SCOTUS ruling may leave unhoused Native Americans in the cold

A blanket on a freezing February morning in 2022, left on a sidewalk in Downtown Albuquerque. The high court’s ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson is its most significant ruling on the issue of homelessness in decades and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live. (Photo by Marisa Demarco / Source NM)

WASHINGTON – Housing advocates across Indian Country say Native Americans and Alaska Natives likely will feel the full weight of a June 28 Supreme Court ruling that has cleared the way for cities to enforce bans on unsheltered people sleeping outside in public places.

Native Americans experience homelessness at a disparate rate. Advocates say the housing crisis is a reflection of our society’s unwillingness to address systemic issues.

“It’s criminalizing poverty,” said attorney Caroline LaPorte, who is an immediate descendant of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. “We are much more comfortable with putting, and paying, for people to be incarcerated.”

LaPorte is the director of the STTARS Indigenous Safe Housing Resource Center, a project of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, and she is the board chairman for the StrongHearts Native Helpline . STTARS focuses on the intersection of housing insecurity and gender-based violence. A lawyer, she said the Supreme Court’s decision was enraging.

“Everybody belongs in our communities. They deserve to be safe, and it is our responsibility. We are required to make sure that those people have the things that they need,” LaPorte said.

The high court’s ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson is its most significant ruling on the issue of homelessness in decades and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live. Announced on June 28 in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the court found that outdoor sleeping bans don’t violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling overturned a California-based appeals court’s ruling that such bans amounted to cruel and unusual punishment when shelter space is lacking.

But according to LaPorte, Grants Pass, Oregon, had an unhoused population significantly outnumbering available shelter space, and existing spaces were inadequate to accommodate the varying needs of the community.

She said the few shelter spaces that did exist had barriers to entry, such as rules including religious requirements or dress codes. One available emergency space resembled a jail cell. “That’s not a space that a lot of people want to go, let alone Indigenous people,” she said.

Five Indigenous organizations, led by The StrongHearts Native Helpline, filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court. It reads, “The unsheltered homeless are some of the most vulnerable individuals in our country. To escape this status, they need access to resources and the support of their community. The ordinances have the intention and effect of removing unsheltered homeless persons from their communities that can be the most important source of support and assistance.”

Cities across the country have passed similar ordinances to Grants Pass. In Missoula, Montana, the City Council recently passed an ordinance creating buffer zones in specific public spaces, such as near parks or on sidewalks, where camping bans can be enforced. But in Missoula, this is not treated as a criminal infraction.

Minneapolis has a similar ban on outdoor camping, but the city’s director of regulatory services, Enrique Velazquez, said he has never issued a fine for violation of this ordinance. “It just creates additional barriers to access to economic opportunities,” he adds.

The Minneapolis ordinance differs from that in Grants Pass, as it is a part of the housing maintenance code , not the criminal code. According to Velazquez, “There’s nothing there that criminalizes people who are camping outdoors, that’s not something we do.”

In a statement shared with ICT , City of Minneapolis communications specialist Jessica Olstad said, “The Supreme Court’s decision has no impact on how the City of Minneapolis responds to people experiencing homelessness. The City does not ticket unsheltered individuals for violating the camping ordinance.”

In Rapid City, South Dakota, local authorities strictly enforce a ban on sleeping in certain public spaces. Ordinances prohibit camping in flood hazard zones, as well as in public spaces unless otherwise designated. In a text to ICT , Lakota spiritual leader Johnathan Old Horse said, “The police will destroy those camps and all their property without notice.”

In a statement provided by the city’s communications coordinator Darrell Shoemaker, Rapid City officials said, “City personnel notify illegal campers of violations, and give a grace period for the owners to remove their property to an alternate location.” The city denied allegations of police officers generally destroying or discarding personal property.

Old Horse, Oglala Lakota, is a pastor at Woyatan Lutheran Church in Rapid City. Woyatan means “to highly praise” in the Lakota language, and he has been a spiritual leader there for 14 years.

He said Rapid City has been a hostile place for unhoused Natives, as it has few adequate shelter options. The situation has only worsened as downtown undergoes gentrification. “[The Mayor’s] answer to the ‘Indian problem,’” he told ICT , “is to tell the tribes – especially Pine Ridge – to go here and get the people and put them on buses and take them home to the reservation,” referencing in part, remarks by former Mayor Steve Allender, shared at a 2020 press conference.

According to the statement from Rapid City, former Mayor Steve Allender focused on, “ways to assist Rapid City’s unsheltered population and encourage those who had arrived from outside the area to seek assistance, resources, and services closer to their home communities.” The statement says current mayor, Jason Salamun, “has not asked tribes to take their citizens back to the reservation.

Three years ago, Old Horse opened up his church to community members in need amid extremely cold temperatures.

“We got a shelter started within 72 hours, the coldest winters,” he said. Cheyenne River Sioux community leader Chris White Eagle reached out to Old Horse to collaborate the effort to care for those they lovingly call their unhoused relatives. “He’s like, ‘Brother, what do you think about opening up as a shelter and get the people off the street ‘till the weather warms up a bit?’” Old Horse recounts.

The Woyatan Lutheran church still operates as a day shelter, which they also call Pejuta Waste O’tipi , the Good Medicine Lodge. It continues to provide sanctuary for those in need, and Old Horse said relatives sheltering there care for the space.

“If it takes Woyatan as a church to not be a word- and sacrament-type place where there’s Sunday services, but that it’s a dedicated shelter for the people, we’re still walking in that sacred manner,” he said. “That’s more important than having a service one day a week, and then letting the people die and not have a safe place, because just a handful of people would want to go there on Sunday.”

In the last three years, they have also seen the successful repatriation of their lands and the 2021 opening of Wambli Ska Okolakiciye, the city’s first Native American community center serving families and teens.

Derrick Belgarde is the executive director of the Chief Seattle Club, which has provided support to urban Indians and others in the Seattle area since 1970. Belgarde is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and is also Chippewa-Cree from Rocky Boy, Montana.

He said Native Americans are disproportionately experiencing homelessness on the streets of Seattle, “which means a ruling like [Grants Pass] disproportionately puts more harm on us than any other group.”

What started as a small drop-in center, a place for unhoused relatives to find respite or a meal, has expanded to include two off-site shelter locations with a total of 51 shelter beds, as well as four permanent support housing complexes with a total of 339 units.

“It’s about creating sacred space,” Belgarde said. “In these urban cities, there’s no place for Natives to actually have a true sense of belonging.”

Caroline LaPorte said tribal governments and community advocates fighting for housing rights can’t let the Supreme Court’s ruling get in their way of caring for unsheltered relatives.

“They’re in their ivory tower, they have no understanding of what it means to be an individual who has these struggles, at all. And even if they previously had those experiences, they currently do not,” she said.

LaPorte insists the answer is shifting advocacy away from institutions like the courts and the legislature, and onto local governments and tribal councils.

“We have to start talking to our tribal council members about how our sovereignty and our status as sovereign nations gives us the ability to distinguish our way of living from the Western space in a way that is in line with our own cultural views,” she said.

“Everybody belongs in our communities, they deserve to be safe, and it is our responsibility – we are required to make sure that those people have the things that they need.”

The AP contributed to this reporting.