Today, the U.S. Supreme Court released its devastating opinion in Johnson v. Grants Pass and held that the 8th Amendment does not prohibit governments from punishing people for living outside even when they have no option to live inside. In short, governments may criminalize homelessness and the protections of Martin v. Boise have ended.
We all know that arresting or ticketing people for being unhoused is harmful, expensive, and does nothing to correct the systems that push people from housing and onto the streets. And we anticipate that local and state governments will respond to this decision with increased enforcement actions against our unhoused community members. In a regional affordable housing crisis where hundreds of evictions are filed each month and family homelessness is up by nearly 37% in a single year, these enforcement actions will take us much further away from the systemic solutions our community needs.
Indeed, this decision has dark implications for us all. As famously stated by civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” If governments can constitutionally criminalize universal activities like sleeping or using a blanket, what else will be punished as crimes? Our nation has a long and brutal history of weaponizing law against people of color, people with disabilities, people living in poverty, and other marginalized groups – people who not coincidentally comprise the majority of our unhoused community members. We must be prepared to fight back.
The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley has advocated for our region’s unhoused and at-risk residents for 50 years, and we condemn the criminalization of homelessness in all of its forms. Join us in the fight to protect the rights of our unhoused neighbors and dismantle the barriers unhoused people face in securing adequate housing and health services.