It’s hard enough not having a safe place to live. Now it’s easier for cities to arrest you for it.
“I am afraid at all times,” testified Debra Blake, who’d been forced to live outside in Grants Pass, Oregon, for eight years after losing her job and housing. Her disability disqualified her from staying in the town’s only shelter. “I could be arrested, ticketed, and prosecuted for sleeping outside or for covering myself with a blanket to stay warm,” she said.
In 2018, after being banished from every park in town and accruing thousands in fines, she sued the city as part of a class action suit for violating homeless residents’ constitutional rights. The Oregon District Court agreed in 2020 that the city’s actions constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Sadly, Blake died before seeing the results.
Today, a person who works full-time and earns a minimum wage cannot afford a safe place to live almost anywhere in the country.
But Grants Pass appealed the decision all the way to the Supreme Court. The billionaire-backed justices ruled this summer that unhoused people aren’t included in the Constitution’s protections against “cruel and unusual punishment,” overturning a federal appeals court.
But punishing people for our country’s failure to ensure adequate housing for all is inherently “cruel and unusual.” Widespread homelessness directly violates the human right to housing under international law, which must be recognized in the United States.
The court’s ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.” Fines and arrests on a person’s record, in turn, make it more difficult to get out of poverty and into stable housing.
The decision comes as housing is increasingly unaffordable in our increasingly unequal nation. Today, a person who works full-time and earns a minimum wage cannot afford a safe place to live almost anywhere in the country.
With half of all renter households now spending more than 30% of their income on housing, millions are one emergency away from homelessness. According to federal data, last year over 650,000 Americans experienced homelessness on a given night—a 12% increase from 2022. Nearly half sleep outside.
Research confirms what should be obvious: Unaffordable housing and homelessness are intertwined. A lack of adequate health care and social safety net supports further compound the problem.
Hedge funds and private equity firms have also driven up housing costs since gaining control over a greater share of the market. Blackstone alone owns and manages over 300,000 units, making it the nation’s largest landlord. This financialization of housing treats a basic necessity and fundamental human right as just another commodity.
Cities and states face complex challenges in responding to homelessness. But experts have long documented that the real solution is affordable housing and supportive services, not punishment. Housing those in need ultimately costs less than imprisoning them, both financially and morally.
Despite the court’s abhorrent decision, cities and states aren’t required to prosecute the unhoused. Instead, they should double down on proven and humane solutions like Housing First, which provides permanent housing without preconditions, coupled with supportive services.
Guaranteed income programs offer another promising and cost-effective solution. Denver’s innovative, no-strings-attached cash assistance to 807 unhoused participants helped increase their access to housing within one year, while decreasing nights spent unsheltered and reducing reliance on emergency services.
Congress must also do more to invest in all those who call America home.
Currently, only one in four eligible households receive federal rental assistance. Housing rights organizations like the National Homelessness Law Center recommend that Congress invest at least $356 billion on measures like universal rental assistance, expanding the national Housing Trust Fund, and eviction and homelessness prevention.
It will take a broad-based movement to achieve these goals and counter the court’s latest cruelty against everyone who struggles to get by in America. But the impacts of housing are just as wide-ranging and consequential—from our health to education, security, economic mobility, and even our dignity.
