Bare necessities
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that anti-camping ordinances in an Oregon city that prohibited people experiencing homelessness from using blankets or pillows while sleeping violated those people’s Eighth Amendment rights.
The ruling affirms a 2018 appeals court decision called Martin v. Boise in which the court found that the city of Boise could not prosecute people for surviving in public spaces if they didn’t have alternative shelter options.
The city of Grants Pass, Oregon, passed a law prohibiting people from using bedding and other protection for the purposes of sleeping in public. The majority of the court sided with a lower court judge who ruled that the Grants Pass law violated a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by preventing people from “taking necessary minimal measures to keep themselves warm and dry while sleeping when there are no alternative forms of shelter available.”
The Ninth Circuit further clarified the Boise decision by addressing civil infractions that lead to criminal consequences for sleeping outside. Grants Pass attorneys argued that violating the ordinance was a civil infraction, not a criminal one. After two violations of the ordinance, a person could be excluded from a park. If they violated the exclusion order, they could be cited with criminal trespass.
The judges looked askance at this “circuitous approach.”
“The holding in Martin cannot be so easily evaded,” they wrote.
Advocates cheered the ruling, writing in a press release that homeless people surviving in Grants Pass could “breathe a sigh of relief.”
“Because this decision is rooted in settled law and sensible policy, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling should not be controversial: So long as people have no option but to live outside, they should not be punished for doing what all human beings must do to survive in that condition,” said Tristia Bauman, senior attorney for the National Homelessness Law Center, in the press release.
No place like home
The homeownership gap between white and BIPOC Washingtonians is wider today than it was in the 1960s when housing discrimination was legal, according to a new report issued by the state’s Department of Commerce.
The “Improving Homeownership Rates for Black, Indigenous and People of Color in Washington” report found that BIPOC Washingtonians would have to acquire 140,000 more houses in the state to “achieve parity with white homeownership on a percentage basis.”
Approximately 49 percent of BIPOC households own a home in Washington, compared to 68 percent of white households.
Home production has not kept up with demand in Washington state, pushing prices through the roof and preventing historically marginalized groups with less wealth from buying property. That, in turn, cuts them off from one avenue to build wealth.
Ashley Archibald was the editor of Real Change through July 2023, and is now a communication specialist for Purpose. Dignity. Action.
Read more of the Oct. 5-11, 2022 issue.