Homeless and sleepless
A FEDERAL court in California has thrown out a local ordinance aimed at arresting homeless people for sleeping or sitting on city streets, sidewalks, or alleys. The court decision is a rarity because it uses the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment as the basis for its ruling. But the overall message -- that homelessness itself is not a crime -- is an important judicial statement that other cities should heed closely.
This month the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, struck down the convictions of six homeless people under the ordinance, ruling that Los Angeles could not arrest people for ''the unavoidable act of sitting, lying, or sleeping" on city property when adequate shelter is not available. Citing a 1962 US Supreme Court decision regarding drug addiction, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote that ''the Eighth Amendment prohibits the state from punishing an involuntary act or condition if it is the unavoidable consequence of one's status or being."
Lawyers for the city argued that the ordinance targeted a particular conduct, not an individual or group. But who else sleeps on city sidewalks besides the homeless?
The court estimated that 10,000 to 12,000 homeless people are living around the area of east Los Angeles known as Skid Row, but the city maintains fewer than 10,000 shelter beds, single-room occupancy units, or other alternatives. ''So long as there are a greater number of homeless individuals in Los Angeles than the number of available beds," the ordinance cannot be enforced, it concluded.
The ruling does not mean cities are defenseless in their efforts to clear streets of vagrants or beggars. The court cited other cities, such as Tucson, Houston, and Seattle, which have similar but less sweeping ordinances that are limited to certain times, locations, or behaviors. Boston's ordinance against loitering applies only to obstructing or endangering others, and the prohibition against sleeping appears limited to public benches.
The judges made clear they were not imposing any particular solution on Los Angeles. Still, it seems obvious the city needs to rewrite its ordinance or expand emergency beds so that adequate shelter is available (a similar law in Orlando, Fla., was upheld because the court there found that the city's shelter had never reached capacity).
But the real solution is not to create more shelter beds to warehouse poor or troubled people. Homelessness was not always a widespread social problem; it grew as the consequence, sometimes unintended, of government actions. Government actions can undo the problem, as well: The creation of more low-income housing; treatment on demand for substance abuse and mental illness; a living wage for honest work.
