One possible backdrop to the story of America’s homeless is the recently argued case of Johnson v. Grants Pass before the Supreme Court. I say “possible” because the case concerns a city ordinance that forbids camping on public property which is interpreted as sleeping outdoors with a blanket. Its stated intent is public safety and the safety of the homeless who need proper shelter, not a park bench.
For the plight of America’s 650,000 homeless, this case amounts to a theatrical sideshow. The main stage is best avoided; the scent and appearance of it makes us turn our heads.
“The most significant causes (of homelessness) are the shortage of affordable homes and the high cost of housing.” That observation from Jeff Olivet, who heads the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, is in line with other experts on the subject. Most of us became armchair experts on the economics of housing as children — ensconced at the family table madly rolling the dice and acquiring properties over the board game Monopoly.
Were you at all bothered by those sheltering in cardboard beside your newly acquired mansion on Park Place? I wasn’t either. Yet there is a collective guilt to be felt when those who have “lost” the game settle for a donated tent as their new address, particularly when we are informed that the latest surge among the homeless are families with children.
Gregg Colburn, Real Estate professor at the University of Washington, reflects the same in his observation that “in arguably the wealthiest country in the history of the world, having this number of people without housing is a moral outrage.”
What a stark contrast between this attitude and the hardened policies and laws being passed by municipalities and states. The latest from DeSantis Inc. in Florida is a measure which makes it illegal for any municipality in the state to allow anyone to camp or sleep on public property. For our new class of righteous techno-feudal lords who own multiple properties in West Palm Beach and Naples, this was a requisite payoff, a statutory “moat” to surround and protect their investment. (They do, though, recycle their cardboard and glass for a sense of moral equilibrium).
Geography is an important aspect. Over half the country’s homeless are unhoused in just four states: California, New York, Washington, and yes, Florida. Texas escaped contention by busing thousands of migrants to New York. Having no place to call home is a misery of place as much as a misery of race. Three out of four homeless are either Black or Hispanic. One in five has a mental illness.
Those with an eye toward history may notice a pattern. Once upon a time, those of money and means forced native tribes off their ancestral lands and homes and onto reservations. When Colburn applies the term “moral outrage,” there is an implied understanding: that freedom and power (to house and be housed) finds a resonant source in white European male property owners. And it is difficult to not see this same attitude loitering on the steps of the Supreme Court as they wrangle over whether to consider homelessness a legal “status” to be protected or a “conduct” worthy of punishment.
Amid the many homeless activists in front of the Court, is the Los Angeles Action Network with signage reading, “Grant Pass is Jim Crow.” There are parallels to be drawn. What had been the despotic attitudes of the plantation-owning aristocrats are far from vanished in 2024, some 60 years after Jim Crow. Drinking mint juleps from breezy porches does more for property values than the rank odor of malt liquor, what to speak of the homeless trespasser consuming it.
With the intention of ridding neighborhoods of poor beggars and the homeless, northern states had devised Ugly Laws, to keep the homeless, those “diseased, mutilated, unsightly, and disgusting objects” from public view. I suppose that is more of a status than a conduct, but no longer on the books, so a moot point.
With the owner of Broadway and Marvin Gardens, poised, yet again, to be president, the unkept and unhoused will likely remain unheard.
After years of globetrotting, Broadman finds himself writing from his perch on the Palouse and loving the view. His policy briefs can be found at US Renew News: usrenewnews.org.
