SCOTUS agrees to hear case on homelessness
Outside the realm of SORNA and SORR, homelessness is often debated over whether it is truly voluntary or involuntary. That is irrelevant in the world of SORNA and SORR where the debate centers on whether it is harder to convince someone to rent to you, or how to find a location that meets vague and often hidden obstacles.
In any of these examples, if one becomes homeless it can be further complicated by municipal ordinances banning or preventing homelessness, or camping, on public properties. Fines and additional citations can be seen as the ultimate form of doubling down on a difficult situation. According to a recent case in the 9th Circuit, can even be cruel and unusual punishment.
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has agreed to hear an appeal of that case. The 9th Circuit Federal Court ruling in City of Grants Pass v Johnson that issuing citations and fines for public camping was cruel and unusual punishment has left the Circuits with conflicting opinions and direction. The City has appealed to SCOTUS with a plea that consistency amongst the Circuits is needed.
Essential to the case are precedents that allow governments to punish behaviors, but not the status of the individual. The debate will hinge on SCOTUS’s weight provided to the status of being involuntarily homeless versus the act of committing homelessness on public property when that has been lawfully deemed to be a finable public nuisance.
Several cases in Florida and the 11th Circuit have ruled in the opposite manner to City of Grants Pass. In Joel v Orlando, the existence of a large shelter that had not experienced full occupancy, amongst other reasons, supported an opposite ruling.
While City of Grants Pass is not a case directly impacting being a registrant, registered people are often homeless, transient, indigent and if not, increasingly facing housing insecurities. The right win here could prevent additional challenges from being inflicted on a growing portion of this population.
So the Florida Legislative body has moved on to the next target of their banishment goal… the homeless https://m.flsenate.gov/session/bill/2024/1365/billtext/filed/pdf
Will the homeless agree to these rules? they’ll be forced to live in one part of the city and be threatened with arrest if they live anywhere else outside the confines of the homeless “prison yard” located very far away from everything hence, they cannot lower property values.
I see Florida is setting its self up for a residency restriction lawsuit for a potential plaintiffs if they force the homeless to certain areas. And with that hopefully that will allow us a plaintiff to challenge residency restrictions since research article after research article has shown that residency restrictions push homelessness onto registrants.
It says I may bring a lawsuit against any county that’s in violation of this ordinates What if all the homeless registrant people in the state of Florida want to attend an FAC meeting will they have available housing for all registrants who are homeless in that area because clearly we couldn’t go to the other shelters it’s no secret that many openly declare no registrants allowed here, so therefore we should be able to sue for lack of beds and lack of shelter space. Since they accommodate some of the homeless, they would have to accommodate all the homeless wouldn’t they ? These laws are nothing but a status crime that leads to a conduct charge.
Cities are going to be forced to build one of these camp into every county in order to get around not banishing homeless people there at all, so they’ll be saying you can live in this county but you have to live in this area however, our registrants gonna be able to live in that area because we’re hardly living in any other areas, maybe hopefully this will lead to us challenge the residency restrictions once and for all.
i’d like to point out that I have conducted TWO surveys, one in 2016 and one just last year, where I have asked individuals on the registry about homelessness.
In both surveys, responses to the question found that roughly 3% of Registered Persons were currntly homeless at the time they filled out the survey, with nearly twice that number having experiencing homelessness within the past 12 months. Specifically, the percentage of RPs in the 2016 survey and this survey shows a consistent pattern of homelessness (current homelessness rate, 3.28% in 2016 vs 3.45% in 2023).
By contrast, about 0.18% of the total US population is currently homeless, as noted in key findings of the Point-In-Time (PIT) count and Housing Inventory Count (HIC) conducted in January 2022. So the homeless rate just for those currently homeless is roughly 20 times the rate of the average American.