.”

The road to the Supreme Court’s doorstep began in the office of Howard Belodoff, a Boise civil rights lawyer. In 2009, after a local shelter closed, Mr. Belodoff filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of six homeless men and women who had been cited for violating city ordinances that prohibit sleeping on public property. Most of the plaintiffs were prosecuted and pleaded guilty, with the exception of Robert Martin, whose case was dismissed.

Mr. Martin and the other plaintiffs subsequently filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the city’s ordinances. The case was litigated for several years before being appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Last year, in a decision that reverberated across the West Coast, the court ruled that it was unconstitutional to cite someone for sleeping outdoors if there wasn’t any shelter available.

In August, Boise formally asked the Supreme Court to hear the case. While the Ninth Circuit has described its decision as “narrow,” the city’s petition portrays it as anything but, using words like “vast,” “far-reaching” and “catastrophic” to depict a picture of mass confusion and lawlessness arising from the court’s ruling. The filing goes on to say that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling could also imperil a host of other public health laws “such as those prohibiting public defecation and urination.”

“Public encampments, now protected by the Constitution under the Ninth Circuit’s decision, have spawned crime and violence, incubated disease and created environmental hazards that threaten the lives and well-being both of those living on the streets and the public at large,” it declares.

In an interview, Ms. Evangelis, from Gibson Dunn, said: “I don’t think that fighting for someone’s right to live and die in squalor is helping.”

In response, lawyers for the plaintiffs, quoting an earlier Ninth Circuit decision, argue that the court’s ruling in the Boise case merely “reflects the ought-to-be uncontroversial principle that a person may not be charged with a crime for engaging in activity that is simply ‘a universal and unavoidable consequence of being human.’”

Dozens of cities have filed briefs backing Boise’s position, saying that they are confused as to how broadly the Ninth Circuit ruling applies and that the decision has impeded enforcement of basic health and safety laws. In some cases, the cities contend, the decision has actually made it harder to build housing meant for the homeless.

Among Boise’s allies is Los Angeles, which has passed more than $1 billion in bonds for permanent supportive housing but has found steep neighborhood resistance. Mike Feuer, the Los Angeles city attorney, said the Ninth Circuit decision raised as many questions as it answered. For instance, to determine whether or not is in compliance with the ruling, does the city have to constantly count how many beds there are and compare it to the homeless population? Can Los Angeles prohibit sleeping in sensitive locations, such as next to new homeless shelters?

“The language, rather than citing clear principles where constitutional questions are at stake, makes local jurisdictions vulnerable to lawsuits as they struggle to achieve a balance between the legitimate rights and interests of homeless people and the legitimate rights and interests of other residents and businesses,” he said.

Whatever happens in the Boise mayor’s race, Boise v. Martin is far enough along that its fate now rests with the Supreme Court: Even if she is elected mayor, Ms. McLean said, she has no plans to withdraw from the case. “The case is moving forward — that ship has sailed,” she said. “I just still maintain that we can do this without ticketing folks and moving them into the criminal justice system, which will make it harder to find shelter, home and work.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/1.../homeless-boise.html

It's been 20 years since I've been in ca. Are there tents and human waste on the sidewalks of Rodeo Drive?

In my opinion this is a big screw up by the Supreme Court. I hope the homeless pitch tents right on their steps.


Supreme Court Lets Ruling Stand Forbidding Prosecution of Homeless for Sleeping in Public Spaces

https://www.nationalreview.com...ng-in-public-spaces/

The Supreme Court on Monday chose not to hear the city of Boise’s defense of its policy of prosecuting homeless people who sleep in a public space, letting a lower court ruling stand that terms the city’s policy “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Boise, the capital of Idaho, fined or jailed homeless people for sleeping in public, contending the policy was needed to prevent unsanitary and unsafe conditions from developing in the city. Six current and former homeless residents of the city, who were fined between $25 to $75 and served one to two days in jail, sued the city government in federal court in 2009.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, California, ruled in 2018 that Boise’s policy violated the 8th amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling prevents cities from punishing homeless people for sleeping in public if there are not enough beds available at local shelters to house them.


“As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter,” the court said in its ruling. The city of Boise maintained that it did not issue citations to people when shelters were full, and added that two of the city’s shelters had a policy to never turn away a person in need of a bed.

The state of California is currently in the midst of its own homelessness crisis, with 60,000 homeless in Los Angeles County and 28,000 in San Francisco.

So for the legalites here in this forum.Will this Supreme Court action to refuse to take the case just impact the 9th circuit,or the entire United States?

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
So for the legalites here in this forum.Will this Supreme Court action to refuse to take the case just impact the 9th circuit,or the entire United States?

A denial of cert by SCOTUS is not a ruling on the merits, so the 9th Cir. opinion is the final word. It is only binding on the 9th cir., but anyone in other jurisdictions who sues will cite the 9th Cir. decision as persuasive (as opposed to mandatory) precedent, and the citation will include a designation of "cert. denied." It will carry significant weight but not bind the other circuits, who are free to interpret the constitution differently. If other circuits do come to different legal conclusions, then that would increase pressure on SCOTUS to hear the case to resolve the conflict between the circuits.

Thanks ChicagoSig for a plain English explanation.

quote:

Originally posted by az4783054:
It's been 20 years since I've been in ca. Are there tents and human waste on the sidewalks of Rodeo Drive?

I am in LA regularly for work, flew in yesterday and drove to Santa Barbara in fact. There are tent camps here and there, mostly under freeway overpasses. I have been in downtown LA, Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Orange County, and several other sections of greater LA over the past couple of months and I have seen zero human feces on any public streets or sidewalks. I have walked past zero tents. I have smelled a lot of weed being smoked and seen some bums passed out a time or two but that is not any different than it was 30 years ago when I visited LA for the 1st time. Rodeo Drive is unchanged in 20 years...

Surely it’s apparent that many cities within the Ninth Circuits region have self-created this “Constitutional right” crisis. When you facilitate living on the streets by decriminalizing...everything: public urination and defecation, drug use (supply needles), petty theft, etc., more street people come to the city making it impossible for city government to provide shelter—even if they wanted to. Crazy

Each night over the last week on the Spokane news there's always a reminder that WA. court has said that until homeless housing is equal to or exceeds the number of homeless, they can't be prosecuted.

Good, let the left coast deal with this shit and hopefully the insanity will help cure the chronically brain dead of the error of their ways...

Maybe sleeping. But not camping out. No sleeping bags, tents, or other equipment. If you want to sit on a bench and snooze - maybe.

quote:

Originally posted by Neel:
Each night over the last week on the Spokane news there's always a reminder that WA. court has said that until homeless housing is equal to or exceeds the number of homeless, they can't be prosecuted.

The newly elected mayor of Spokane, Nadine Woodward, said she would boldly address the homeless problem. It'll be interesting what that bold action will be. Staying within the law really limits what she can and can't do.

Jim

So given that court ruling how can State and Federal campgrounds charge $12-$50 per site, per night?

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
So given that court ruling how can State and Federal campgrounds charge $12-$50 per site, per night?

Maybe people that are sick of this bullshit could direct the fine shambling homeless folks to said campgrounds. Things only change when revenue gets affected.

The reality is that the homeless would rather squat on a sidewalk where they’re close to such amenities as local dope, easy to steal and sell shit, panhandling hotspots and the like.