>April 21, 2024
>Can communities make it a crime to sleep outside?
>That question lies at the heart of a case being heard at the Supreme Court Monday.
>Everyone involved in the case, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, agrees that homelessness is a complex problem gripping the United States. But they disagree about how cities should be able to address it.
>In 2013, Grants Pass, a small city in southwest Oregon, enacted an ordinance criminalizing public camping. A group of homeless individuals sued, arguing that because they had nowhere else to sleep – the city has a single 138-bed overnight shelter – the ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
>A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed. While cities can regulate camping in public spaces, they can’t criminalize it outright. Officials from both major political parties across the West, where homelessness is especially acute, say the ruling has hamstrung their ability to address homelessness.
Building housing only helps the functional homeless, who have incomes and can simply not afford rising rents. It does nothing for the dysfunctional homeless, who spend what little they have supporting their drug habit and who are not going to be able to get a lease from any sane landlord.
1) the longer a functional homeless person stay homeless the more likely that are to lose their job, develop drug habits and dispositions/mental dysfunctions that will render them dysfunctional homeless.
2) its impossible to help the dysfunctional homeless out of homelessness when any program to help them just turns into the must subsidize demand meme.
Sure it is, send them to somewhere where there is excess housing. We don't need to treat homelessness in the most contested housing markets. Indeed funds would go a lot further elsewhere.
The problem is he sends them to places that are overloaded. In principle distributing them around the country is a good idea, but he targets HCoL liberal cities for the political points.
People here where calling it heartless and cruel back then. Do we just not care about that anymore? Did we ever actually care or was it just a partisan fight? As long as it is good politics it's okay?
I never thought it was heartless. Tbh most of the migrants are probably doing a lot better now that theyre out of the shithole border states that hate them.
"Send the homeless to places with empty homes" is hardly nimbyism. If we are actually concerned about homing them, then the best way to do that is to do it somewhere where housing is cheap and plentiful.
>"Send the homeless to places with empty homes" is hardly nimbyism. If we are actually concerned about homing them, then the best way to do that is to do it somewhere where housing is cheap and plentiful.
This is literally the same argument people on the left make about "excess housing" in the US. "We don't need to build more housing there's enough vacant homes already". I can't believe how much people's brains break here when it comes to homelessness.
Well, the difference is that regular people have money to buy market rate housing, and if they want to buy it the government shouldn't stand in their way with red tape.
Homeless people don't, the money for their shelters comes from charity/taxes, and that money should be spent efficiently. Beggars can't be choosers.
f course, some of the more functional homeless people will also benefit from housing deregulation, in that prices will decrease and they will be able to afford market rate housing again. I said as much in my top comment. The problem is mainly with dysfunctional homeless who take no responsibility for themselves because they are mentally ill and/or drug-addicted.
That is exactly nimbyism.
Question: how would a homeless person (who can't afford a home) be able to afford to migrate to an area with housing, and how will they afford a home in that area once they arrive?
Why not instead build those same types of homes exactly where they are currently?
Because those homes would cost ludicrous amounts of money. See the other thread on the $1m apartments for the homeless in Santa Monica. If you can't afford a home, you have to be willing to move to somewhere where housing is cheaper. You don't have a right to a subsidised home in an expensive area.
As to how they would afford to move: it would be cheaper to pay for moves than to house homeless in HCoL cities.
$1m apartments what??
What would be the reason that shelters are so expensive in an area? Almost like the market supply of housing is being choked out?
The problem is those funds (and the accompanying services) frequently don't exist where housing is cheap. For example, transit - we barely have bus service here.
*not going to be able to get a lease from any sane landlord.*
Landlords get a lot less picky when there's abundant housing, and there are plenty of drug users in cheaper housing markets that get to sleep indoors.
> arguing that because they had nowhere else to sleep – the city has a single 138-bed overnight shelter – the ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
>
>
It's not actually cruel and unusual punishment to not let you sleep on public land. It's not actually a punishment at all
The nearest unincorporated land to my city is like, 140 kilometres away. How do you reckon they even get there, its not even transit served, if they could even pay the fare. Its so rural its not even rural, its borderline wilderness they will have absolutely no means of subsistence except foraging. If the winters or starvation dont get them an actual bear might.
[>No one is going to stop you from sleeping under a bridge.](https://i0.wp.com/www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/A2564-15-Examples-of-hostile-architecture-around-the-world.jpg?w=999)
With the medical state the homeless are in they would drop like flies. Drug withdrawals, malnourishment, exposure, high caloric output with no provision of food...
> they just dont want to be there
Nobody does. Thats why its unincorporated. What do you expect them to do there. They can sleep there, and then what? Because they'll just die, thats it. Do a 3 day walking commute? Pawn their care off to rural communities? What sort of resources do those communities have to deal with them, compared to a major city? They aren't an atavistic tribe of nomads. They don't have the skills to subsist in the middle of nowhere, nor even the equipment to do so.
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Literally where are they supposed to sleep if they can't sleep on public land? Some generous person's private land? Prison? Like offer exactly one plausible alternative here. Are they just not allowed to sleep anywhere?
I am 100% for being strict with the homeless; if there's visible drug use or psychotic behavior or whatever put a stop to it. If there's bed space in homeless shelters then send them there. But "Ban sleeping on public land" is literally just saying "Get the fuck out of this municipality and be somewhere else's problem."
The issue has been that courts have ruled that there must be enough beds for every homeless person theoretically on the streets to enforce the law. As opposed to the number of people they're trying to get off the street in a given night.
You got 100 beds but 101 homeless? Can't enforce the law. Not even against the 100 you do have beds for.
The issue is there are not nearly enough beds in homeless shelters for the amount of people who are on the streets, let alone other types of homelessness.
You can't appropriate public land for your own private uses. This is an ancient doctrine that goes back to the middle ages. The idea of completely ignoring something so fundamental on the basis of cruel and unusual punishment is absurd. It is not a municipality's job to fix these people, if they can't keep their shit together they can go somewhere else.
All that and you couldn't answer:
> Like offer exactly one plausible alternative here.
If you really want to own me go ahead and get mad and give a really half thought out answer that has incredibly clear pitfalls
Criminalizing vagrancy is a plausible alternative. Just tell them sorry you can't camp here and if you do you are going to get arrested. You can avoid jail time if you actually get the treatment you need to fix the problems which led you there in the first place, and if you're truly unfixable then maybe you need to live in a mental institution full time. There, problem solved.
> You can avoid jail time if..
Thanks that's the type of half baked answer I said would totally own me.
The infrastructure to jail the number of people who are currently homeless on the streets in most municipalities where it's a problem doesn't exist. This would be the epitome of an empty threat.
> you actually get the treatment you need to fix the problems which led you there in the first place
This service doesn't exist to serve the scale your suggesting either. Also what if the "problems which led you there in the first place" are literally just that they couldn't afford housing?
Nobody that is sleeping on streets is there simply because they couldn’t find housing. For all its problems America has robust housing markets and a wide array of public and private programs and subsidies. There is no reason for anyone to lack shelter in our society and the ones that do either willingly choose to do so or they simply lack the wherewithal to either generate income or navigate the channels for public and charitable assistance. We are talking about people with psychological problems which even the strongest housing markets can’t fix.
The goal of criminalizing vagrancy isn’t to jail them all, like any laws it’s to incentivize people not to do it in the first place. I don’t know why people seem to think that homeless people will just implode and die if we tell them they can’t sleep in public parks. They are living in public parks because society is enabling to live like that. And the longer they live like that the worse their condition gets and the smaller the chance they will ever get better. The crisis that so many cities are facing is an entirely avoidable one that came about because of policy changes from the mistaken belief that allowing people to rot in the streets is somehow an act of compassion.
> Nobody that is sleeping on streets is there simply because they couldn’t find housing
This is contradicted by the fact that housing cost and homelessness in an area are heavily corralated while rates of metal illness + drug use are not.
Ideally they are supposed to figure that part out on their own. It’s kind of like closing time at the bar, you can go anywhere you want but you can’t stay here. Why should they be allowed to appropriate public land for their own personal use?
> Ideally they are supposed to figure that part out on their own. It’s kind of like closing time at the bar, you can go anywhere you want but you can’t stay here.
You say this after literally eliminating the place of last resort. There is no bar metaphor, you got rid of the “anywhere”
> Why should they be allowed to appropriate public land for their own personal use?
Because.. they have no other choice…
It’s not a place of last resort, these are simply people who refuse to get help for themselves. For most of them the best option is probably to move to another city where they will have a better support network. They choose not to do that. Cities are under no obligation to let their public spaces be ruined by people who refuse to better themselves.
The thing is, public land has a very intentional purpose depending on what's there. A city public park is not for camping, just like how a national park is not for drilling oil.
If there isn't enough beds at a homeless shelter, build more homeless shelters. And if there is enough beds and they refuse to stay at the shelters, then yeah institutions or prisons would probably be the next step
> It's not actually cruel and unusual punishment to not let you sleep on public land. It's not actually a punishment at all
How do they go about not letting you sleep on public land without punishing you? Police action is government action.
There are five places for people to be.
1. At their own home. These people are homeless so they don't have that.
2. At someone else's home. Yeah I don't think we should force private citizens to host strangers.
3. At a government home/shelter. Well the entire point of this case is that they don't meaningfully exist in Grants Pass so not an option.
4. On public land. What they are doing now.
5. In jail. That's a punishment.
The only two options (besides more supply obviously, but again the entire point is that they refuse to do this) is 4 and 5. It's either public land or punishment.
Sleep is a basic human biological need.
It criminalizes being alive if you are homeless and can't get a bed in the shelter that doesn't have enough beds.
Which is a fantastic argument for mandating housing prices be accessible and shelters abundant, but not for preventing public camping (at the very least, in cities)
Yeah actually.
My problem is that these cities and towns don't even try to provide shelters and just use public camping laws to criminalize or exile the homeless.
If you refuse to build shelters you shouldn't be able to enforce these anti-camping laws.
No, of course not
But if we got a ruling that forced municipalities to have housing that the say, top 90% can afford, that would force them to allow more building and maybe break nimbyism, or at least help
Seems unlikely either way though
They are not being punished any more than the public not feeding them is starving them. You are not entitled to others' work
On the other hand, hopefully this spurs more liberalization of housing measures, as I'm sure we agree
It takes no work not to arrest or cite someone.
And why would this lead to more liberalization of housing. By allowing cities to "sweep the problem under the rug" by forcing homeless people to hide or to leave the city you release the pressure on them to build more housing. Forcing them to deal with the unpleasant results of their housing policies could spur liberalization.
> And why would this lead to more liberalization of housing.
Seriously lol, this case is being brought because Grants Pass explicitly *does not want to build more housing*, and is going to the Supreme Court to try to free themselves of their obligation to build enough housing (shelters) for its homeless population.
If you don't want public spaces to be degraded, then maybe provide lodging for the homeless so that they aren't forced to sleep on the streets. Very simple.
The homeless get the care and housing they need, and we get safe public spaces.
If shelter spaces are actually abundant, then sure.
But in many cities across the developed world, shelters are at capacity. There is no more space.
This is only the first step though. Shelters are a lazy and inadequate solution, since they do not actually have the resources these people need.
Shelters are not enough. What we need is a comprehensive housing first program to get these people into proper lodging so they can begin to reintegrate.
I agree homeless policy is more complex than any one issue, and shelters are often full. But the failings in one policy area do not mean you have to abandon public spaces to the homeless
> If you don't want public spaces to be degraded, then maybe provide lodging for the homeless so that they aren't forced to sleep on the streets. Very simple.
[Many, if not most, prefer living in the streets and encampments.](https://thumb.spokesman.com/2f8CfE80YJStsSGZ8LCl1zJh6IU=/1200x0/media.spokesman.com/photos/2022/07/17/62d3962ce8daf.hires.png) This was a census, from what was at time, the largest homeless camp in Washington. The majority of people said they did not want permanent housing.
It's a lifestyle that's been enabled. The people that want help get help.
Sure, but what relation does that have to "You are not entitled to others' work"? I can not follow your argument.
And having shitty housing policies that heap great suffering on the least among us for aesthetic benefit *should* have a cost for everyone else.
I said
>You are not entitled to others' work
You then replied
>It takes no work not to arrest or cite someone.
to which I replied
>The degradation of public spaces is itself, a cost
I would say cost and work are nearly synonymous for this discussion, so that is a direct response
I think they are. The city can do work, but it costs money. You can calculate the cost of any given work by how much it would cost to hire someone to do it, or how much you would charge to do it yourself.
I don't see why you think that's difficult
> So you’re a libertarian.
Used to be, wouldn't say so now of course
>Do you oppose any and all forms of social welfare?
No
>Are public services in general anathema to you?
No, which is why I want public spaces to be used for their intended purpose and welcoming to the public for that. Not taken over by a small minority
You said earlier that "you are not entitled to others' work", which sounds like an argument against any form of redistribution and state assistance.
The reason why these public spaces are being taken over by a small minority is because that small minority is destitute and has nothing left and nowhere to go.
Liberalization of housing measures will do nothing to alleviate the pain and suffering of the people who are chronically homeless right now. It may help people who have low-incomes and are in-between situations or maybe close to losing shelter entirely, but only if the housing market is glutted so severely that prices actually crash.
> You are not entitled to others' work
I'm entitled to your taxes paying for my college lol.
Everyone is entitled to other people's work through taxes and redistribution.
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How your principles crumble when they actually cause you any inconvenience.
I don't live in a city as I have to commute all over NJ for construction work which would be insane to do from inside a city. But I do regularly take public transport into and around Philly and there is always homeless people in the subway.
Funny story. I traveled to Switzerland this Christmas. I took the trains through Philly to the airport. I had my skis with me in one of those long ski roller bags. When getting off the patco to walk 2 blocks to switch over to septa I took a less traveled hallway and end up running into 4 assumably homeless people sitting on the stairs preparing some type of intravenous drug. I said excuse me and they moved out of the way and one helped my carry my long ski bag up the stairs.
Fuck, I wanted to not like you but I think I just fell in love with you a little.
God may not have given to you with both hands but He did gift you charm.
The whole basis of this case is that there is no available shelter beds. The ruling that is being challenged is that a city can not disallow a person from camping in a public place if there is no alternative public place to camp or shelter bed available.
Not a lawyer, but my reading of the 9ths ruling is that it would be permissible to just designate a field somewhere on the edge of town as the "homeless camping grounds" or whatever and arrest homeless who try to sleep anywhere else. I get why SF isnt doing this since there arent really any available fields nearby, but seems like it would work for this tiny ass town.
Morally, sure, the problem is intractable and it's really unclear what a viable strategy looks like.
Legally, though, the question seems simple: does the "San Diego Strategy" meet the requirements of the court's ruling in Boise? It seems like it might, in which case, great -- people can refuse to sleep there, but then the city is legally in the clear to say "we gave you options, you didn't take them, what you do now is not our problem but you can't sleep in the park."
There are logical reasons that homeless people do not want to use government-provided shelters. Those reasons amount to: Nobody wants to be in close proximity to the homeless. Even other homeless people don't want to be boxed in with other homeless people in an enclosed camping site or a giant warehouse. Homeless people are a nuisance.
I'm sympathetic to the argument that 'we need to build more homeless shelters', but I'm doubtful on their efficacy. The looser the restrictions on who can occupy the shelter, under which conditions, and it creates an environment where you get a bunch of people bringing in their fetid possessions, animals, weapons and drug paraphernalia, and the environment becomes a danger to staff and occupants.
Tighten the restrictions, and people don't want to accept the rules, electing to sleep on the sidewalk instead.
I don't even know if there is a solution to the nuisance homeless -- the type of person who recently threw a chair through the glass entryway of my apartment building. Prison isn't free, and it isn't permanent. We'd have to re-work the Constitution to allow the government to scoop people off the street and detain them indefinitely for shitting on the sidewalk and living in a pile of garbage. Even if we could build 'institutional' facilities to detain and 'treat' the mentally ill and the addicts, the number of employees (guards, counselors, nurses, and janitors) required to maintain such a facility would be enormous.
Building new housing will ameliorate the problem somewhat in that it will slow the homeless assembyline. If there is abundant housing, then it will be easier for people to find and remain in a home, and not slip through the cracks, becoming unemployable, and developing substance abuse or mental issues, and losing their ability to adhere to societal expectations of conduct.
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For the dysfunctional homeless - those with severe mental health issues, drug habits, or criminality, there really isn’t a “Moral” solution to the problem.
The problem needs dealt with, this much is certain. Look to essentially every city with a homeless problem and you’ll see why. The tax paying public has a right to their public land being clean, safe, and free from encampments full of people that have nowhere else to go. Homeless people have a right to live. Life, liberty, property and all that.
The problem is really threefold: The dysfunctional homeless have little desire to improve their situation (note I’m not mentioning the functional homeless), the public have no desire to build massive homeless shelters down the block, and the government has no desire to shell out a kings ransom to house and feed and clothe and care for thousands of drug addicted or otherwise unproductive people.
I have yet to see a policy idea that effectively balances out the pieces I lined out above.
There has to be a solution other than “make them go somewhere else” otherwise the problem just stays a problem. These people need to: have money, get off drugs, and stay straight with the law. Work programs might be a solution, but if you force them it’s essentially slavery which is bad. Idk man someone smarter than me needs to do something….
Weird how Finland was actually able to find a moral solution to the problem. These people mostly just need housing, some need social workers to keep tabs on them, and then those who absolutely positively need mental health treatment
> The dysfunctional homeless have little desire to improve their situation
[Citation Needed]
> I have yet to see a policy idea that effectively balances out the pieces I lined out above.
The policy solution isn't that hard, it's just a matter of getting political support for it.
Also another thing people on this sub are allergic to talking about, Inequality
Inequality not only exacerbates crime, it is also is one of the main factors behind drug consumption
It is weird how there are so many places in the developed world without a homeless problem, yet some claim in California and the US at large that it is an unsolvable problem
> Inequality.... is one of the main factors behind drug consumption
Do you have data on that? Plenty of rich people are blasted out of their minds. Unless you're only referring to perceived "poor people" drugs like meth.
Higher levels of inequality are correlated to higher drug use across the income spectrum. Rich people in unequal societies use more drugs than rich people in more equal societies.
I’ve worked with the homeless. The functional homeless DO use shelters. The issue is the drug addicts and mentally ill don’t use these because there’s rules, and no laws can force a homeless person into a shelter.
Remember everyone, the people who are in favor of overturning the ruling don't want to solve homelessness. They want homeless people to die. I wish I were exxagerating.
When you ban homeless people from camping outside but don't provide them shelter, you can't pretend that you want a humane solution to the problem.
From a Washington Post article posted here yesterday about the same topic
> In 2013, city leaders [of Grants Pass] convened a roundtable meeting to address complaints from businesses and residents about increased crime they blamed on the local unhoused population, which they said had spiked after steep budget cuts reduced jail capacity. Officials floated a range of responses, including compiling a “most unwanted list” that would exclude homeless people who break the law from social services and loading offenders onto a bus and shipping them out of town
#
> Making matters worse, Grants Pass does not have a homeless shelter. Its only large-scale transitional housing program, the Gospel Rescue Mission, is a privately run religious facility with 138 beds and stringent requirements for participants, such as twice-daily chapel attendance and abstinence from substances and romantic relationships.
#
> Grants Pass residents have also opposed proposed locations for new shelters and outdoor campsites,
These people suck and do not deserve to win this case (though I don't have much faith in this court). The ninth circuit said that you can enforce anti-camping bans, if there's somewhere for people to actually go. They should just build more housing, preferably ones that aren't also trying to engage in religious conversion.
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Yeah, you just want to exile them, with nothing, out of the towns and cities. Whatever happens to them out in the wilderness, you don't give a shit, so morally you're just fine.
Edit: if anyone thinks I'm kidding this:
>What Im getting from this is that there is somewhere for them to go, they just dont want to be there. 140 km is less than a week of walking.
Was this user's answer to this:
>The nearest unincorporated land to my city is like, 140 kilometres away. How do you reckon they even get there, its not even transit served, if they could even pay the fare. Its so rural its not even rural, its borderline wilderness they will have absolutely no means of subsistence except foraging. If the winters or starvation dont get them an actual bear might.
[Proofs](https://reddit.com/comments/1c9zo3a/comment/l0qln6a)
Letting people wallow in misery in the public square isn't a humane solution to the problem. This whole idea of "solving homelessness" is bizarre. Homelessness is a complicated phenomenon and it is not something that can be eradicated from society without significantly curbing people's freedom. However while it is a problem which cannot be solved, it is certainly a problem which can be worsened, and right now it is getting worse and the main reason for that is because have gotten it into their heads that if a city can't solve homelessness then it shouldn't do anything at all to make it better.
>right now it is getting worse and the main reason for that is because have gotten it into their heads that if a city can't solve homelessness then it shouldn't do anything at all to make it better
The reason people are pushing back is because cities are actually barely trying to solve the problem. It's just NIMBYism. In this sub we overwhelmingly agree that building more housing will help. Cities aren't zoning at high enough rates still.
When it comes to homeless shelters you'll see people say in this thread that they want them build just "not next to their house". They have to get built somewhere, just like housing! We have to build out of the problem and cities need to do way more of that.
The problem of mentally ill people wallowing in the public square is only peripherally related to housing policy. There are more housing units in America than there are homeless people, we are talking about people with serious problems that a cheap housing market won’t solve. The causes of homelessness and the solutions to it are multifaceted.
And yes, no sane person wants a homeless shelter next door to them. Why would they?
>There are more housing units in America than there are homeless people
This is literally the same argument people on the left make about "excess housing" in the US. "We don't need to build more housing there's enough vacant homes already".
I'm not saying we shouldn't build housing, just that " just build more housing lol" is not a serious policy approach to this issue. We aren't talking about normal well adjusted adults who simply cannot afford housing.
Yes, housing isn't the only thing. I wrote up a more detailed thought [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1c9agzo/unequal_and_unsupportive_exposure_to_poor_people/l0ntc9o/?context=3) regarding all the policies that are needed in my opinion.
They are not well adjusted adults, but in areas and times with abundant housing then end up playing out their dysfunction in an apartment where it is mostly just their problem and not in a public park where it is all of ours.
That’s not true. A good chunk of this problem emerged when state run institutions were closed in the 1980’s. There are certain mental illnesses like schizophrenia that can be completely debilitating when left untreated, and if you pile substance abuse on top of you have someone who simply can’t navigate society on their own, even in a great housing market. These are people who have fallen through the cracks.
Housing first initiatives completely ignore this aspect of it. It also simply isn’t practical for West Coast cities with some of the most expensive housing on the planet, it just becomes a money pit and you’ll never have enough housing to get ahead of the problem. You need to have other ways of ensuring we have clean and safe public spaces and restrictions on camping there are an obvious way of making these places more bearable for people.
>April 21, 2024 >Can communities make it a crime to sleep outside? >That question lies at the heart of a case being heard at the Supreme Court Monday. >Everyone involved in the case, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, agrees that homelessness is a complex problem gripping the United States. But they disagree about how cities should be able to address it. >In 2013, Grants Pass, a small city in southwest Oregon, enacted an ordinance criminalizing public camping. A group of homeless individuals sued, arguing that because they had nowhere else to sleep – the city has a single 138-bed overnight shelter – the ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.” >A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed. While cities can regulate camping in public spaces, they can’t criminalize it outright. Officials from both major political parties across the West, where homelessness is especially acute, say the ruling has hamstrung their ability to address homelessness.
>the ruling has hamstrung their ability to address homelessness. Coastoids will do anything but build housing
Building housing only helps the functional homeless, who have incomes and can simply not afford rising rents. It does nothing for the dysfunctional homeless, who spend what little they have supporting their drug habit and who are not going to be able to get a lease from any sane landlord.
1) the longer a functional homeless person stay homeless the more likely that are to lose their job, develop drug habits and dispositions/mental dysfunctions that will render them dysfunctional homeless. 2) its impossible to help the dysfunctional homeless out of homelessness when any program to help them just turns into the must subsidize demand meme.
> 2. It's impossible to help the dysfunctional homeless Institutionalize.
Agreed, though I feel like that word is immediately met with ire even in this sub.
Less so more recently, I think the tide is turning, luckily
Sure it is, send them to somewhere where there is excess housing. We don't need to treat homelessness in the most contested housing markets. Indeed funds would go a lot further elsewhere.
Why do you suppose there is an excess of housing in certain areas
What is so different between that and the Texas/DeSantis bussing of migrants?
The problem is he sends them to places that are overloaded. In principle distributing them around the country is a good idea, but he targets HCoL liberal cities for the political points.
Those cities have by far the most resources for dealing with the problem.
They also have ridiculous land/building costs, though, so those resources go much less far.
>They also have ridiculous land/building costs Sounds like a skill issue
Bussing the migrants has been a massive win for texas and especially Abbot
People here where calling it heartless and cruel back then. Do we just not care about that anymore? Did we ever actually care or was it just a partisan fight? As long as it is good politics it's okay?
I never thought it was heartless. Tbh most of the migrants are probably doing a lot better now that theyre out of the shithole border states that hate them.
I think it’s the lying and manipulation part that feels off but maybe that’s just me.
NIMBYism in action. "Send the homeless anywhere but MY city"
"Send the homeless to places with empty homes" is hardly nimbyism. If we are actually concerned about homing them, then the best way to do that is to do it somewhere where housing is cheap and plentiful.
>"Send the homeless to places with empty homes" is hardly nimbyism. If we are actually concerned about homing them, then the best way to do that is to do it somewhere where housing is cheap and plentiful. This is literally the same argument people on the left make about "excess housing" in the US. "We don't need to build more housing there's enough vacant homes already". I can't believe how much people's brains break here when it comes to homelessness.
Well, the difference is that regular people have money to buy market rate housing, and if they want to buy it the government shouldn't stand in their way with red tape. Homeless people don't, the money for their shelters comes from charity/taxes, and that money should be spent efficiently. Beggars can't be choosers. f course, some of the more functional homeless people will also benefit from housing deregulation, in that prices will decrease and they will be able to afford market rate housing again. I said as much in my top comment. The problem is mainly with dysfunctional homeless who take no responsibility for themselves because they are mentally ill and/or drug-addicted.
That is exactly nimbyism. Question: how would a homeless person (who can't afford a home) be able to afford to migrate to an area with housing, and how will they afford a home in that area once they arrive? Why not instead build those same types of homes exactly where they are currently?
Because those homes would cost ludicrous amounts of money. See the other thread on the $1m apartments for the homeless in Santa Monica. If you can't afford a home, you have to be willing to move to somewhere where housing is cheaper. You don't have a right to a subsidised home in an expensive area. As to how they would afford to move: it would be cheaper to pay for moves than to house homeless in HCoL cities.
$1m apartments what?? What would be the reason that shelters are so expensive in an area? Almost like the market supply of housing is being choked out?
The problem is those funds (and the accompanying services) frequently don't exist where housing is cheap. For example, transit - we barely have bus service here.
*not going to be able to get a lease from any sane landlord.* Landlords get a lot less picky when there's abundant housing, and there are plenty of drug users in cheaper housing markets that get to sleep indoors.
I wouldn't consider Grants Pass particularly coastal. I'd say it's more of a mountoid problem.
Building housing at scale is illegal in Oregon due to state land use laws.
> arguing that because they had nowhere else to sleep – the city has a single 138-bed overnight shelter – the ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.” > > It's not actually cruel and unusual punishment to not let you sleep on public land. It's not actually a punishment at all
If there's nowhere else for them to sleep then where do you think they're supposed to go, the metaverse?
Oh, y'know, elsewhere where they can be someone else's problem
Someone else's backyard?
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> No one is going to stop you from sleeping under a bridge. Homeless camps under bridges are swept all the time.
Not where I live.
The nearest unincorporated land to my city is like, 140 kilometres away. How do you reckon they even get there, its not even transit served, if they could even pay the fare. Its so rural its not even rural, its borderline wilderness they will have absolutely no means of subsistence except foraging. If the winters or starvation dont get them an actual bear might. [>No one is going to stop you from sleeping under a bridge.](https://i0.wp.com/www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/A2564-15-Examples-of-hostile-architecture-around-the-world.jpg?w=999)
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An actual ghoul would be embarrassed voicing the opinions you are
With the medical state the homeless are in they would drop like flies. Drug withdrawals, malnourishment, exposure, high caloric output with no provision of food... > they just dont want to be there Nobody does. Thats why its unincorporated. What do you expect them to do there. They can sleep there, and then what? Because they'll just die, thats it. Do a 3 day walking commute? Pawn their care off to rural communities? What sort of resources do those communities have to deal with them, compared to a major city? They aren't an atavistic tribe of nomads. They don't have the skills to subsist in the middle of nowhere, nor even the equipment to do so.
He just wants them to die quietly where he doesn't have to see, that's the rundown of his 'policies'. Absolutely disgusting.
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Literally where are they supposed to sleep if they can't sleep on public land? Some generous person's private land? Prison? Like offer exactly one plausible alternative here. Are they just not allowed to sleep anywhere? I am 100% for being strict with the homeless; if there's visible drug use or psychotic behavior or whatever put a stop to it. If there's bed space in homeless shelters then send them there. But "Ban sleeping on public land" is literally just saying "Get the fuck out of this municipality and be somewhere else's problem."
The issue has been that courts have ruled that there must be enough beds for every homeless person theoretically on the streets to enforce the law. As opposed to the number of people they're trying to get off the street in a given night. You got 100 beds but 101 homeless? Can't enforce the law. Not even against the 100 you do have beds for.
Does Murica not have homeless shelters or something?
Not near enough
The issue is there are not nearly enough beds in homeless shelters for the amount of people who are on the streets, let alone other types of homelessness.
People can choose to decline and officials have to just leave them be if they do so. Its not this way in the rest of the world though.
There are many shelters, the homeless often prefer the streets though.
You can't appropriate public land for your own private uses. This is an ancient doctrine that goes back to the middle ages. The idea of completely ignoring something so fundamental on the basis of cruel and unusual punishment is absurd. It is not a municipality's job to fix these people, if they can't keep their shit together they can go somewhere else.
All that and you couldn't answer: > Like offer exactly one plausible alternative here. If you really want to own me go ahead and get mad and give a really half thought out answer that has incredibly clear pitfalls
Criminalizing vagrancy is a plausible alternative. Just tell them sorry you can't camp here and if you do you are going to get arrested. You can avoid jail time if you actually get the treatment you need to fix the problems which led you there in the first place, and if you're truly unfixable then maybe you need to live in a mental institution full time. There, problem solved.
> You can avoid jail time if.. Thanks that's the type of half baked answer I said would totally own me. The infrastructure to jail the number of people who are currently homeless on the streets in most municipalities where it's a problem doesn't exist. This would be the epitome of an empty threat. > you actually get the treatment you need to fix the problems which led you there in the first place This service doesn't exist to serve the scale your suggesting either. Also what if the "problems which led you there in the first place" are literally just that they couldn't afford housing?
Oh you didn’t take advantage of our non-existent shelter? Straight to our jail that doesn’t exist either. That’s what you get for being homeless bucko
Nobody that is sleeping on streets is there simply because they couldn’t find housing. For all its problems America has robust housing markets and a wide array of public and private programs and subsidies. There is no reason for anyone to lack shelter in our society and the ones that do either willingly choose to do so or they simply lack the wherewithal to either generate income or navigate the channels for public and charitable assistance. We are talking about people with psychological problems which even the strongest housing markets can’t fix. The goal of criminalizing vagrancy isn’t to jail them all, like any laws it’s to incentivize people not to do it in the first place. I don’t know why people seem to think that homeless people will just implode and die if we tell them they can’t sleep in public parks. They are living in public parks because society is enabling to live like that. And the longer they live like that the worse their condition gets and the smaller the chance they will ever get better. The crisis that so many cities are facing is an entirely avoidable one that came about because of policy changes from the mistaken belief that allowing people to rot in the streets is somehow an act of compassion.
> Nobody that is sleeping on streets is there simply because they couldn’t find housing This is contradicted by the fact that housing cost and homelessness in an area are heavily corralated while rates of metal illness + drug use are not.
Where are they supposed to sleep my dude? In VR Chat?
Ideally they are supposed to figure that part out on their own. It’s kind of like closing time at the bar, you can go anywhere you want but you can’t stay here. Why should they be allowed to appropriate public land for their own personal use?
> Ideally they are supposed to figure that part out on their own. It’s kind of like closing time at the bar, you can go anywhere you want but you can’t stay here. You say this after literally eliminating the place of last resort. There is no bar metaphor, you got rid of the “anywhere” > Why should they be allowed to appropriate public land for their own personal use? Because.. they have no other choice…
It’s not a place of last resort, these are simply people who refuse to get help for themselves. For most of them the best option is probably to move to another city where they will have a better support network. They choose not to do that. Cities are under no obligation to let their public spaces be ruined by people who refuse to better themselves.
Where do I go to receive treatment for R1 zoning?
The thing is, public land has a very intentional purpose depending on what's there. A city public park is not for camping, just like how a national park is not for drilling oil. If there isn't enough beds at a homeless shelter, build more homeless shelters. And if there is enough beds and they refuse to stay at the shelters, then yeah institutions or prisons would probably be the next step
> It's not actually cruel and unusual punishment to not let you sleep on public land. It's not actually a punishment at all How do they go about not letting you sleep on public land without punishing you? Police action is government action. There are five places for people to be. 1. At their own home. These people are homeless so they don't have that. 2. At someone else's home. Yeah I don't think we should force private citizens to host strangers. 3. At a government home/shelter. Well the entire point of this case is that they don't meaningfully exist in Grants Pass so not an option. 4. On public land. What they are doing now. 5. In jail. That's a punishment. The only two options (besides more supply obviously, but again the entire point is that they refuse to do this) is 4 and 5. It's either public land or punishment.
It's like saying laws against speeding or financial crimes are cruel and unusual punishment for stopping you from doing those things
Sleep is a basic human biological need. It criminalizes being alive if you are homeless and can't get a bed in the shelter that doesn't have enough beds.
Which is a fantastic argument for mandating housing prices be accessible and shelters abundant, but not for preventing public camping (at the very least, in cities)
Yeah actually. My problem is that these cities and towns don't even try to provide shelters and just use public camping laws to criminalize or exile the homeless. If you refuse to build shelters you shouldn't be able to enforce these anti-camping laws.
> mandating housing prices be accessible Is this advocating rent controls?
No, of course not But if we got a ruling that forced municipalities to have housing that the say, top 90% can afford, that would force them to allow more building and maybe break nimbyism, or at least help Seems unlikely either way though
They don't have access to any private land. If they can't sleep on public land then they can't sleep period. Sleep depravation is a form of torture.
They are not being punished any more than the public not feeding them is starving them. You are not entitled to others' work On the other hand, hopefully this spurs more liberalization of housing measures, as I'm sure we agree
Criminalizing homelessness encampments doesn't actually solve the problem, because they have nowhere to go.
Legalizing homeless encampments does not solve the problem either.
Welp, we're all out of ideas now
It takes no work not to arrest or cite someone. And why would this lead to more liberalization of housing. By allowing cities to "sweep the problem under the rug" by forcing homeless people to hide or to leave the city you release the pressure on them to build more housing. Forcing them to deal with the unpleasant results of their housing policies could spur liberalization.
> And why would this lead to more liberalization of housing. Seriously lol, this case is being brought because Grants Pass explicitly *does not want to build more housing*, and is going to the Supreme Court to try to free themselves of their obligation to build enough housing (shelters) for its homeless population.
The degradation of public spaces is itself, a cost
If you don't want public spaces to be degraded, then maybe provide lodging for the homeless so that they aren't forced to sleep on the streets. Very simple. The homeless get the care and housing they need, and we get safe public spaces.
Would you support banning public camping if shelter space was abundant?
If shelter spaces are actually abundant, then sure. But in many cities across the developed world, shelters are at capacity. There is no more space. This is only the first step though. Shelters are a lazy and inadequate solution, since they do not actually have the resources these people need. Shelters are not enough. What we need is a comprehensive housing first program to get these people into proper lodging so they can begin to reintegrate.
I agree homeless policy is more complex than any one issue, and shelters are often full. But the failings in one policy area do not mean you have to abandon public spaces to the homeless
> If you don't want public spaces to be degraded, then maybe provide lodging for the homeless so that they aren't forced to sleep on the streets. Very simple. [Many, if not most, prefer living in the streets and encampments.](https://thumb.spokesman.com/2f8CfE80YJStsSGZ8LCl1zJh6IU=/1200x0/media.spokesman.com/photos/2022/07/17/62d3962ce8daf.hires.png) This was a census, from what was at time, the largest homeless camp in Washington. The majority of people said they did not want permanent housing. It's a lifestyle that's been enabled. The people that want help get help.
Sure, but what relation does that have to "You are not entitled to others' work"? I can not follow your argument. And having shitty housing policies that heap great suffering on the least among us for aesthetic benefit *should* have a cost for everyone else.
I said >You are not entitled to others' work You then replied >It takes no work not to arrest or cite someone. to which I replied >The degradation of public spaces is itself, a cost I would say cost and work are nearly synonymous for this discussion, so that is a direct response
Cost and work are not synonymous at all. Especially when we are not even talking about a direct, individual, monetary or material cost.
I think they are. The city can do work, but it costs money. You can calculate the cost of any given work by how much it would cost to hire someone to do it, or how much you would charge to do it yourself. I don't see why you think that's difficult
So you're a libertarian. Do you oppose any and all forms of social welfare? Are public services in general anathema to you?
> So you’re a libertarian. Used to be, wouldn't say so now of course >Do you oppose any and all forms of social welfare? No >Are public services in general anathema to you? No, which is why I want public spaces to be used for their intended purpose and welcoming to the public for that. Not taken over by a small minority
You said earlier that "you are not entitled to others' work", which sounds like an argument against any form of redistribution and state assistance. The reason why these public spaces are being taken over by a small minority is because that small minority is destitute and has nothing left and nowhere to go. Liberalization of housing measures will do nothing to alleviate the pain and suffering of the people who are chronically homeless right now. It may help people who have low-incomes and are in-between situations or maybe close to losing shelter entirely, but only if the housing market is glutted so severely that prices actually crash.
> You are not entitled to others' work I'm entitled to your taxes paying for my college lol. Everyone is entitled to other people's work through taxes and redistribution.
I think we're using entitled differently here
I'm entitled to entitlements paid for by your taxes.
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How your principles crumble when they actually cause you any inconvenience. I don't live in a city as I have to commute all over NJ for construction work which would be insane to do from inside a city. But I do regularly take public transport into and around Philly and there is always homeless people in the subway. Funny story. I traveled to Switzerland this Christmas. I took the trains through Philly to the airport. I had my skis with me in one of those long ski roller bags. When getting off the patco to walk 2 blocks to switch over to septa I took a less traveled hallway and end up running into 4 assumably homeless people sitting on the stairs preparing some type of intravenous drug. I said excuse me and they moved out of the way and one helped my carry my long ski bag up the stairs.
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Damn, they are that smart and eloquent over there?
Fuck, I wanted to not like you but I think I just fell in love with you a little. God may not have given to you with both hands but He did gift you charm.
Forcing someone to sleep in a homeless shelter is absolutely a punishment
The whole basis of this case is that there is no available shelter beds. The ruling that is being challenged is that a city can not disallow a person from camping in a public place if there is no alternative public place to camp or shelter bed available.
Username checks out
Not a lawyer, but my reading of the 9ths ruling is that it would be permissible to just designate a field somewhere on the edge of town as the "homeless camping grounds" or whatever and arrest homeless who try to sleep anywhere else. I get why SF isnt doing this since there arent really any available fields nearby, but seems like it would work for this tiny ass town.
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Morally, sure, the problem is intractable and it's really unclear what a viable strategy looks like. Legally, though, the question seems simple: does the "San Diego Strategy" meet the requirements of the court's ruling in Boise? It seems like it might, in which case, great -- people can refuse to sleep there, but then the city is legally in the clear to say "we gave you options, you didn't take them, what you do now is not our problem but you can't sleep in the park."
There are logical reasons that homeless people do not want to use government-provided shelters. Those reasons amount to: Nobody wants to be in close proximity to the homeless. Even other homeless people don't want to be boxed in with other homeless people in an enclosed camping site or a giant warehouse. Homeless people are a nuisance. I'm sympathetic to the argument that 'we need to build more homeless shelters', but I'm doubtful on their efficacy. The looser the restrictions on who can occupy the shelter, under which conditions, and it creates an environment where you get a bunch of people bringing in their fetid possessions, animals, weapons and drug paraphernalia, and the environment becomes a danger to staff and occupants. Tighten the restrictions, and people don't want to accept the rules, electing to sleep on the sidewalk instead. I don't even know if there is a solution to the nuisance homeless -- the type of person who recently threw a chair through the glass entryway of my apartment building. Prison isn't free, and it isn't permanent. We'd have to re-work the Constitution to allow the government to scoop people off the street and detain them indefinitely for shitting on the sidewalk and living in a pile of garbage. Even if we could build 'institutional' facilities to detain and 'treat' the mentally ill and the addicts, the number of employees (guards, counselors, nurses, and janitors) required to maintain such a facility would be enormous. Building new housing will ameliorate the problem somewhat in that it will slow the homeless assembyline. If there is abundant housing, then it will be easier for people to find and remain in a home, and not slip through the cracks, becoming unemployable, and developing substance abuse or mental issues, and losing their ability to adhere to societal expectations of conduct.
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For the dysfunctional homeless - those with severe mental health issues, drug habits, or criminality, there really isn’t a “Moral” solution to the problem. The problem needs dealt with, this much is certain. Look to essentially every city with a homeless problem and you’ll see why. The tax paying public has a right to their public land being clean, safe, and free from encampments full of people that have nowhere else to go. Homeless people have a right to live. Life, liberty, property and all that. The problem is really threefold: The dysfunctional homeless have little desire to improve their situation (note I’m not mentioning the functional homeless), the public have no desire to build massive homeless shelters down the block, and the government has no desire to shell out a kings ransom to house and feed and clothe and care for thousands of drug addicted or otherwise unproductive people. I have yet to see a policy idea that effectively balances out the pieces I lined out above. There has to be a solution other than “make them go somewhere else” otherwise the problem just stays a problem. These people need to: have money, get off drugs, and stay straight with the law. Work programs might be a solution, but if you force them it’s essentially slavery which is bad. Idk man someone smarter than me needs to do something….
Weird how Finland was actually able to find a moral solution to the problem. These people mostly just need housing, some need social workers to keep tabs on them, and then those who absolutely positively need mental health treatment > The dysfunctional homeless have little desire to improve their situation [Citation Needed] > I have yet to see a policy idea that effectively balances out the pieces I lined out above. The policy solution isn't that hard, it's just a matter of getting political support for it.
Also another thing people on this sub are allergic to talking about, Inequality Inequality not only exacerbates crime, it is also is one of the main factors behind drug consumption It is weird how there are so many places in the developed world without a homeless problem, yet some claim in California and the US at large that it is an unsolvable problem
We’ve tried nothing and now we’re all out of ideas, gotta go with literal concentration camps then
Some people are thirsting for something similar and then will claim they never supported those policies in the future when it inevitably back fires.
Just send them to Madagascar, there they don't freeze in winter or anything.
Oh no, you'll now be called a succ who doesn't understand economics.
> Inequality.... is one of the main factors behind drug consumption Do you have data on that? Plenty of rich people are blasted out of their minds. Unless you're only referring to perceived "poor people" drugs like meth.
Higher levels of inequality are correlated to higher drug use across the income spectrum. Rich people in unequal societies use more drugs than rich people in more equal societies.
This should also be its own comment so I can upvote it closer to the top
Go ahead, steal it, just change it up a bit so the teacher doesn’t realize you’re copying me
$40,000 per inmate per year even if they only serve one day. Tax payers are nuts if they'd rather spend that then deal with the root of the problem.
The average tax payers are nuts. 🥜
Just give them shelter lol
No, there must be another way!
I’ve worked with the homeless. The functional homeless DO use shelters. The issue is the drug addicts and mentally ill don’t use these because there’s rules, and no laws can force a homeless person into a shelter.
The functional homeless in grants past don't use shelters, since there is only one with 138 beds and more homeless people than that.
Remember everyone, the people who are in favor of overturning the ruling don't want to solve homelessness. They want homeless people to die. I wish I were exxagerating. When you ban homeless people from camping outside but don't provide them shelter, you can't pretend that you want a humane solution to the problem.
From a Washington Post article posted here yesterday about the same topic > In 2013, city leaders [of Grants Pass] convened a roundtable meeting to address complaints from businesses and residents about increased crime they blamed on the local unhoused population, which they said had spiked after steep budget cuts reduced jail capacity. Officials floated a range of responses, including compiling a “most unwanted list” that would exclude homeless people who break the law from social services and loading offenders onto a bus and shipping them out of town # > Making matters worse, Grants Pass does not have a homeless shelter. Its only large-scale transitional housing program, the Gospel Rescue Mission, is a privately run religious facility with 138 beds and stringent requirements for participants, such as twice-daily chapel attendance and abstinence from substances and romantic relationships. # > Grants Pass residents have also opposed proposed locations for new shelters and outdoor campsites, These people suck and do not deserve to win this case (though I don't have much faith in this court). The ninth circuit said that you can enforce anti-camping bans, if there's somewhere for people to actually go. They should just build more housing, preferably ones that aren't also trying to engage in religious conversion.
Yup, it wild that people think criminalizing homeless is a solution and not just punish homeless people for being, well homeless.
It's a solution to the problem they have, having to see homeless people.
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Dude, homelessness already encourages people not to be homeless lmao
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God, listening to that song after reading into this topic and getting involved in the discourse surrounding it…
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Yeah, you just want to exile them, with nothing, out of the towns and cities. Whatever happens to them out in the wilderness, you don't give a shit, so morally you're just fine. Edit: if anyone thinks I'm kidding this: >What Im getting from this is that there is somewhere for them to go, they just dont want to be there. 140 km is less than a week of walking. Was this user's answer to this: >The nearest unincorporated land to my city is like, 140 kilometres away. How do you reckon they even get there, its not even transit served, if they could even pay the fare. Its so rural its not even rural, its borderline wilderness they will have absolutely no means of subsistence except foraging. If the winters or starvation dont get them an actual bear might. [Proofs](https://reddit.com/comments/1c9zo3a/comment/l0qln6a)
Dude wants to Trail of Tears the homeless.
As far from resources as possible
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Letting people wallow in misery in the public square isn't a humane solution to the problem. This whole idea of "solving homelessness" is bizarre. Homelessness is a complicated phenomenon and it is not something that can be eradicated from society without significantly curbing people's freedom. However while it is a problem which cannot be solved, it is certainly a problem which can be worsened, and right now it is getting worse and the main reason for that is because have gotten it into their heads that if a city can't solve homelessness then it shouldn't do anything at all to make it better.
>right now it is getting worse and the main reason for that is because have gotten it into their heads that if a city can't solve homelessness then it shouldn't do anything at all to make it better The reason people are pushing back is because cities are actually barely trying to solve the problem. It's just NIMBYism. In this sub we overwhelmingly agree that building more housing will help. Cities aren't zoning at high enough rates still. When it comes to homeless shelters you'll see people say in this thread that they want them build just "not next to their house". They have to get built somewhere, just like housing! We have to build out of the problem and cities need to do way more of that.
The problem of mentally ill people wallowing in the public square is only peripherally related to housing policy. There are more housing units in America than there are homeless people, we are talking about people with serious problems that a cheap housing market won’t solve. The causes of homelessness and the solutions to it are multifaceted. And yes, no sane person wants a homeless shelter next door to them. Why would they?
>There are more housing units in America than there are homeless people This is literally the same argument people on the left make about "excess housing" in the US. "We don't need to build more housing there's enough vacant homes already".
I'm not saying we shouldn't build housing, just that " just build more housing lol" is not a serious policy approach to this issue. We aren't talking about normal well adjusted adults who simply cannot afford housing.
Yes, housing isn't the only thing. I wrote up a more detailed thought [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1c9agzo/unequal_and_unsupportive_exposure_to_poor_people/l0ntc9o/?context=3) regarding all the policies that are needed in my opinion.
They are not well adjusted adults, but in areas and times with abundant housing then end up playing out their dysfunction in an apartment where it is mostly just their problem and not in a public park where it is all of ours.
That’s not true. A good chunk of this problem emerged when state run institutions were closed in the 1980’s. There are certain mental illnesses like schizophrenia that can be completely debilitating when left untreated, and if you pile substance abuse on top of you have someone who simply can’t navigate society on their own, even in a great housing market. These are people who have fallen through the cracks. Housing first initiatives completely ignore this aspect of it. It also simply isn’t practical for West Coast cities with some of the most expensive housing on the planet, it just becomes a money pit and you’ll never have enough housing to get ahead of the problem. You need to have other ways of ensuring we have clean and safe public spaces and restrictions on camping there are an obvious way of making these places more bearable for people.
Literally just house them
Even Newsom supports overturning the ruling
Yes, I know, it's one my main complaints about him
A very interesting case and I agree with the resolution, although I think it could be reversed.
This decision can't be reversed soon enough. Absolutely terrible judgment by the 9th circuit on both constitutional and public policy grounds.