The SCOTUS Drops the Gavel on the Homeless

"SCOTUS Drops the Gavel on the Homeless"

[00:00:00] It is July 8th, 2024. And a week ago, it seems, was it almost a week ago? It was almost a week ago. Uh, the United States was set ablaze, not by a wildfire in California. No, by the SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States issued several opinions last week that just completely blew up our spot. And I'm going to talk about one of them. Just one. Yes, I know you're disappointed. I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into it. Hey there All-iens and new listeners, welcome back [00:01:00] for another episode of Ayana Explains It All, the podcast that bridges the gap between current events and human behavior. I am your black Muslim lady lawyer, host, Ayana R. Fakir, I am a practicing attorney in the state of Ohio, and I'm happy to announce this week that I have a brand partnership with the league. If you go to our show's Instagram page, you will find, um, a partnership video that I did with the league about the Ohio Supreme Court.

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This week, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, I know last episode I was um, quite upset. I went back and I listened to that episode and I was like, dang girl, you ain't have nothing but fire for them people. Yes. Exactly. Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire. Let me tell y'all something, there's so much going on in this country in the United States that it's hard to, I don't know, you want to focus on other things, but you can't because there's so much going haywire, weird, there's so many weird things happening, like people doing weird things and saying weird things that you never, [00:05:00] people you never expected to say and do these things.

Like, you know, as people are talking about, uh, President Biden's, uh, as a factor in whether he is competent to govern the United States and the ageism and Ableist attitudes is so disgusting from people I, I respected people saying that an old person and old, I use quotes, person should not be a president of the United States or a person who has maybe has a disability or maybe has something different about them.

Like President Biden stutters. Hell, I stutter. Okay. Does that mean that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing? Okay. But apparently it means that he shouldn't be doing what he's doing people who are different than the norm. Like I have ADHD, so I'm neuro, uh, neuro spicy as they like to call it. Does that mean that I should not be doing any of the things that I'm doing because I have a different kind of brain?

[00:06:00] There's always these classifications that we have for people, these boxes that we put people in based on how we feel, uh, about what they are. And we do this not just to elderly people or people who have a disability, but we also do this to homeless people. Yes. You like that segue? Homeless people.

Last week, the, um, Federalist Society Why do I keep making this mistake? It's not the Federalist Society. It's the U. S. Supreme Court. Womp womp, you get that joke, but they issued a 6 3 opinion in this Grants Pass case. Grant's Pass versus Johnson, and it was an opinion in favor of the city of Grant's. Grant's Pass, Oregon, which gave, which was giving criminal citations to people [00:07:00] for sleeping in public. They're not the only city to do this. This has been happening for years and years and years all over the country, but.

A group of people got together and said, okay, this is a violation of the eighth amendment to the U S constitution against cruel and unusual punishment. Like it's cruel and it's unusual to cite someone for sleeping in public, for camping in public. The city had ordinances that prohibited camping and sleeping in public spaces. And these laws were enforced against homeless individuals leading to arrests and, fines. The city even fined campers and they jailed repeat offenders that would return to the parks. Several homeless individuals challenged these ordinances arguing that, they had no choice but to sleep in public spaces due to the lack of available [00:08:00] shelter. Now there are shelters in grants past.

I looked, I researched this to find out what resources would be available for someone who's homeless and grant. Grants passed and there are shelters and there are organizations that help homeless people, but there's not enough It's just like any city in the United States There's more people in need than there are resources to give to these people And so there are people who are forced to sleep on the streets But then there are also people who, for them, these shelters do not work because they may have rules that, you know, some people are like, fuck it.

I don't want, I don't do rules. I want to play by my own rules. I want to live my own way, do my own thing. And if you're addicted to substances, you know, you can't, can't drink alcohol. You can't do drugs in these shelters. And some people are still not ready to give up that substance or they just don't want to be confined to these places [00:09:00] where they have to check in and they have to check out and they have to do chores at some of these places.

They make you do chores. They make you a, if it's a religious organization, they make you go to church and they make you do this, this religious service. And maybe you don't want to do that. You know, it's usually Christian, uh, organizations and maybe you're not Christian. You don't want to be involved.

Maybe you just want help and you don't want to have to do things to get help. You know, so there are all these factors and there are people who are saying, yeah, some of us are forced to sleep on the street and we shouldn't be penalized for it. This should not be criminalized. They contended that the city's enforcement of these ordinances was unconstitutional and they made their argument under the eighth amendment.

Like I said, And they also argued necessity. They didn't just argue the eighth amendment violation. They argued necessity. They claimed that sleeping is a necessary and [00:10:00] involuntary act and criminalizing it when there are no available alternatives is unjust. Now the city argued of course that the ordinances are necessary to maintain public safety, health and order.

However, they maintained that. Municipalities have the right to regulate the use of public spaces. Now, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is where, how this got to the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and they referenced a previous case called called Martin versus city of Boise, where the court held that it is unconstitutional to punish homeless individuals for sleeping in public.

If no shelter beds are available. And now the Martin ruling is the one that has been keeping cities from successfully, uh, Surviving challenges to citations for [00:11:00] sleeping in public. People have been citing this case and saying that it's unconstitutional and they in the cities have no nothing. They have no recourse there.

There's nothing they can do about it. This court said it was unconstitutional that is unconstitutional. But now here comes the grants pass case and Martin, the Martin decision is the central argument that the plaintiffs are using. And the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court said, actually, Martin is bad law.

It's bad law. The court's decision was that cities that the court's decision was essentially that the eighth amendment, they do not have the power under the eighth amendment to tell a city what it can and cannot do as far as regulating public spaces. So essentially the eighth amendment is not the amendment to use.

Not that there's any other amendment to [00:12:00] use, but the eighth amendment ain't the one. And grants pass can do whatever the hell they want. They can cite you. They can put you in jail. They can impose fines and fees and yeah, you won't have the money to pay it.

Yeah. You won't have the money to get out of jail. Oh well. Go find a shelter. So this won't happen to you, or move along to another city so this won't happen to you, become a nomad, become a wanderer.

But the Eighth Amendment is insufficient to give the Supreme Court the power to tell a city how to cure its homelessness. It's homeless problem and advocates for the homeless are shocked. I'm shocked. Lots of people were shocked because you're saying that it's constitutional for cities to fine people.

Number one, many of these people don't have a fucking penny to their name. So how are you fining them? Finding [00:13:00] someone, giving them a criminal citation saying this, you have to pay this or you have to come to court to answer for this. Okay. And if we find you guilty, then you have to pay this.

You don't have any money. What are you going to do? And if you don't show up for court, what do you think is going to happen? Yes. They're going to issue a warrant for your arrest. And now you have a warrant. You don't know you have a warrant. You probably didn't even remember you had to go to court because what you're thinking about is where is your next meal coming from?

You're not thinking about going to court, right? And so now you have a warrant, but you live on the streets. The police come, they approach you, they ask for your name, you give your name, they find out you have a warrant. Where are you going?

You're going to jail. You're going to jail and you're going to be in jail probably until you can get before a judge but advocates for the homeless are [00:14:00] shocked Josiah quarrels he's the director of organizing an advocacy for the Northeast Ohio homeless coalition.

And he said that criminalization is counterproductive arrests, fines, jail time, and criminal records make it more difficult for individuals experiencing homelessness to access affordable housing, health services, and employment necessary to exit homelessness. Policymakers should instead work with.

Urgency to scale up proven solutions, starting with greater investments in affordable housing and supportive services. Now he says affordable housing because affordable housing is actually one of the latest newest and within the last four years, causes of the rise in homelessness in the United States.

And I'll talk about that later. What cities hoped to achieve with these [00:15:00] ordinances, we know as pointed out by the Supreme Court is to force people to accept help offered by shelters, force them off the street into shelters because, I mean, Homeless people. They're, they're dangerous, right? They're dangerous.

They're all criminals. They're all drug addicts. All you see when you walk down the street or are needles and crack pipes and you know, kids want to play at the playground, but they can't because there are homeless people sleeping on the playground equipment equipment and people want to stand on the sidewalk, but they can't because there's a homeless person camp there and people want to sit at the bus stop, but they can't because there's a homeless person sleeping there.

And my very first time and only time I have been to Washington DC, this was in, I want to say it was 2016 because it was just before, so just before, yeah, just before president Obama left office. I was in Washington [00:16:00] DC and I was taken aback by the number of people sleeping, living on the streets right outside of the White House, right outside of, you know, the Lincoln Memorial and the, the, the U.

1. Capitol. People sleeping outside of embassies and, and outside of restaurants. And I know people who live and work there, that's completely normal for them to see that. But for me, it was jarring because I don't see that where I live. I mean, there are homeless people where I live, but There's also so many resources available that you don't really see a large number unless you go to downtown Cleveland.

That's where you will see the most. That's where it has actually increased and camp, um, these [00:17:00] encampments and things have increased and that's where you will see it the most. But for the most part on the suburban streets, you don't see it. I don't see it because, um, police, social workers, mental health advocates, they will come and you know, they'll offer services to people.

And for the most part, people take them. If you go to the library, people hang out at the library because there's AC, there's heat, there's wifi, there's books, you know, you can spend time there during the day. I mean, But what I saw in DC was like, wow, it was so jarring to me that I never wanted to go back to DC because all I kept thinking was there are these big beautiful buildings that our tax dollars are paying for all of these memorials and monuments, all of this money, all of these tourist dollars coming into this area yet they have people sleeping, [00:18:00] camping, living on the streets.

 And I know that there are, there people, there's a, people make a series of bad decisions over years and months that eventually lead to homelessness. It's not just people are just homeless. There's sometime a series of bad decisions that people make. And they end up homeless and getting to shelter, getting back to having a home is sometimes daunting because it means that you have to clean up.

It means that you have to, um, learn new skills. It means that you probably have to get a job. Maybe you're not ready for a job. Maybe you need to learn new job skills before you get a job. Maybe your mental health isn't the greatest, or maybe you've been in this thing in this state for so long that. Doing something else.

You can't even imagine it. You can't picture it. This is their routine. They know how to survive and live on the [00:19:00] streets, every person is different. Every situation is different, obviously. So we can't paint this with a broad brush, but , all over the country there are these little communities springing up of housing developments for homeless people.

To get them from being unsheltered to sheltered. And is this something that can be done in D. C.? I don't know. It's worth exploring. Um, so yeah, that was my, that, I don't even, it's not like I hadn't seen a homeless person before. Of course I had. I, I worked in downtown Cleveland for a number of years. But it was just like, damn, that's the White House?

And then you got people just It's just the dichotomy. Is that the word dichotomy? I don't know. I have ADHD. I can't remember what words mean. No, it is. Yeah. You know what I'm trying to say? [00:20:00] The difference, the stark difference.

So getting back to my point, what cities hope to achieve with these ordinances is to force people to accept help and not everybody wants help. According to the federal government, however. Homelessness in this country has reached its highest levels since the government began reporting data on the subject in 2007, the highest levels, California alone is home to around half of those in this nation living without shelter on a, on any given night.

And each of the five states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness in the country are California. Oregon, Hawaii, Arizona, and Nevada, and these were, um, stats cited by the SCOTUS and [00:21:00] their grants passed decision. And what do these states have in common though, right? California and Oregon national disasters.

Fires, floods, Hawaii is, is, is, is racked by fires, flooding, Arizona fires, Nevada fires, heat fires, places where there are natural disasters. There's a lot of homelessness, a lot, but California has the most people. It also has some of the highest costs of living. It also has an issue where a lot of people cannot afford to live in the same city where they work because again, housing affordability is an issue.

Not only housing affordability, a living wage people before they passed the, uh, the 15, uh, minimum wage law, people were making 5 an [00:22:00] hour. People were making 2 an hour plus tips and you can't. Rent an apartment, if you're making 2 an hour plus tips, you, you would have to live with someone. You would have to double up and triple up.

And I remember reading stories about people who were living in the garage of their home and then renting out their home to other people just so they could make money and then there are people who are just sleeping and living in their cars because they cannot afford housing. There's a city in California, I can't remember the name of the city. Look at me. I can't remember the name of the city. I can't remember the name of the city.

But they're building a community just for teachers to live in, just for teachers to live in, to support their teaching community. And it was just for teachers and their families. And a lot of people were like, well, they could just make [00:23:00] housing affordable. Yes, they could. They could just write a big ass check for 30 billion and wipe out homelessness altogether.

Is that going to happen? No. Are these housing prices coming down despite consumers complaining every single day? No, we've been complaining for several years. Are the prices coming down? No, they're going up. So woulda coulda shoulda hell, this is what we're doing. We know who's behind a lot of the, the housing prices going up.

It's big corporations, it's hedge funds, it's overseas investors who don't give a, who don't give a. Fuck. They don't care about homeless people. They don't care about affordability of housing. They don't care about your little problems, your little society, social problems. They don't care if you're poor.

They only [00:24:00] care about profits, profits, profits, profits, profits, profits. They care about successful investments. They don't give a damn about your complaints. They don't care. You're preaching to a bunch of people who are making billions of dollars every year who are making hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

They could buy the entire street that you live on and clear everybody out. They do not care. We have to work around them. Putting pressure on them is not working. We have to work around them and these are some of the solutions that people are coming up with. Could there be better solutions? Absolutely.

But for now, this is one of the solutions that people are coming up with. You have to support the community. You have to support it. Otherwise, it's going to fall apart. Homelessness is actually a result of communities falling apart. Yeah, [00:25:00] it is the breakdown in familial ties, uh, the lack of educational opportunities in a community, the lack of job opportunities in a community, and yes, the lack of affordable housing in a community, food deserts.

All of these things are contributing to not just homelessness, but the continuation of homelessness. People cannot live where they work. They also cannot find a place to eat where they work. They can't afford to eat where they work. People are going to go where they can get resources for the limited amount of money or energy that they have, honestly.

And yeah, some people are doing it for drugs. They're doing it for alcohol. Absolutely. 100%. 100%. I was actually talking to a friend of mine, Hey friend, he's probably shaking his head when he [00:26:00] hears that. I talked to him about, you know, what do you think are the root causes of homelessness driving homelessness?

And he said, and I agree it's substance abuse. It just is. It just is. Yeah. The breakdown of the community, but also communities fuel substance use. What do I mean by that? I'm, I live next door to Cleveland, Ohio. There is liquor up in town, every freaking street around here. There's what, what people in the Midwest call a party store a couple of blocks from where I live.

If you go to a gas station, every gas station sells alcohol. Every single one of them. Not only that, there are bars, nightclubs. Any place that has [00:27:00] tried to open up and not sell alcohol has closed down everywhere you go. There's alcohol. And now Ohio has recreational marijuana. It used to be just medicinal.

Now recreational. You can even grow it yourself recreational. So there are going to be more people. Doing drugs legally. I don't agree with it.

I don't, but if that's your thing, it's legal.. Ohio itself has a huge opioid Problem. Opioid abuse problem, rather. There are pockets of the state of Ohio where, my God, at least one person in every household has an opioid addiction. It's awful. It's awful. And a lot of these people get kicked out onto the streets by their families.

You don't want to [00:28:00] deal with that shit every day. You don't want to be coming home to somebody fucking freebasing, uh, oxy and fentanyl in the basement. You want peace. You want security. You don't want to see this. You don't want to deal with it. So you kick them out. They become homeless. Most of the time these people are wandering the streets trying to make a little bit of money or get money somehow so that they can buy more drugs.

And police aren't, there are some states where the police aren't dealing with this shit. They're not putting people in jail. They're not arresting people for drug offenses because it's not worth it to them. Like California, Oregon, Oregon decriminalized drug possession altogether. And what, what, what, what, what happened in Oregon?

They decriminalized drug possession. They've seen an increase [00:29:00] in drug abuse and people on the streets, literally standing in place. Standing still like statues high as giraffe. You know what? Yeah, it's bad. It's bad. There's a lot of bad shit going on. A lot of bad shit. And so whatever solutions people can come up with.

Fine. But do I think criminalizing homelessness is a proper solution? No. Where are you going to put all these people?

 You think New York wants to put more people in jail because they're homeless?

Well, maybe they do. I don't know. Mayor Eric Adams is a different kind of mayor. Let me tell you.

He looks like he would be compassionate, but he ain't. But [00:30:00] California, they have to release people from jails because of overcrowding. You think they want to put more people in jail? You think after this grants pass decision that cities are going to be rushing to criminalize the homeless? I know one place where they probably will.

Florida. Ron DeSantis just loves to, to, to penalize people. He loves to criminalize any kind of behavior. He loves, he loves, loves. He hates to see anything that even looks like it's dirty. Like he can't possibly get any kind of dirt on him. He's such a, he wants his state to be pristine. I've been to Florida.

I don't know. He's got a long way to go.

Hey to my Florida peeps. I have, um, a sibling who lives in Florida. Hey girl.

 But I, I posit, [00:31:00] I posit this is my theory. I've said it before. Cities create policies and systems that push people into homelessness, then criminalize sleeping and camping in public to force them into shelters.

People are homeless sometimes because of mental health problems and drug problems and now it's housing prices. It's rent prices, rent increases. Have you all seen these stories? People are telling horror stories about rent tripling, doubling, tripling. And yeah, where are they supposed to get the money from?

People who could afford to live in an apartment building one year can't afford to live in it the next year. They have to find some place to live other than this place that took them forever to find in the first place. You Now they have to find some other place that's probably in an undesirable neighborhood, but the rent is reasonable.

 I read [00:32:00] an article An editorial someone did on the grants pass case in the New York Post I believe and she was just complaining about oh There's so much homelessness in New York and their drug needles everywhere.

Nobody wants to look at that and it's like Lady, I'm sure they're drug needles behind closed doors, too You You think people are only doing drugs outside? You think homeless people are the only ones doing drugs? No, no, no, my dear. No, not in New York City, not in any city. But it's just people associate homelessness with dirty, undesirable, unwanted, unclean, begging,

And quiet as it's kept, many people feel like cities and towns States should not have to foot millions of dollars for homeless people.

Why can't they find their own house? Why can't they find their own shelter? Why can't their families do something about this? When [00:33:00] this, when the SCOTUS decision came out, there were people who straight up went online and said, well, they're all a bunch of drug addicts and alcoholics anyway. That's all it is.

We got to do something about mental health because obviously everyone who's homeless is mentally, uh, unwell, right? Everybody who's homeless is a drug addict or an alcoholic. This is what we've come to believe. It's so fucking ridiculous. People have no insight whatsoever. All they have are their prejudices.

All they have are their prejudices. You don't know that maybe, and I know it's not so easy as, People are one paycheck away from living on the street. Some people actually are. If you're a renter and you lose your job, you're not going to be renting anymore. So yeah, you're actually one paycheck away from living on the street.

It happens. But like I said before, at the top of the show, there are a lot [00:34:00] of, there could be a series of bad decisions that leads to someone being homeless. It's not as simple as people make it seem. And I, I read this, um, this information came from a tweet by Patrick Seidman. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Patrick Seidman, S I E G M A N. And he offered a very interesting, uh, theory. on the rise of homelessness in Grants Pass. He said in Grants Pass, since 1961, the city has implemented mandatory parking rules, including, and these are parking rules Means the number of parking spaces that, um, a developer has to make per [00:35:00] based on the kind of building or the kind of structure they're building.

So you're only allowed one parking space per apartment unit. And there's mandated parking for most purposes, including if you build a prison, there has, you have to have one space per five inmates. So if you build a prison, you have to have one parking space per five inmates. And if you build a bowling alley, there have to be six parking spaces per line.

For stadiums, you have to have one space, one parking space per five seats or 10 feet of bench length. So if you're a builder, you can't just build a fucking building. You have to consider the number of parking spaces you have to include based on the city ordinance. [00:36:00] So right there. That decreases the space you have for the building.

So if you want to build a house, you want to build a series of houses. You're only going to be able to build so many houses because you have to include As in Grants Pass, you have to include off street parking, mandatory, it's mandatory. Well, at least it was until 2022 when Oregon adopted a new rule that requires local jurisdictions to remove or sharply reduce minimum parking space.

Mandates grants pass was so upset by that. In fact, they sued, but they lost that case. And in 2024, they finally repealed minimum parking mandates citywide. So, yeah, this is another angle to the homelessness issue because imagine how [00:37:00] much more building, how much more housing you could build if there weren't minimum parking mandates.

If you didn't have to have so many parking spaces per fucking lane at a bowling alley. Come on, that doesn't, that's ridiculous. So builders have to build with that in mind. In the city that I live in, there are minimum parking mandates. And I, I think it's, I have a garage. I have a two car garage attached to my house.

I have a long ass driveway. That's a bitch to clear when it snows. But in my city, two garage spaces are required, required per single family home and two parking spaces per unit of a multifamily home with one and a half spaces to be enclosed. A three car garage and one open air [00:38:00] space on a parking pad are required.

Think about the amount of space that gets used just by parking garages alone and parking spaces alone. How much more space for development we could have if there were not these minimum parking requirements. We could probably build affordable housing in Shaker Heights where I live at Shaker Heights, Ohio, little fires everywhere.

There's no affordable housing in Shaker Heights. There's a lot of renting. But renting cost at least a, it's a minimum of 1, 200 a month if you want to rent here. It's ridiculous. It's gone up. It's gone up so much in the last four years. It makes no sense except greed. Greed is the only explanation. But my city borders a major, [00:39:00] major city, Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland has minimum parking requirements as well.

However, in 2023, the not always popular mayor, Justin Bibb, reduced the parking requirements. Around frequent public transit stops. Cleveland has a lot of transit stops. It has a major transit line. It has, um, a railway system, all of that good stuff, but there are frequent public transit stops and the mayor was like, okay, we're going to reduce the minimum parking requirements so that we can build more.

How's it? No. No,

you would think because there is a housing crisis in Cleveland and there's a homelessness issue in Cleveland, not as big as other cities, but still an issue. Nonetheless, we've seen an increase in the downtown area. You would think. This would allow new apartments and businesses in some neighborhoods as they won't have to provide off street parking, but no.

And this is why [00:40:00] he's sometimes not popular. Mayor Bibb wants to, wants developers to support walking, biking, and transit instead. To say that you want to take this new space that you're going to be provided and change it into a walking, walking, biking, and transit instead. Cleveland doesn't need this! If you've ever been to Cleveland, listen, there are a lot of areas in Cleveland where walking, there's no fucking way you're walking anywhere.

The sidewalks are, I don't even know how to describe this. They're buckled. The sidewalks are buckled. They're crooked. Most parts, parts of the missing. If you're biking, you have to bike around all of the fucking potholes. A lot of the sidewalks in the streets are not well maintained. They have [00:41:00] overgrown shrubbery. But he wants to turn his, his city. He's embraced a planning philosophy known as the 15 minute city that residents should be able to find daily amenities within a short walk, bike ride, or transit trip from their homes.

And I hope he's talking about the tire city because there are parts of Cleveland where you're not walking anywhere. In fact, you're driving quite quickly through these areas because you don't want a bullet to go through your car. You're certainly not going. walking or biking unless it's out of desperation.

And where are you walking to? Some places there are no stores, certainly no grocery stores. Cleveland is a food desert. Cleveland is a food desert. Cleveland is a food desert. Where are people walking to? There's a huge [00:42:00] shopping center in Cleveland called Steel Yard Commons. There's a Walmart and a target and an old Navy and all these, the Home Depot one.

It's one of the most violent places in the city of Cleveland. Someone is either shot and or killed there at least once a week. People have been kidnapped, murdered, carjacked. It's ridiculous. I don't even go there anymore.

But he wants to make this city a 15 minute city. It's crime ridden. What he needs to focus on, but he can't because he doesn't have the resources or the people who want to do it, is policing in the city of Cleveland.

Policing. That's what he needs to focus on, but he's also focusing on cleaning up homelessness. He's focused on cleaning up homelessness. Cleveland has a growing urban camping [00:43:00] population. In the downtown area and mayor Justin Bibb has proposed a program called a home for every neighbor to house.

It's several hundred unsheltered.

But again, it doesn't address the lack of affordable housing that has created the growing urban camping population in the first place. And now he wants to take areas that could where affordable housing could be developed and he wants to make it into a fucking walking, biking, transit, uh, Barbie land.

If you don't address the problems that are creating the homelessness, then you're going to need a bunch of these homes for every neighbor. You're going to need more shelters. And this is the problem in a lot of these cities. They're not addressing what is causing homelessness. Even if it is substance abuse, are they [00:44:00] investing more in substance abuse programs?

Are they investing more in mental health services? Are they investing more? Are they making more beds for inpatient psychiatric hospitals? Are they making more facilities for people who need help with if they're having a mental health crisis or are they taking these people and putting them in jail, putting them in jail to detox and die in some cases, putting them in jail to, uh, have a mental health crisis.

where they're possibly off their meds and that causes them to die or they commit suicide. You have to address the root cause of the problem. You cannot just criminalize homelessness. You can't just build these shelters and go, yay, shelters. Now everything's fine. We put the [00:45:00] people in shelters, everything will be okay.

You haven't solved homelessness. How is everything okay?

These anti camping laws, these loitering and trespassing laws, public ordinances, they have the sole purpose is to sweep the streets of people we don't want to look at, right? We don't want to see homeless people. Because again, we associate homelessness with violence and dirty and drugs and alcohol and, and undesirable people.

There's this show on Netflix and it was, it was okay. It was okay. It's got, it stars, uh, Benedict Cumberbatch and it's called Eric and I won't give away the plot, but part of the problem that they highlighted in the show was the amount of homelessness in New York City and people living [00:46:00] literally. In the sewers, people were living in the sewers.

They had little encampments in the sewers and the city officials who were corrupt wanted to get rid of the people. And I mean, this happens. I don't know if this still happens, but it happens.

But they wanted to sweep. They wanted to clear it. They wanted to show that they were doing something about the homeless problem. Meanwhile, there were organizations. Who were helping people who probably could have used the money that the cities were using to sweep. Like in California, they take bulldozers and they clean up these camps.

They just take people's shit and they bulldoze it and they toss it. And I've seen some people got some pretty interesting setups. Like they're running electricity and they got cable and shit. They [00:47:00] got doors. They go to Home Depot and buy doors. It's very clever. It's very clever. Bulldozed. They don't care.

They want these people off the streets. It's a nuisance. It's a nuisance. Homelessness is a nuisance, but they don't cure homelessness. They just sweep the homeless people away. Just sweep, just take a big old fucking broom and just sweeps and sweep them away. Where are they going? Oh, I don't know. But the SCOTUS decision means that cities can start more enforcement measures against camps and people sleeping in their cars while insisting they are doing something to end chronic homelessness in their cities.

But the question is, how do they humanely enforce these laws? They don't. They do not. They're not human. You can't humanely enforce giving someone a ticket because they have nowhere else to sleep

and this is a, [00:48:00] I have a, I was going back and forth about whether I wanted to tell this story because it's not really my story to tell. And I don't, I don't feel so good about telling this story. But. One of the reasons why I'm passionate about when I talk about this is because I encounter people who are homeless in my line of work. I, I spent a summer working. For a government agency that directly dealt with the public and people would come in every day who were homeless, who needed help.

I attended college at the university of Notre Dame and my first year and she was also my roommate. In my third year, very incredibly sweet young woman from Minnesota, and I was probably one of the first black [00:49:00] people that she ever met. and ever had any kind of dealings with because she was from a small town in Minnesota and it was culture shock for the both of us.

Well, not me so much because I had, um, I had, I had white friends, I had Caucasian friends, but also I grew up in a diverse environment. The Islamic community that I grew up in was diverse. There were, you know, white people's Asians, uh, Africans, et cetera, et cetera. So I. And I was on the speech and debate team in school and we traveled to all these schools that were mainly white schools, white schools with a lot of white people rather.

And so, it was cool. I mean, I had never met anybody from Minnesota before. And I got to know her and she was just heard her entire life was just so different from mine. And we spend a lot of time talking and learning from each other and, and, you [00:50:00] know, supporting each other and helping each other. And, and, um, she spent her second year abroad and I, I, I didn't go abroad.

I couldn't, I couldn't do it. But, um, when she came back, we, we did our third year together and I ended up. in a, um, in a single my fourth year, but we were still big as thieves, honey, still friends. She came to her and another friend, came to my very first wedding and they drove all the way to Cleveland, Ohio, from South Bend to come to my wedding and After college, I was kind of mired in this really horrible marriage and I was, um, going through some things and we, we drifted apart.

I mean, we still talk to each other, we would write to each other and, um, she had something really bad happened to her and I, I heard from her afterwards [00:51:00] and we, you know, we, we wrote to each other a couple of times and then again, lost touch and I would, every once in a while I would Google her name. To see if I could, you know, cause it was the age of social media by then and I thought, okay, she's probably on social media, although I don't know why she would be.

She was very private person, but she's probably on social media, you know? And I Googled her name and it wasn't a social media handle that I, that came up and it was Berry. It was shocking. It was shocking. But then again, as I said before, people make a series of decisions that eventually lead to this thing or that thing.

And sometimes those decisions you make are bad and you, and I don't know the reasons for why people do the things that they do. that they do. I can only explain it to you. But sometimes the, the answer is a lot [00:52:00] deeper than what I am available to explain. And I can only guess why this happened to her. But Um, so I thought, wow, that's, you know, I, I reached out to someone in her family and I said, you know, just let her know that, Hey, I'm, I'm here and I'm doing this and I'm doing this and tell her I said hi and they would be like, okay, we'll let her know.

And then a couple of more years go by and I would Google her name again to see if, you know, anything would come up. I would Facebook her name to see if maybe I could reach out to her and talk to her and it would just be one. Not so good thing after another, after another, after another. And just recently I.

I, I did, I Googled her name again and I saw that she had been, um, cited for [00:53:00] camping and I, I said, why would somebody be cited for camping? Why? And then I looked up the ordinance. And it was for sleeping in, in a public park. It was for an encampment. It was, she had been given a ticket for sleeping in a, in a public park.

Not only was she given a ticket, but it was something that she had to go to court for. It was something that, you know, they imposed fines for, and I thought, this is fucking ridiculous. This is ridiculous because I know how people end up homeless. I know how people stay homeless and I know how difficult it is to get from being unsheltered to sheltered.

And then you put this other weight on them. You put the weight of the criminal justice [00:54:00] system on them. People who probably never had any kind of criminal record Or, you know, even criminal records for minor offenses even can create barriers to employment, housing, social services, and that just perpetuates the cycle of homelessness.

Why would you do this to people? Why do you do this to people? Because you're mad that they're sleeping outside. Even when there are no shelter beds available, even when there are no resources available to You're putting the weight of the criminal justice system on them to punish them for basic survival activities.

Basic survival activities, sleeping, eating. This is a, this is no longer just a community issue. This is a human rights issue. This is a human rights issue. [00:55:00] This is a violation of the right to dignity and the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. In my opinion, of course the Supreme Court disagrees, but how is this not cruel?

How is this not unusual to criminalize something that's a basic survival activity? You got to fucking sleep. You got to sleep. You have to sleep. And if you have nowhere with a roof to do that, What are you going to do?

It boggles my mind. Criminalization does not address the root causes of homelessness either. It doesn't and it can exacerbate public health issues by pushing homeless people into more hidden and unsafe areas. You're making it [00:56:00] harder for outreach workers to provide services because if people know that they're going to, if they go to a certain place that they're going to be ticketed and put in jail.

Where they're going to go, they're going to be pushed further away from available resources. And all of these law enforcement tactics and court proceedings and incarceration are expensive. They're expensive and often less effective than providing social services and housing solutions.

Taxpayer money is often spent on punitive measures against homelessness, against homeless people rather than on sustainable solutions

like support services and affordable housing and shelters, shelters that help people transition [00:57:00] from homelessness to housing.

For instance, in the state of Minnesota. There is a project called the Avivo village. And it's a first ever indoor community of 100 secure private dwellings or tiny houses that provide shelter and wraparound services to individuals experiencing Unsheltered homelessness and that's from their website, the Avivo village, A V I V O all services at the Avivo, all services at the Avivo village are designed to support each person with a goal of moving into permanent housing in the community and or taking or taking next steps toward their well being. [00:58:00] And they have outreach teams and other providers working in the county utilizing what they have called the Homeless Management Information System to designate an individual fitting Avivo's target population. And residents stay an average of 100 days. They're given time to decompress, establish goals, connect with services and plan for permanent housing.

They're supported the entire way as they move on to the next best solution as quickly as they would like. And the Avivo Village, as with other shelters, is funded through state, county, and city sources, as well as support from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Grants pass has a similar project called the foundry village. Again, There are resources available, but for [00:59:00] people for whom these resources. They can't get to them or they are not appropriate for them. Criminalizing their presence on the street just piles on.

It is not helpful. It does not help. It does not help. Community based solutions, supportive services, help

integrated health services, offering comprehensive health care. Including mental health and addiction services, case management services, providing personalized support through case managers who help individuals navigate services, job training and employment services, street outreach teams. such as the one that the Avivo Village uses.

Homeless resource centers, continuum of care networks, public and private partnerships [01:00:00] where, cities partner with businesses to provide funding, resources, and employment opportunities for homeless individuals. Eviction prevention programs. But also rental assistance programs work. And, and, uh, providing a livable, living, livable wage for people.

This is something that Ohioans, I mean, Ohioans balk at things like this because, well that means that the price of a, a big Beaufort is gonna go up. You These people don't deserve to make 15 an hour. These jobs are supposed to be for teenagers anyway, not for people, uh, supporting a family. Some, you know, Yes, these are actual comments that I have read.

These are actual comments from actual human beings. I know it sounds like some monster said it. People have no [01:01:00] insight. All they have is their prejudice. All they have is their prejudice. They have no insight. They have no sense. All they know is, Well, I don't want to have to pay an extra 2 for a hamburger.

But community based solutions to homelessness recognize that addressing homelessness requires a comprehensive, collaborative approach that leverages local resources and engages all sectors of the community.

Remember I said this is a community problem. And by focusing on housing, supportive services, prevention and advocacy, these solutions aim to provide not just temporary relief, but lasting stability and dignity, dignity for individuals experiencing homelessness. That is what is missing here. People are not being empowered at all.

They are being spat on. They are being looked down upon. They are being treated as if they are worthless. [01:02:00] Human beings, as if they are undesirable human beings and these community based solutions inject some dignity into these people and, and these community based solutions inject some dignity into individuals experiencing homelessness, criminalizing homelessness.

is an ineffective approach to addressing the complex issue of homelessness. And it tends to focus on punitive measures rather than addressing the underlying causes. And it can lead and will lead and we will see it lead to significant social and economic change. Costs, the more humane and effective strategies involved providing housing and support services that address the root causes of homelessness and help individuals achieve longterm stability and [01:03:00] wellbeing.

And this has been Ayana Explains It All brought to you by Facts, Figures, and Enlightenment. Take care.