The U.S. Supreme Court made the wrong decision in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case regarding homelessness. It said that arresting or fining someone for being outdoors with a pillow or blanket was not cruel and unusual punishment.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated in her dissent, sleep is a basic human need. Arresting and fining people who have no other place to sleep will not help address the root causes of homelessness or do anything to reduce homelessness. It will simply heap more misery on those who have no other option.
Stepping back from the emotional responses to homelessness, most people can acknowledge that everyone needs access to a safe place to sleep. Especially across most of the West Coast, there is a significant gap between the number of available emergency shelter spaces and the number of people who are currently homeless. With nowhere else to go, people make the logical choice to stay in their vehicle, or in a doorway or anywhere that might offer some sense of safety and shelter.
To illustrate the gap between the number of people who are homeless and the available shelter in Pierce County, during the 2024 Point in Time Count on a single day in January volunteers counted 2,661 people who were homeless. Pierce County currently has fewer than 1,700 year-round shelter spaces available, with the largest number open during the winter months and fewer in the summer. Not only is the number of people counted during a Point in Time Count much lower than the actual number of people who are homeless across the county, but it is also clear that even if every shelter space was utilized, hundreds of people would still need to find a way to survive outdoors or in their vehicle.
When interviewed during the Point in Time Count, the top three reasons that people cited for becoming homeless were the inability to find affordable housing, experiencing a family crisis or experiencing an eviction. Making it easier for government entities to arrest and fine people will do nothing to fix these issues that led people to become homeless in the first place. In fact, it will make it harder for a person or household to overcome the additional burden of a fine or jail time before they can find stable housing.
Homelessness can be solved by working to keep people in their homes and by supporting a strong community-wide commitment to create housing that is affordable for households at all income levels. When people have a home, it is much easier to address things like substance use disorder or mental health challenges.
Through a combination of emergency shelter, affordable housing, and supportive services for those who need them, we can reduce and end homelessness . We simply need to re-examine what we are doing now and make the commitment to focus on solutions that are successful.
We will never be able to arrest and fine our way out of the homelessness crisis.
Doubling down on failed policies will just waste time, money and the potential for creative new solutions that might actually reduce homelessness and the negative impacts of homelessness on the entire community.
Rob Huff is a member of the Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness, a network of individuals, non-profit organizations, government agencies, faith communities, and community businesses working together to end homelessness.
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