Mother Jones illustration; Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty
“When I am back in the White House, we will use every tool, lever, and authority to get the homeless off our streets,” Donald Trump said in a Spring 2023 campaign video.
In June 2024, the US Supreme Court made this promise much easier to keep by overturning a lower court’s decision on criminalizing homelessness. Grants Pass, Oregon, where the case originated, had been punishing the unhoused with fines ranging from $295 to $1,250 and 30 days in jail. Ed Johnson was the initial lawyer who successfully argued this practice was unconstitutional. But after the Supreme Court weighed in, Grants Pass now was able to resume this practice. Other cities are likely to do the same.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why are some cities criminalize opting to criminalize homelessness?
These efforts are not aimed at solving homelessness, but at hiding it—and they’re not even effective in doing that. They increase people’s vulnerability and make it harder to get out of homelessness. People running for office think the rhetoric about getting tough resonates with voters, but it’s unworkable. We need to live in communities where we take care of the people who are the victims of our failed policies.
What did the Grants Pass Supreme Court ruling really mean?
The legal issue was very narrow. The question was whether cities violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment if they punish people for living outside when they have nowhere to live inside. The Supreme Court held that the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause does not prevent that kind of punishment. There have been cities that have taken the Supreme Court’s invitation to follow the worst possible policies since that decision, but there have also been a lot of cities that have proceeded with existing evidence-based solutions. My hope, of course, is that there are more cities that figure out what works and they stick with that. The Supreme Court—both the majority and the dissent—were clear that there’s nothing requiring cities to punish people who are living outside.
What sorts of policies would effectively address the homelessness crisis?
You can’t solve homelessness without more housing. Secondly, we need prevention efforts. That means rent assistance, renter protections, and trying to preserve the affordable housing that we have. Because if we’re adding to the population of people who are forced outside, it offsets any efforts to move people inside. Finally, we need shelter so that people can stay safe, stable, and alive while they’re looking for permanent housing. People need to be in a place where they can stay connected to providers and continue to work with people who are trying to find them work and housing. It’s hard enough to do that when you’re not hiding from the police. And of course, if people are getting ticketed, fined, and arrested, and as a result, have recent convictions on their record, it’s going to make it even more difficult for them to move out of homelessness. Year-round, they will have to figure out where to go to the bathroom, where to store any valuables they do acquire, and how to find food. Seasonally, they’ll face frostbite, heat exhaustion, and increasingly, air pollution from wildfires.
Are there any good, real-world examples of effective policy?
“It’s taken us decades to get into this hole: we’re 7.2 million housing units short of what we need in the richest country in the history of the world. “
It’s taken us decades to get into this hole: we’re 7.2 million housing units short of what we need in the richest country in the history of the world. You can’t look at that statistic in any other way than a decades-long bipartisan policy failure. Among incremental improvements, Los Angeles County voters approved a measure that will devote an expected $1.1 billion a year in sales tax revenue to support housing and rent relief programs. New Orleans set up a Housing Trust Fund. Spokane, Washington, vowed to get rid of zoning-mandated parking minimums that make it impossible to build affordable housing.
On the campaign trail, Trump mentioned creating “tent cities” on “inexpensive land” for homeless people. What do you make of that?
There’s a pretty clear distinction between the things that will work and costly efforts that will make the problem worse. Moving people away from services, punishing them, and making their lives more difficult is going to be expensive and really ineffective.
What can we do to help people living outside?
Even though homelessness is taking up more space in the media than ever, it often feels like people with the most information aren’t talking enough. Talk to your friends and colleagues about how we can solve this problem through building more housing and prevention efforts, and don’t make it worse by vilifying the people who’ve been forced to live outside. This is a housing shortage, and these are our neighbors: They are children, and seniors, and veterans, and working people, and people fleeing violent relationships.
