by James A. Bacon
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on a case that will determine if local governments can criminalize the homeless for sleeping in public, even when shelters are unavailable, reports The Virginian-Pilot. Citing National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) figures, the newspaper notes that there were nearly 6,000 homeless people in Virginia on any given night in 2018, including nearly 1,500 in Hampton Roads.
Unsurprisingly, the Pilot devotes much of its story to quoting advocates of compassion for the homeless.
“We cannot arrest and punish our way out of homelessness,” said Isabel McLain, director of policy and advocacy for the Virginia Housing Alliance. “We have to provide affordable housing and support services for people to be healthy and stable. Housing someone in a jail does nothing for improving their life and it cost the state a lot of money as well.”
“I think it’s a tragedy that we have gotten to the point in this country that we want to criminalize people who are unable to pay for housing,” said Antipas Harris, chief executive director of the Urban Renewal Center in Norfolk. “It is a travesty for humanity.”
Utter nonsense. It’s worth making two points regarding indiscriminate compassion for the homeless.
First, it would be disastrous for Virginia to follow the West Coast states down the slippery slope to disease-ridden, drug-infested, crime-ridden homeless encampments. Second, some homeless people are more deserving of sympathy and succor than others.
Broadly speaking, there are two main causes of homelessness. The first is the rising cost of housing. The other is the surging number of people who are mentally ill or substance addicted, many of whom resist taking medication or seeking treatment.
Rising rents make it increasingly difficult for poor people to find a place to live. Rents consume a disproportionate share of their income. Living paycheck to paycheck, they lack the resources to survive even a modest financial setback. Whether through imprudence or bad luck, thousands of Virginians are evicted every month. Some land in dumpy one-room motel rooms, others in homeless shelters. They don’t want to be homeless and, with help, most do get re-established.
The short-term solution is to support nonprofits that specialize in sheltering the temporarily homeless. The long-term solution is to provide more affordable housing options for the poor. In either case, the temporarily homeless do not contribute to social disorder in the way that San Francisco-style encampments do with their defecation, disease, open-air drug dealing, and criminality.
It is crucial to note: To say that there are 6,000 homeless people in Virginia is not to say that 6,000 people are living on the streets. According to the NAEH, whose figures admittedly are about six years out of date, roughly 5,000 of the homeless find refuge in shelters.
In 2018, about 1,000 Virginians were chronically homeless, mostly people afflicted by mental illness and substance addiction. If they are homeless because they choose to be… because they refuse to take their medications, or seek treatment, or simply prefer the unstructured life on the streets… a different moral calculus comes into play.
A compassionate society will provide these people with medication and treatment for substance abuse. But chronically homeless people who refuse treatment do not have a right to deprive the rights of others to public order. Local governments should be allowed the means to criminalize anti-social behavior. If some recalcitrants end up in jail, well… that what jails are for.
West Coast states combine unaffordable housing with a hyper-sensitivity to the rights of “marginalized” groups. The rights of the “oppressed” trump the rights of citizens who work, pay taxes, raise families, support charities and keep society functioning. Ironically, the indiscriminate-compassion model fails even the intended beneficiaries by giving rise to cesspools of misery, ill health, and elevated mortality.
It would be a travesty if the Supreme Court deprived Virginia localities the tools needed to keep the “San Fransicko” syndrome at bay.