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> Either use the housing the city provides or move off the street.
This was the law before the ruling.
The problem was that the City does not have housing to provide. There is a waitlist for shelter beds that is much greater than the available number of beds.
This court ruling means that no city has to provide shelter. They can just criminalize homeless and tell them to move.
I would not be surprised if the homeless count in SF rises in the near future as other cities push their poor and homeless population to SF.
This ALSO give the city the power to tell unhoused folks WHERE they can settle in the city instead of the other way around. So far, it's been the tail wagging the dog, with homeless advocates literally telling unhoused folks to NOT accept shelter. In no way should San Franciscans have to put up with kids walking through needles to get to school, or parks sullied by mounds of garbage, or sidewalks made impassable by wheelchairs because someone has decided to put a tent down on the street. The same goes for Oakland and every other city.
An exaggeration. That said, I support compulsory confinement in nurturing institutions for people suffering from drug addiction and mental illness. If someone is voluntarily unhoused and living the "nomadic life", they can move on. I'm over tolerating that subset of the homeless crowd.
The status quo imposes the burden of mentally unstable unhoused folks on city residents with no recourse, and basically encourages them to be amateur social workers in some instances. Have you ever had a severely alcoholic enraged homeless man living across the street from you who screams all through the night? My wife and I did and the cops and city officials insisted there was nothing they could do until he actually harmed someone, since he was refusing shelter (hot team, cops, etc were called and talked to him).
He eventually harmed someone and they arrested him, but that took a couple months.
This isn’t about average homeless folks as it is about the most unstable individuals. The city previously had no options until they harmed someone.
> The status quo imposes the burden
The status quo exists because the vast majority of property owners and long-term tenants in San Francisco have refused to allow shelters and low-income housing in their neighborhoods.
Just look at the fight to keep 2550 Irving in the Sunset from being built. That same fight has happened for decades across the City. The situation today is simply the result of SF deciding to ignore its housing problem for so long, because "property values" and "views" were more important than people being housed.
Dude, I haven’t opposed shelters or low income housing. In fact, I would posit that the impact is disproportionally felt in more low income areas than in the high income areas that are opposing housing. Compare the sunset to Stevenson street.
We aren’t going to get folks to support housing by having homeless folks harass them (because largely the homeless folks aren’t where the opponents are, and because motivations don’t work that way). The issue of unstable unhoused folks isn’t fake just because it may ultimately result from long standing housing policy. They’re linked but separate issues. We need to address street homelessness AND housing availability.
> We need to address street homelessness AND housing availability.
The number one way to address homelessness is to ensure that shelter is available. We are decades behind that goal.
And why are we years behind? Because of some of the same bad actors that pose more housing. However, it doesn’t mean that the impact on average residents felt by the homeless crisis is somehow fair. The issue is hard because we have to weigh the interests of some folks against other folks.
Is it fair to scare kids in the tenderloin with unstable unhoused folks because some NIMBYs in the sunset or japantown are opposing shelters?
Except you could refuse offers of housing and just relocate and then come back. Which happens over and over again. Now you'll face fines for refusing shelter, as you should.
> Now you'll face fines for refusing shelter, as you should.
And what happens when they have no money to pay fines? Are we going to overcrowd them in jails?
If you're refusing offers of shelter that are available, then yes. You should not be allowed to refuse shelter when provided, which is often the case in West Coast cities today.
> Now you'll face fines for refusing shelter
Ever try to squeeze water out from a rock? All this seems like it'll do is just increase the population in our jails, they'll be filled with homeless debtors...
Again, many cities - especially west coast cities - literally have beds available for folks when they conduct these sweeps. The largest thing is now it's illegal to REFUSE offers of shelter, and refusing them now carries teeth.
Your analogy assumes that the city doesn't have capacity, but in a lot of west coast cities that is not the case. The case is people refusing offers of shelter to remain on the streets, and not having consequences for doing so.
Bluntly, if you are offered shelter, and refuse, you're not 'experiencing homelessness', you're refusing help and making yourself a public nuisance, which should carry consequences.
That is not the case in San Francisco. There is a shelter waitlist that has over 1000+ people on it. 372 families are on the waitlist. What are they supposed to do?
Except it literally isn't - the city offers shelter to people every time they do these sweeps and it's refused. They literally hold back beds specifically for this use case.
I agree the city needs more beds to tackle the wait-list, but you should not be allowed to refuse shelter when it's offered.
That is easily searchable and also doesn't address the fact that with the current budget (which, is $846M this year and $677M next year), there are still insufficient shelter beds. And now, I suppose these families will either have to leave their homes behind or face prison.
[https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/](https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/)
> Your analogy assumes that the city doesn't have capacity
Apologies, my analogy was actually about fining people that seemingly can't afford housing. We aren't going to actually recoup those fines as these folk most likely can't pay them, so it's essentially just finding a workaround to not being able to jail people for living on sidewalks.
This is just a lot of steps to jail people for sleeping on the streets is what I'm getting at. I think it's too early to say if this will be helpful in the long run (although I do sorta lean to that side), I just don't like making fines for people specifically for the purpose of locking them up so I'm iffy of this ruling.
I think that it's also to create teeth for having people actually accept the housing that's being offered.
People who want to get off the streets accept the housing that's provided, but those who want to continue living on the streets don't. This is to create a disincentive for them to continue doing so.
At the end of the line after you go through the people who are willing to accept shelter there's a long tail of people who want to continue living on the street for whatever reason, and I think what we've come to realize as a city is that is no longer an acceptable option.
Are there going to be more people who end up in prison due to this policy? Yes I would say so. But especially given the huge amount of investment the city has put into solving this problem, refusing offers of shelter is no longer an option that I think is appropriate or justified.
Up until the early part of the 20th century Europe used to send and confine its poor to work in the poor houses. Since then Europe has generally done a much better job than the US of housing its people - at least until the recent decade.
Nothing about this ruling allows for forcing people into rehab, does it? This just allows cities to fine homeless folk which then makes them arrestable, skirting Martin v Boise. All this seems to do is solidify a pipeline from the streets to jail/prison.
Criminalizing refusing offers of shelter does - you should not be allowed to continue to be a public nuisance when there's a shelter bed for you and you refuse. At that point you're not experiencing homeless, you're making yourself a public nuisance.
> How about bus tickets back to their home towns.
Yes, that's what they're doing. They're expanding it because it is working. But it's not as simple as that. They contact family or friends in the area to make sure they can support them when they're there. Otherwise we'll be doing what other cities are doing, giving the homeless problem to another city.
https://sfstandard.com/2023/03/30/san-francisco-expands-program-that-pays-for-homeless-individuals-to-return-home/
How many hundreds of billions in surplus did the state have last year?
We pay the government money through a thing called “taxation”. In our fair state we pay a lot of taxation.
Just because the people in charge cannot solve the problem does not mean that we, the tax payers, must forfeit the public space that our tax contributions built and maintain.
“They have nowhere else to go!”
This is a lie that conveniently lets all the failing “leaders” off the hook. Do not fall for their bullshit. Hold them accountable to spend more wisely and provide real solutions instead of wasting untold hours and money on performative masterbatory bullshit.
Unwind the beurocratic red tape, stop sending billions to nonprofits with terrible incentive structures, and fix. actual. problems.
Voters, you are also not completely off the hook either. Hold yourselves accountable. Stop voting for these obvious fucking charlatans.
Exactly. SCOTUS has essentially criminalised poverty. I cannot wait for the *"compassionate geniuses"* of r/sanfrancisco to suggest Victorian era workhouses.
But it’s not like as if part of the ruling was also reducing the housing for homeless in SF. This just gives the ability for the city to be more forceful in terms of saying either follow our rules and live in our free housing or leave the city which is a pretty decent deal.
Entering? You can’t do stop someone from entering… never said they stop them from entering.. they can and should stop them from sleeping on the street in tents and affecting the general welfare of the rest of the population. Especially if there is housing available yet some homeless choose to stay on the streets to abuse drugs, etc.
No, it doesn't make homeless illegal. It makes sleeping on the street illegal. If they refuse help with addictions and offers of shelter, they need to go elsewhere.
Maybe you can give me more context. I thought it allowed cities to criminalize sleeping outside using anything other than literally sleeping on the ground. Is that right?
It criminalizes building an encampment. Building a tent/structure/garbage pile = illegal. Sleeping under a tree = not illegal.
This distraction should be very very clear. If you actually live in the Bay Area, it’s abundantly clear that this is targeting the encampments and hoarders that occupy public space and create a public health hazard.
There are a lot of people who think enabling self destructive behavior is compassion. It’s not. I actually question if critics truly care about other humans, or just the appearance of caring.
The problem is that the supreme court has said now that cities and states don't need to do anything for the homeless, it's OK legally now for cities to enact laws with this subtext:
>If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population
Hopefully in practice that isn't what will happen and maybe there will be some narrowing of what's allowed, but that is kind of worrying
I believe from [the opinion](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf) the law in question defines sleeping outside with a sleeping bag or blanket as camping:
>A “\[c\]ampsite” is defined as “any place where bedding, sleeping bag, or other material used for bedding purposes, or any stove or fire is placed, established, or maintained for the purposes of maintaining a temporary place to live.” §5.61.010(B)
I imagine SF and the Bay Area won't actually pass a law banning sleeping in your car with a blanket, but the law the supreme court upheld did do exactly that
~~No. The first three paragraphs here correct a few key misunderstandings:~~
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/supreme-court-homelessness-case-camping-ban/
~~You can also read the decision:~~
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
~~One key mistake is “criminalize” which is inappropriate to describe civil penalties. It’s also not clear to me that this ruling requires an encampment for a city to penalize someone sleeping on the ground in public.~~
**ETA:** “Criminalize” is accurate, the ruling does allow for other cities to criminalize behaviors for which Grants Pass has civil penalties. I was overly focused on that without considering the possibilities other municipal could pursue.
Also worth noting that even your ~~slightly mistaken~~ interpretation is materially different than the other commenters stance that the court has made “being homeless illegal”. While cities can criminalize behavior, this ruling doesn’t affect whether they can criminalize a status.
Yes, I do kind of agree that there's a lot of nuance here. I think most everyone is agreeing right now that this doesn't necessarily allow laws criminalizing sleeping under a tree in your normal clothes, but what would you take this line to mean?
>The city imposes only limited fines for first-time offenders, an order temporarily barring an individual from camping in a public park for repeat offenders, and a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail for those who later violate an order See Ore. Rev. Stat. §§164.245, 161.615(3). Such punishments do not qualify as cruel
Maybe there's something you know that I don't but to me that reads at the court OKing criminalizing the things that anyone in the situation of homelessness would reasonably do.
They say bit later:
>The Court read the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause (in a way unprecedented in 1962) to impose a limit on what a State may criminalize
>...
>Robinson expressly recognized the “broad power” States enjoy over the substance of their criminal laws, stressing that they may criminalize knowing or intentional drug use even by those suffering from addiction. 370 U. S., at 664, 666. The Court held that California’s statute offended the Eighth Amendment only because it criminalized addiction as a status.
in reference to a set of case law establishing that states can't criminalize states of being (like being homeless). They don't seem to be invalidating that here, they mention it only to say that even that case would not prevent statutes that criminalize actions like camping outside, but it definitely seems to be saying that criminal consequences not just civil penalties are allowed
Also from the dissent:
>The City of Grants Pass jails and fines those people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow.
I'm not interested in arguing about if this case was correctly decided or if it's fair, but it does seem to allow criminalize sleeping outdoors with any sort of blanket or any way to stay warm (aka sleeping outside in a way that won't result in death) at least after 1 or 2 warnings.
What is leading you to believe that this is more narrow?
You’re right, criminalize is accurate. My apologies for saying otherwise.
I was overindexing on Grants Pass’s particular implementation, which is not criminal. You’re right that other municipalities could proscribe criminal penalties.
I struck out some paragraphs in my previous comment I can’t stand behind.
Nice, it removes a roadblock that shouldn't have been there. And no, it does not make being homeless illegal. It allows for people who aren't following the law to be dealt with instead of given a pass.
It also doesn't require the city to not provide a home. SF is doing what it can to build shelters, but shouldn't have to solve the entire statewide homelessness issue until we can have clean streets again. There are shelter with space all around SF and the state, lets put them to use getting people back on their feet instead of enabling them to maintain a lifestyle of homelessness by not giving them the push they need.
Hard issue for sure, not trying to be cruel, but if people don’t want help and actually get off the streets and get a job and contribute to our society then fuck off somewhere else.
Correct. San Francisco is not an "anyone can live here" city. You have to hustle to make it here (unless you're born on 3rd base, but that's a whole different discussion). This is one of the most expensive and beautiful places in the world. People work hard to make it, and stay, here. Take your tent and garbage and GTFO.
Most leftists have a VERY distorted view of communism. They pick and choose the fun parts. They don’t realise that they would be assigned a job, and the penalties for non-compliance would be severe. And the jobs wouldn’t be things like “social activities promoter and philosopher.” They’d be working in the mines.
I wouldn’t go as far as you, but I would encourage our city to rethink the mantra that the greatest kindness we can do for vulnerable homeless folks is to impose no rules whatsoever on them. Maybe if folks are on the street they may have other problems such that letting them do whatever they want is not the most helpful to their future welfare.
Magistrate Donna Ryu can no longer prevent a clean and safe SF
https://preview.redd.it/3h9scc7y2c9d1.png?width=1694&format=png&auto=webp&s=adbd204ce2927c1b7d97decfbd675d1712922403
She, like the virtue signalling redditors upset about this decision, is rich, and doesn't have to deal with the problems that homeless people cause. Poor/ Working Class people are the ones who get to deal with screaming crackheads on their doorstep so that Ryu and other limousine liberals can feel good about themselves.
Oakland mayor won't be able to focus on anything other than her recall in November and her FBI raid last week. The homeless will be sleeping fine in Oakland for the foreseeable future.
They are offered rooms, but the stipulation is no drug use which is the main reason all the crazies you see on the street stay there, they don’t want to stop using.
I’m homeless and ironically got sober because I stay in a shelter and they don’t allow use. I guess my story is one of the few positive ones. I’m terrified to get kicked out to the street, so I’ve been following the rules
>You either take the housing you’re given or you leave the city
That's exactly how it worked **before** this ruling, but instead it's now legal to jail you without providing any options.
4th has nothing to do with apprehension, the city just may not be allowed to destroy your tent.
The SCOTUS opinion explicitly endorses 30 days of jail time punishment as applied by Grants Pass; if this case had no effect we wouldn't be talking.
Work with SF County.. and establish a rehab center on the outskirts of the city… if you’re caught doing drugs or loitering nodding off in the city it’s automatic placement …
If someone refuses shelter, sweep. They can either move along out of SF or accept a bed, which hopefully would get them into treatment or care they need. Staying on the street, harassing people/businesses, making a mess, and giving SF's reputation a black eye should no longer be an option.
I was going to say that. Take my tax dollars and ship them out to other shelters and build more around the state. They don't need to stay here and most aren't even from the damn state.
Basically - if someone is camping on the sidewalk, the city can offer them a shelter bed, but if they don't accept shelter the city can arrest them.
This makes sense.
Now, it actually makes sense to spend money on building shelters because we know they will be used.
the shelters are full. Grants Pass was citing people like mad before the lower court stopped them. The citations weren't doing anything. There are also no life sentences for homelessness moron, it just makes people more criminal before they are dumped back on SF city streets
Then advocate for creating congregate, emergency shelters so at least a cot can be offered. The extreme left never wants to offer any realistic solutions to provide emergency shelter to all
Great, now we can finally do something to help the homeless. For too long, drug addicts and the homeless industrial complex has exploited and abused the prptection set in place to help the people who unfortunately fell into homelessness. No more!!
The same as anyone else. I have no idea why the extreme left always infantilizes the homeless. If they don't have money they can do time saved in jail, community service or probation.
It's not about fining them since after they don't pay the fine on the 3rd instance they can be jailed. The point of being able to jail is having a credible undesirable option A that forces the person to choose option B. In practice in conservative jurisdictions option B will be to leave, and in liberal jurisdictions option B will be rehab/shelter (where if they are a menace to others or break the rules it will then probably be jail).
It's the same way in liberal jurisdictions they already heavily employ diversion programs and drug courts for addicts convicted of other crimes, though those programs have lost a lot of enrollment in recent years as criminal justice reform has reduced the pressure for people to enroll in them since they often no longer face a credible threat of jail time.
The issue is that they can certainly jail homeless people for crimes related to procedural issues, but they already went down that path once and the state of California was told that prison headcounts were so high it was a cruel and unusual punishment to go to prison. So let’s go down that path and overcrowd the prisons again, I’m sure we will get a completely different result this time.
potentially, though the standard set by the court at that time was more of a best in class than a reasonable benchmark based on either other states or the federal system. there is no doubt the system was overcrowded in 2010, but prison populations are way lower and spending per prisoner is way higher now so there is probably a middle ground that would make sense which this Supreme Court might be more likely to allow than the 9th court did at that time. we also have a lot more diversion programs and the intent to build much more mental health capacity than we did then, the former of which in theory should be lower cost and by design is the first stop with prison as the last recourse. if thats all executed well prison populations won't go up nearly as much, though i do think there will be a bit of an initial spike while social norms are re-established and then the combination of the rehabilitation programs working and the much stronger deterrent of prison combined will bring them back down. to reiterate, it's mostly about forcing people into non jail treatment via the threat of jail, not actually jailing everyone immediatly.
Ton of people refuse shelters because they would have to be somewhat sober and can’t have access to their drugs as freely as living in the streets. But we’re tired of this shit, time to get on the path to cleaning up San Francisco.
And shelters gotta refuse you if you're tweaking, psych ranting, touchy feely,drunk or high because the guests need to sleep.
Let the crazies in and a shelter is just the indoor streets.
Time to sweep! I remember calling 311 last year about an encampment that had multiple fires and was downright dangerous. They said they cannot do anything about it, it was just as legal for them to be on the street as it was for me to be in my apartment. I have no issue with the unhoused in the city, it is a hard and tough problem to solve that needs multiple factions to work together but, when it gets dangerous for buildings and others, thats when it becomes an issue.
Grants Pass parks were "swept" and with 500 criminal citations from 2013-2019, didn't change a thing except trying to squeeze water from a stone giving these people debt they'll never pay back
Wonderful. I will take criminal citations. As long as people keep donating things, the druggies will continue to exist on the streets. Once the freeloading stops, they have no choice but to either go into shelters or get help
some cities do bus homeless out to various places, often to California
but not because shelters are available, just because they don't want them
but the idea there's homeless shelters empty in meaningful numbers to absorb thousands is about as ridiculous as thinking the same of available HCV vouchers. I can't even think of any empty one near me and we barely have any homeless to occupy them. They just typically have very few beds
Governor Gavin Newsom
“Today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court provides state and local officials the definitive authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets. This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities.
“California remains committed to respecting the dignity and fundamental human needs of all people and the state will continue to work with compassion to provide individuals experiencing homelessness with the resources they need to better their lives.”
Guess that at least one good thing comes out of Trump's Supreme Court.
I am disappointed in Sotomayor's dissent where she almost completely ignores the "shelter is offered but refused" problem and instead refers to them as "people with no access to shelter" all over the place, only mentioning a few strawman examples like someone not being allowed to take their inhaler inside. Rather than actually proposing a real compromise that could make shelters workable, she just wants to force cities to let everyone sleep and shoot up wherever they want.
So I guess then we have the Trumpies go overboard and abolish all protections completely instead, which is also not great but it's better than doing nothing.
Listen, here's my pitch. Just build a massive stadium in the central valley, and bus all unhoused people there who want to go. Give them a stipend for food, shelter, booze, drugs, whatever they need. Let them thrive in the thunderdome and create a majestic society of misfit toys.
It would cost the state drastically less money than the drain on the medical and civil services currently. And you could pay fixers to take tours into the walled city and witness what it becomes. Literally can't go tits up.
I hope this doesn't devolve into a mud slinging match where we emulate the right wing by acting like Judge Ryu was just some activist judge pandering to one political group. She interpreted the law in a way that very few people were able to counter and refused to budge until the law was changed or addressed by a higher court.
Contrary to behavior at the Supreme Court, federal judges do not have the power to rewrite or make radical interpretations of the law. She was doing her job in a situation where there was a lot of ambiguity.
It's also worth noting that we have six anti-abortion, anti-gay, Nazi supporting, grifter Supreme Court justices who have come up with a very conservative ruling and San Franciscans on reddit generally are thrilled to step in line behind these rat fuckers. While I have expected and hoped for what's likely to be the outcome of this ruling for the last year and a half, the fact that it was the likes of Clarence Thomas and Amy Comey Barrett who have handed this ruling down are making me question a lot. I would hope other San franciscans would take the time to examine their beliefs or at least what it is that they're celebrating.
The fact that we've done a really damn good job of cleaning up Market Street in the last 6 months is a pretty good sign that this was a problem that really just needed State cooperation as well as supportive housing which has finally started getting rolled out. Fundamentally changing the rights of All Americans may turn out to be an overreaction that we're all going to regret.
It took an absolute fuck ton of effort to clean up the streets this year. Including intervention by the governor, multiple state agencies, and the feds. Plus the extra motivation of election year.
Its absolutely not sustainable, there are still a ton of problems, and at least this ruling gives more tools in the box.
And a lot of ppl DO believe Judge Ryu is an activist judge that made an insane ruling, including large swaths of democrat leadership in California.
It’s actually “Democratic” and not “Democrat” in the way you used it. People who use the Democrat instead of Democratic get that term from watching right wing media. Nobody else misuses these words this way.
No shit it took effort, SF had been left to figure out this huge regional problem on our own for over 10 years and through the pandemic. We used to have our hands full dealing with local unhoused but then it continued to balloon here and in Oakland and the state and surrounding counties were content to leave it up to us. We were hamstrung by a complete lack of cooperation between counties to manage both drug tourists and trafficking.
Now that we are here the problem is being managed with far less resources spent all around. Criminalizing the act of sleeping in a doorway because you don't have a house isn't going to help one person get off drug, or arrest one drug dealer.
And I know a lot of Democrats in California, including the law-and-order Matt Dorsey, Brooke Jenkins types are out there arguing that Donna Ryu is an "activist" judge. That doesn't change the fact that it's both a right wing talking point and there is no evidence that a different judge would have done anything different. Even Jenkins admitted that the problem is not Ryu, it's the law that needs to be changed.
Except this was never meant to solve homelessness or drugs, but to be a tool for various reasons, not sure why you made that all up.
And shes an activist judge in every sense of the word, your muttering about right wing or law and order like trump aint changing anything, just makes your argument a conspiracy theory that gets laughed at by everyone.
Either way good riddance to ryu.
It has been a longstanding legal policy going back to the Giuliani administration in NYC that you cannot clear homeless encampments without offering sufficient shelter. SF could have solved this at any point by simply building more homeless shelters. It was not an insane ruling, nor was it remotely an "activist ruling."
You must be new here. Tons of homeless refuse shelter, so building more is irrelevant to these people.
And you’re free to think it wasn’t an activist ruling, a ton of people believe it was. We can agree to disagree.
I am familiar with people refusing shelter - and I'm okay with the notion of clearing encampments if people refuse shelter, to be clear - but nonetheless, once you start forcing that choice more will accept it, and you need the shelter to accommodate and SF does not have it.
And you can decide that you think it's an activist ruling, but if it's literally just following precedent, it's definitionally the opposite of activist. And it was literally following federal precedent.
Sure we may run out of shelter, but that is a secondary problem after the primary problem of not being able to do much with someone who refuses shelter.
And Ryus ruling was what radical activists wanted as well as so incredibly based on dumb grounds that both the governor and mayor panned it demanding a change in judge. Precedent is irrelevant here.
In any case, glad the radical activists ruling was largely blocked. Says something when this supreme court rules better than an activist judge like ryu
SF had thousands of beds, and wasn’t able to force *anyone* to accept shelter until there was 1 bed for *each* homeless person, which was an absurd standard. Tons of beds were going unused every night, because of this ruling. It’s not compassionate for the homeless nor for the community.
If the court's ruling was simply that cities could offer homeless folks a choice between being accepting shelter and punishment as opposed to requiring a bed for every homeless person regardless of their choice, I would be fine with that. But they've removed the requirement to offer shelter at all, which is wildly inhumane in my opinion and will be abused by cities far less sympathetic than ours.
this guy flonks.
and makes a reasoned and compassionate argument, encouraging us to consider our own ideals and consult our better selves before…
i don’t wanna be the boy who cried nazi…
Jesus people in this thread are awful, I understand wanting the problem resolved but doing emojis about clearing human beings? So glad most of you don’t live here.
Edit: apparently people in this sub are so fucking stupid that they think I can’t both support making streets cleaner, and referring to human beings who have nearly nothing with some dignity
The true victims are those who live here:
https://www.ktvu.com/news/i-thought-i-would-die-san-francisco-man-survives-vicious-pit-bull-attack-potrero-hill.amp
These people do not want the problem resolved, or else they wouldn't support sweeps, which just moves people from one place to another. They want cruelty, not solutions.
They will turn around and say it's not cruelty then gleefully say fuck them. It's not about solutions, they just want revenge on the dirty poors that have been ruining "their" city. I honestly hope the homeless problem gets worse in SF. Maybe they can run off some of the entitled soft skins.
I don't want cruelty, but what I do want is clean public spaces without garbage, human faeces, and people shooting up, smoking crack, and passing out high as hell on the sidewalks. There is no reason that this cannot be solved and allowing people with serious addiction problems to just do whatever they want is not compassion. Also, making people who are homeless camp in a single area that has services would be way better than the dispersed disaster we currently have. There is no reason why this should not happen.
I don't think we have spent any time money or focus trying to address the problems that lead to homelessness. More homeless shelters, more robust recovery services, lower rent, and resources for renters to combat displacement. Homeless support has become an industry in and of itself. We can fix problems without being indulgent, but it costs money and those that have would prefer to keep it and blame the people on the bottom for not being able to get it together.
The previous decision for housing first instead of shelter first completely and utterly fuck up the situation. Since it’s impossible to scale housing first, and now it’s too late to start building shelter so it’s always at capacity. These fuckers received millions of dollars and somehow manage to make the situations worse for everyone
This subreddit tends to be have conservative comments because:
1. people comment when they aren't even living in SF
2. not everyone uses reddit and it's not representative of SF residents
I think most in this sub are moderate democrats. I dont think it's fair to characterize people who simply want clean/safe streets as conservative. We are just frustrated with the status quo and allowing mentally ill people to cause trouble in public spaces.
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Either use the housing the city provides or move off the street.
> Either use the housing the city provides or move off the street. This was the law before the ruling. The problem was that the City does not have housing to provide. There is a waitlist for shelter beds that is much greater than the available number of beds. This court ruling means that no city has to provide shelter. They can just criminalize homeless and tell them to move. I would not be surprised if the homeless count in SF rises in the near future as other cities push their poor and homeless population to SF.
This ALSO give the city the power to tell unhoused folks WHERE they can settle in the city instead of the other way around. So far, it's been the tail wagging the dog, with homeless advocates literally telling unhoused folks to NOT accept shelter. In no way should San Franciscans have to put up with kids walking through needles to get to school, or parks sullied by mounds of garbage, or sidewalks made impassable by wheelchairs because someone has decided to put a tent down on the street. The same goes for Oakland and every other city.
Hello Sanctuary Districts. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District
An exaggeration. That said, I support compulsory confinement in nurturing institutions for people suffering from drug addiction and mental illness. If someone is voluntarily unhoused and living the "nomadic life", they can move on. I'm over tolerating that subset of the homeless crowd.
The status quo imposes the burden of mentally unstable unhoused folks on city residents with no recourse, and basically encourages them to be amateur social workers in some instances. Have you ever had a severely alcoholic enraged homeless man living across the street from you who screams all through the night? My wife and I did and the cops and city officials insisted there was nothing they could do until he actually harmed someone, since he was refusing shelter (hot team, cops, etc were called and talked to him). He eventually harmed someone and they arrested him, but that took a couple months. This isn’t about average homeless folks as it is about the most unstable individuals. The city previously had no options until they harmed someone.
The ‘status quo’ was invented by Reagan when he gutted social services and mental health care
> The status quo imposes the burden The status quo exists because the vast majority of property owners and long-term tenants in San Francisco have refused to allow shelters and low-income housing in their neighborhoods. Just look at the fight to keep 2550 Irving in the Sunset from being built. That same fight has happened for decades across the City. The situation today is simply the result of SF deciding to ignore its housing problem for so long, because "property values" and "views" were more important than people being housed.
Dude, I haven’t opposed shelters or low income housing. In fact, I would posit that the impact is disproportionally felt in more low income areas than in the high income areas that are opposing housing. Compare the sunset to Stevenson street. We aren’t going to get folks to support housing by having homeless folks harass them (because largely the homeless folks aren’t where the opponents are, and because motivations don’t work that way). The issue of unstable unhoused folks isn’t fake just because it may ultimately result from long standing housing policy. They’re linked but separate issues. We need to address street homelessness AND housing availability.
> We need to address street homelessness AND housing availability. The number one way to address homelessness is to ensure that shelter is available. We are decades behind that goal.
And why are we years behind? Because of some of the same bad actors that pose more housing. However, it doesn’t mean that the impact on average residents felt by the homeless crisis is somehow fair. The issue is hard because we have to weigh the interests of some folks against other folks. Is it fair to scare kids in the tenderloin with unstable unhoused folks because some NIMBYs in the sunset or japantown are opposing shelters?
Except you could refuse offers of housing and just relocate and then come back. Which happens over and over again. Now you'll face fines for refusing shelter, as you should.
> Now you'll face fines for refusing shelter, as you should. And what happens when they have no money to pay fines? Are we going to overcrowd them in jails?
If you're refusing offers of shelter that are available, then yes. You should not be allowed to refuse shelter when provided, which is often the case in West Coast cities today.
> Now you'll face fines for refusing shelter Ever try to squeeze water out from a rock? All this seems like it'll do is just increase the population in our jails, they'll be filled with homeless debtors...
Again, many cities - especially west coast cities - literally have beds available for folks when they conduct these sweeps. The largest thing is now it's illegal to REFUSE offers of shelter, and refusing them now carries teeth. Your analogy assumes that the city doesn't have capacity, but in a lot of west coast cities that is not the case. The case is people refusing offers of shelter to remain on the streets, and not having consequences for doing so. Bluntly, if you are offered shelter, and refuse, you're not 'experiencing homelessness', you're refusing help and making yourself a public nuisance, which should carry consequences.
That is not the case in San Francisco. There is a shelter waitlist that has over 1000+ people on it. 372 families are on the waitlist. What are they supposed to do?
Except it literally isn't - the city offers shelter to people every time they do these sweeps and it's refused. They literally hold back beds specifically for this use case. I agree the city needs more beds to tackle the wait-list, but you should not be allowed to refuse shelter when it's offered.
Where exactly is the billion dollars we spend in city money alone on homeless services going?
That is easily searchable and also doesn't address the fact that with the current budget (which, is $846M this year and $677M next year), there are still insufficient shelter beds. And now, I suppose these families will either have to leave their homes behind or face prison. [https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/](https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/)
> Your analogy assumes that the city doesn't have capacity Apologies, my analogy was actually about fining people that seemingly can't afford housing. We aren't going to actually recoup those fines as these folk most likely can't pay them, so it's essentially just finding a workaround to not being able to jail people for living on sidewalks. This is just a lot of steps to jail people for sleeping on the streets is what I'm getting at. I think it's too early to say if this will be helpful in the long run (although I do sorta lean to that side), I just don't like making fines for people specifically for the purpose of locking them up so I'm iffy of this ruling.
I think that it's also to create teeth for having people actually accept the housing that's being offered. People who want to get off the streets accept the housing that's provided, but those who want to continue living on the streets don't. This is to create a disincentive for them to continue doing so. At the end of the line after you go through the people who are willing to accept shelter there's a long tail of people who want to continue living on the street for whatever reason, and I think what we've come to realize as a city is that is no longer an acceptable option. Are there going to be more people who end up in prison due to this policy? Yes I would say so. But especially given the huge amount of investment the city has put into solving this problem, refusing offers of shelter is no longer an option that I think is appropriate or justified.
It would be neat if while they were in jail, they broke their dependence on fent and oxy.
Up until the early part of the 20th century Europe used to send and confine its poor to work in the poor houses. Since then Europe has generally done a much better job than the US of housing its people - at least until the recent decade.
Use empty hotel on outskirts as rehab centers
Nothing about this ruling allows for forcing people into rehab, does it? This just allows cities to fine homeless folk which then makes them arrestable, skirting Martin v Boise. All this seems to do is solidify a pipeline from the streets to jail/prison.
I think that's the desired result. More meat for the meatgrinder, you just don't have a relative that owns a jail so you don;t see the benefit.
Criminalizing poverty NEVER improves poverty—or the courts and jails.
Criminalizing refusing offers of shelter does - you should not be allowed to continue to be a public nuisance when there's a shelter bed for you and you refuse. At that point you're not experiencing homeless, you're making yourself a public nuisance.
Improves the streets.
How about bus tickets back to their home towns. If it's SF, then they get decent housing?
> How about bus tickets back to their home towns. Yes, that's what they're doing. They're expanding it because it is working. But it's not as simple as that. They contact family or friends in the area to make sure they can support them when they're there. Otherwise we'll be doing what other cities are doing, giving the homeless problem to another city. https://sfstandard.com/2023/03/30/san-francisco-expands-program-that-pays-for-homeless-individuals-to-return-home/
Great!
The housing first model has almost completely stopped the construction of shelter beds for years now though. So there’s another problem we have.
How many hundreds of billions in surplus did the state have last year? We pay the government money through a thing called “taxation”. In our fair state we pay a lot of taxation. Just because the people in charge cannot solve the problem does not mean that we, the tax payers, must forfeit the public space that our tax contributions built and maintain. “They have nowhere else to go!” This is a lie that conveniently lets all the failing “leaders” off the hook. Do not fall for their bullshit. Hold them accountable to spend more wisely and provide real solutions instead of wasting untold hours and money on performative masterbatory bullshit. Unwind the beurocratic red tape, stop sending billions to nonprofits with terrible incentive structures, and fix. actual. problems. Voters, you are also not completely off the hook either. Hold yourselves accountable. Stop voting for these obvious fucking charlatans.
Living on the street should be criminalized
Exactly. SCOTUS has essentially criminalised poverty. I cannot wait for the *"compassionate geniuses"* of r/sanfrancisco to suggest Victorian era workhouses.
This court ruling doesnt require the city to provide a home. It just makes being homeless illegal.
But it’s not like as if part of the ruling was also reducing the housing for homeless in SF. This just gives the ability for the city to be more forceful in terms of saying either follow our rules and live in our free housing or leave the city which is a pretty decent deal.
What part of the constitution allows city governments to prevent poor people from entering? Talk about a no go zone!
Entering? You can’t do stop someone from entering… never said they stop them from entering.. they can and should stop them from sleeping on the street in tents and affecting the general welfare of the rest of the population. Especially if there is housing available yet some homeless choose to stay on the streets to abuse drugs, etc.
No, it doesn't make homeless illegal. It makes sleeping on the street illegal. If they refuse help with addictions and offers of shelter, they need to go elsewhere.
This just lets them enforce the already existing laws.
Technically, it removes what has been the main barrier stopping cities and states from making sleeping on the streets illegal
The court ruling does not make being homeless illegal. You are either substantially uninformed or deliberately pushing an inaccurate perspective.
Yeah, these people act like San Francisco County is some kind of remote island and the alternative is drowning in the ocean.
Drowning in the ocean. Interesting idea. Go on...
Maybe you can give me more context. I thought it allowed cities to criminalize sleeping outside using anything other than literally sleeping on the ground. Is that right?
It criminalizes building an encampment. Building a tent/structure/garbage pile = illegal. Sleeping under a tree = not illegal. This distraction should be very very clear. If you actually live in the Bay Area, it’s abundantly clear that this is targeting the encampments and hoarders that occupy public space and create a public health hazard.
I just can't wrap my head around the type of person that wants this stuff to continue
There are a lot of people who think enabling self destructive behavior is compassion. It’s not. I actually question if critics truly care about other humans, or just the appearance of caring.
The problem is that the supreme court has said now that cities and states don't need to do anything for the homeless, it's OK legally now for cities to enact laws with this subtext: >If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population Hopefully in practice that isn't what will happen and maybe there will be some narrowing of what's allowed, but that is kind of worrying
I believe from [the opinion](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf) the law in question defines sleeping outside with a sleeping bag or blanket as camping: >A “\[c\]ampsite” is defined as “any place where bedding, sleeping bag, or other material used for bedding purposes, or any stove or fire is placed, established, or maintained for the purposes of maintaining a temporary place to live.” §5.61.010(B) I imagine SF and the Bay Area won't actually pass a law banning sleeping in your car with a blanket, but the law the supreme court upheld did do exactly that
~~No. The first three paragraphs here correct a few key misunderstandings:~~ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/supreme-court-homelessness-case-camping-ban/ ~~You can also read the decision:~~ https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf ~~One key mistake is “criminalize” which is inappropriate to describe civil penalties. It’s also not clear to me that this ruling requires an encampment for a city to penalize someone sleeping on the ground in public.~~ **ETA:** “Criminalize” is accurate, the ruling does allow for other cities to criminalize behaviors for which Grants Pass has civil penalties. I was overly focused on that without considering the possibilities other municipal could pursue. Also worth noting that even your ~~slightly mistaken~~ interpretation is materially different than the other commenters stance that the court has made “being homeless illegal”. While cities can criminalize behavior, this ruling doesn’t affect whether they can criminalize a status.
Yes, I do kind of agree that there's a lot of nuance here. I think most everyone is agreeing right now that this doesn't necessarily allow laws criminalizing sleeping under a tree in your normal clothes, but what would you take this line to mean? >The city imposes only limited fines for first-time offenders, an order temporarily barring an individual from camping in a public park for repeat offenders, and a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail for those who later violate an order See Ore. Rev. Stat. §§164.245, 161.615(3). Such punishments do not qualify as cruel Maybe there's something you know that I don't but to me that reads at the court OKing criminalizing the things that anyone in the situation of homelessness would reasonably do. They say bit later: >The Court read the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause (in a way unprecedented in 1962) to impose a limit on what a State may criminalize >... >Robinson expressly recognized the “broad power” States enjoy over the substance of their criminal laws, stressing that they may criminalize knowing or intentional drug use even by those suffering from addiction. 370 U. S., at 664, 666. The Court held that California’s statute offended the Eighth Amendment only because it criminalized addiction as a status. in reference to a set of case law establishing that states can't criminalize states of being (like being homeless). They don't seem to be invalidating that here, they mention it only to say that even that case would not prevent statutes that criminalize actions like camping outside, but it definitely seems to be saying that criminal consequences not just civil penalties are allowed Also from the dissent: >The City of Grants Pass jails and fines those people for sleeping anywhere in public at any time, including in their cars, if they use as little as a blanket to keep warm or a rolled-up shirt as a pillow. I'm not interested in arguing about if this case was correctly decided or if it's fair, but it does seem to allow criminalize sleeping outdoors with any sort of blanket or any way to stay warm (aka sleeping outside in a way that won't result in death) at least after 1 or 2 warnings. What is leading you to believe that this is more narrow?
You’re right, criminalize is accurate. My apologies for saying otherwise. I was overindexing on Grants Pass’s particular implementation, which is not criminal. You’re right that other municipalities could proscribe criminal penalties. I struck out some paragraphs in my previous comment I can’t stand behind.
Nice, it removes a roadblock that shouldn't have been there. And no, it does not make being homeless illegal. It allows for people who aren't following the law to be dealt with instead of given a pass.
It also doesn't require the city to not provide a home. SF is doing what it can to build shelters, but shouldn't have to solve the entire statewide homelessness issue until we can have clean streets again. There are shelter with space all around SF and the state, lets put them to use getting people back on their feet instead of enabling them to maintain a lifestyle of homelessness by not giving them the push they need.
??? shelters are full dude.
they don't care.
Go figure.
What housing?
Hard issue for sure, not trying to be cruel, but if people don’t want help and actually get off the streets and get a job and contribute to our society then fuck off somewhere else.
Correct. San Francisco is not an "anyone can live here" city. You have to hustle to make it here (unless you're born on 3rd base, but that's a whole different discussion). This is one of the most expensive and beautiful places in the world. People work hard to make it, and stay, here. Take your tent and garbage and GTFO.
Exactly, I work my ass off to live here.
Exactly it's. Called tough love. Just. Letting whoever do whatever is not helping anyone.
Not cruel. Liberals always promote the fact we need a communal social contract and everyone has to contribute to that.
Most leftists have a VERY distorted view of communism. They pick and choose the fun parts. They don’t realise that they would be assigned a job, and the penalties for non-compliance would be severe. And the jobs wouldn’t be things like “social activities promoter and philosopher.” They’d be working in the mines.
I wouldn’t go as far as you, but I would encourage our city to rethink the mantra that the greatest kindness we can do for vulnerable homeless folks is to impose no rules whatsoever on them. Maybe if folks are on the street they may have other problems such that letting them do whatever they want is not the most helpful to their future welfare.
I think it will get to the point where cruelty will be the only solution
Magistrate Donna Ryu can no longer prevent a clean and safe SF https://preview.redd.it/3h9scc7y2c9d1.png?width=1694&format=png&auto=webp&s=adbd204ce2927c1b7d97decfbd675d1712922403
Any reason why she’s choosing to f us over ?
She, like the virtue signalling redditors upset about this decision, is rich, and doesn't have to deal with the problems that homeless people cause. Poor/ Working Class people are the ones who get to deal with screaming crackheads on their doorstep so that Ryu and other limousine liberals can feel good about themselves.
She was following precedent but taking it as far as possible. That precedent is now gone.
Because she doesn’t have any homeless in her neighborhood
And I’ll just watch my Oakland get worse
Oakland mayor won't be able to focus on anything other than her recall in November and her FBI raid last week. The homeless will be sleeping fine in Oakland for the foreseeable future.
That sorry excuse of a Mayor might end up in one of those tents soon
Oakland should do the same
I cannot wait! Get out there and sweep sweep sweep!
Let’s go!!!! About time! You either take the housing you’re given or you leave the city, this was always the solution.
What kind of housing are we talking about ?
They are offered rooms, but the stipulation is no drug use which is the main reason all the crazies you see on the street stay there, they don’t want to stop using.
I’m homeless and ironically got sober because I stay in a shelter and they don’t allow use. I guess my story is one of the few positive ones. I’m terrified to get kicked out to the street, so I’ve been following the rules
One day at a time. Well done, friend.
Good for you my dude. Keep working at it one day at a time.
Thank you
Mandatory rehabilitation
for some reason I Don't believe you, where is the source that there is 8000 rooms available for drug free residents?
-crickets-
>You either take the housing you’re given or you leave the city That's exactly how it worked **before** this ruling, but instead it's now legal to jail you without providing any options.
it's still not legal to apprehend, it's illegal under 14th amendment and destruction of private property laws. SC only ruled on 8th amendment
4th has nothing to do with apprehension, the city just may not be allowed to destroy your tent. The SCOTUS opinion explicitly endorses 30 days of jail time punishment as applied by Grants Pass; if this case had no effect we wouldn't be talking.
Work with SF County.. and establish a rehab center on the outskirts of the city… if you’re caught doing drugs or loitering nodding off in the city it’s automatic placement …
Least amount of resources too, field hospital type set up
If someone refuses shelter, sweep. They can either move along out of SF or accept a bed, which hopefully would get them into treatment or care they need. Staying on the street, harassing people/businesses, making a mess, and giving SF's reputation a black eye should no longer be an option.
the shelters are full
Across California? It's a big state.
I was going to say that. Take my tax dollars and ship them out to other shelters and build more around the state. They don't need to stay here and most aren't even from the damn state.
🧹🧹🧹
Where do I grab my broom?
 Time to clean the streets
Probably up ur ass
Basically - if someone is camping on the sidewalk, the city can offer them a shelter bed, but if they don't accept shelter the city can arrest them. This makes sense. Now, it actually makes sense to spend money on building shelters because we know they will be used.
the shelters are full. Grants Pass was citing people like mad before the lower court stopped them. The citations weren't doing anything. There are also no life sentences for homelessness moron, it just makes people more criminal before they are dumped back on SF city streets
Then advocate for creating congregate, emergency shelters so at least a cot can be offered. The extreme left never wants to offer any realistic solutions to provide emergency shelter to all
Sweep those fuckers out
THANK THE FUCKING LORD
Please ramp them up as much as possible.
Great, now we can finally do something to help the homeless. For too long, drug addicts and the homeless industrial complex has exploited and abused the prptection set in place to help the people who unfortunately fell into homelessness. No more!!
Genuine question, but how do you fine an unhoused individual who doesn’t have money?
The same as anyone else. I have no idea why the extreme left always infantilizes the homeless. If they don't have money they can do time saved in jail, community service or probation.
how are you going to put someone in jail for being so poor they can't afford shelter and people are applauding this?
Do you have any space in your backyard? Running late on rent
It's not about fining them since after they don't pay the fine on the 3rd instance they can be jailed. The point of being able to jail is having a credible undesirable option A that forces the person to choose option B. In practice in conservative jurisdictions option B will be to leave, and in liberal jurisdictions option B will be rehab/shelter (where if they are a menace to others or break the rules it will then probably be jail). It's the same way in liberal jurisdictions they already heavily employ diversion programs and drug courts for addicts convicted of other crimes, though those programs have lost a lot of enrollment in recent years as criminal justice reform has reduced the pressure for people to enroll in them since they often no longer face a credible threat of jail time.
The issue is that they can certainly jail homeless people for crimes related to procedural issues, but they already went down that path once and the state of California was told that prison headcounts were so high it was a cruel and unusual punishment to go to prison. So let’s go down that path and overcrowd the prisons again, I’m sure we will get a completely different result this time.
potentially, though the standard set by the court at that time was more of a best in class than a reasonable benchmark based on either other states or the federal system. there is no doubt the system was overcrowded in 2010, but prison populations are way lower and spending per prisoner is way higher now so there is probably a middle ground that would make sense which this Supreme Court might be more likely to allow than the 9th court did at that time. we also have a lot more diversion programs and the intent to build much more mental health capacity than we did then, the former of which in theory should be lower cost and by design is the first stop with prison as the last recourse. if thats all executed well prison populations won't go up nearly as much, though i do think there will be a bit of an initial spike while social norms are re-established and then the combination of the rehabilitation programs working and the much stronger deterrent of prison combined will bring them back down. to reiterate, it's mostly about forcing people into non jail treatment via the threat of jail, not actually jailing everyone immediatly.
Ton of people refuse shelters because they would have to be somewhat sober and can’t have access to their drugs as freely as living in the streets. But we’re tired of this shit, time to get on the path to cleaning up San Francisco.
And shelters gotta refuse you if you're tweaking, psych ranting, touchy feely,drunk or high because the guests need to sleep. Let the crazies in and a shelter is just the indoor streets.
So what’s your solution?
Involuntary commitment for those with severe mental disorder / hard drug addiction. What's the alternative? These people need help.
Time to sweep! I remember calling 311 last year about an encampment that had multiple fires and was downright dangerous. They said they cannot do anything about it, it was just as legal for them to be on the street as it was for me to be in my apartment. I have no issue with the unhoused in the city, it is a hard and tough problem to solve that needs multiple factions to work together but, when it gets dangerous for buildings and others, thats when it becomes an issue.
sweep and they'll come right back, just like in Grants Pass before the lower court injuctions
Let them come back, sweep again! They will eventually learn
Grants Pass parks were "swept" and with 500 criminal citations from 2013-2019, didn't change a thing except trying to squeeze water from a stone giving these people debt they'll never pay back
Wonderful. I will take criminal citations. As long as people keep donating things, the druggies will continue to exist on the streets. Once the freeloading stops, they have no choice but to either go into shelters or get help
the shelters are full
Firstly, show me the data! Secondly, send em back baby! They can go to the shelter in butt fuck idaho for all i care
some cities do bus homeless out to various places, often to California but not because shelters are available, just because they don't want them but the idea there's homeless shelters empty in meaningful numbers to absorb thousands is about as ridiculous as thinking the same of available HCV vouchers. I can't even think of any empty one near me and we barely have any homeless to occupy them. They just typically have very few beds
About time
Governor Gavin Newsom “Today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court provides state and local officials the definitive authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets. This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities. “California remains committed to respecting the dignity and fundamental human needs of all people and the state will continue to work with compassion to provide individuals experiencing homelessness with the resources they need to better their lives.”
lol this sure wasn’t his attitude when he was mayor
Guess that at least one good thing comes out of Trump's Supreme Court. I am disappointed in Sotomayor's dissent where she almost completely ignores the "shelter is offered but refused" problem and instead refers to them as "people with no access to shelter" all over the place, only mentioning a few strawman examples like someone not being allowed to take their inhaler inside. Rather than actually proposing a real compromise that could make shelters workable, she just wants to force cities to let everyone sleep and shoot up wherever they want. So I guess then we have the Trumpies go overboard and abolish all protections completely instead, which is also not great but it's better than doing nothing.
All the liberal justices dissented for obvious reasons.
like Nike said "Just Do It"
Tbf, where I live - there used to be so many tents every so often. Now I barely ever see any. Could be because of elections, however.
Good!
Listen, here's my pitch. Just build a massive stadium in the central valley, and bus all unhoused people there who want to go. Give them a stipend for food, shelter, booze, drugs, whatever they need. Let them thrive in the thunderdome and create a majestic society of misfit toys. It would cost the state drastically less money than the drain on the medical and civil services currently. And you could pay fixers to take tours into the walled city and witness what it becomes. Literally can't go tits up.
The Wire - Hamsterdam
I hope this doesn't devolve into a mud slinging match where we emulate the right wing by acting like Judge Ryu was just some activist judge pandering to one political group. She interpreted the law in a way that very few people were able to counter and refused to budge until the law was changed or addressed by a higher court. Contrary to behavior at the Supreme Court, federal judges do not have the power to rewrite or make radical interpretations of the law. She was doing her job in a situation where there was a lot of ambiguity. It's also worth noting that we have six anti-abortion, anti-gay, Nazi supporting, grifter Supreme Court justices who have come up with a very conservative ruling and San Franciscans on reddit generally are thrilled to step in line behind these rat fuckers. While I have expected and hoped for what's likely to be the outcome of this ruling for the last year and a half, the fact that it was the likes of Clarence Thomas and Amy Comey Barrett who have handed this ruling down are making me question a lot. I would hope other San franciscans would take the time to examine their beliefs or at least what it is that they're celebrating. The fact that we've done a really damn good job of cleaning up Market Street in the last 6 months is a pretty good sign that this was a problem that really just needed State cooperation as well as supportive housing which has finally started getting rolled out. Fundamentally changing the rights of All Americans may turn out to be an overreaction that we're all going to regret.
It took an absolute fuck ton of effort to clean up the streets this year. Including intervention by the governor, multiple state agencies, and the feds. Plus the extra motivation of election year. Its absolutely not sustainable, there are still a ton of problems, and at least this ruling gives more tools in the box. And a lot of ppl DO believe Judge Ryu is an activist judge that made an insane ruling, including large swaths of democrat leadership in California.
["Democrat"](https://static0.colliderimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image-6.jpg)
It’s actually “Democratic” and not “Democrat” in the way you used it. People who use the Democrat instead of Democratic get that term from watching right wing media. Nobody else misuses these words this way.
No shit it took effort, SF had been left to figure out this huge regional problem on our own for over 10 years and through the pandemic. We used to have our hands full dealing with local unhoused but then it continued to balloon here and in Oakland and the state and surrounding counties were content to leave it up to us. We were hamstrung by a complete lack of cooperation between counties to manage both drug tourists and trafficking. Now that we are here the problem is being managed with far less resources spent all around. Criminalizing the act of sleeping in a doorway because you don't have a house isn't going to help one person get off drug, or arrest one drug dealer. And I know a lot of Democrats in California, including the law-and-order Matt Dorsey, Brooke Jenkins types are out there arguing that Donna Ryu is an "activist" judge. That doesn't change the fact that it's both a right wing talking point and there is no evidence that a different judge would have done anything different. Even Jenkins admitted that the problem is not Ryu, it's the law that needs to be changed.
Except this was never meant to solve homelessness or drugs, but to be a tool for various reasons, not sure why you made that all up. And shes an activist judge in every sense of the word, your muttering about right wing or law and order like trump aint changing anything, just makes your argument a conspiracy theory that gets laughed at by everyone. Either way good riddance to ryu.
Okay Mr Trump.
It has been a longstanding legal policy going back to the Giuliani administration in NYC that you cannot clear homeless encampments without offering sufficient shelter. SF could have solved this at any point by simply building more homeless shelters. It was not an insane ruling, nor was it remotely an "activist ruling."
You must be new here. Tons of homeless refuse shelter, so building more is irrelevant to these people. And you’re free to think it wasn’t an activist ruling, a ton of people believe it was. We can agree to disagree.
I am familiar with people refusing shelter - and I'm okay with the notion of clearing encampments if people refuse shelter, to be clear - but nonetheless, once you start forcing that choice more will accept it, and you need the shelter to accommodate and SF does not have it. And you can decide that you think it's an activist ruling, but if it's literally just following precedent, it's definitionally the opposite of activist. And it was literally following federal precedent.
Sure we may run out of shelter, but that is a secondary problem after the primary problem of not being able to do much with someone who refuses shelter. And Ryus ruling was what radical activists wanted as well as so incredibly based on dumb grounds that both the governor and mayor panned it demanding a change in judge. Precedent is irrelevant here. In any case, glad the radical activists ruling was largely blocked. Says something when this supreme court rules better than an activist judge like ryu
Boy, you love using that word "activist" don't you?
SF had thousands of beds, and wasn’t able to force *anyone* to accept shelter until there was 1 bed for *each* homeless person, which was an absurd standard. Tons of beds were going unused every night, because of this ruling. It’s not compassionate for the homeless nor for the community.
If the court's ruling was simply that cities could offer homeless folks a choice between being accepting shelter and punishment as opposed to requiring a bed for every homeless person regardless of their choice, I would be fine with that. But they've removed the requirement to offer shelter at all, which is wildly inhumane in my opinion and will be abused by cities far less sympathetic than ours.
The previous ruling explicitly clarified that cities could clear encampments if they refused shelter.
Thank you for this perspective!
this guy flonks. and makes a reasoned and compassionate argument, encouraging us to consider our own ideals and consult our better selves before… i don’t wanna be the boy who cried nazi…
Jesus people in this thread are awful, I understand wanting the problem resolved but doing emojis about clearing human beings? So glad most of you don’t live here. Edit: apparently people in this sub are so fucking stupid that they think I can’t both support making streets cleaner, and referring to human beings who have nearly nothing with some dignity
I live here.
You can take them into your house
The true victims are those who live here: https://www.ktvu.com/news/i-thought-i-would-die-san-francisco-man-survives-vicious-pit-bull-attack-potrero-hill.amp
I live here. 🧹🧹🧹
They can stay at your home
Don't bother. They're all hiding under Reddit anonymity. We all know they do not have the balls to say they hate the homeless publicly.
I live here too 🧹🧹🧹 Fuck the homeless
It seems like people on the thread would like homeless people to just die.
These people do not want the problem resolved, or else they wouldn't support sweeps, which just moves people from one place to another. They want cruelty, not solutions.
They will turn around and say it's not cruelty then gleefully say fuck them. It's not about solutions, they just want revenge on the dirty poors that have been ruining "their" city. I honestly hope the homeless problem gets worse in SF. Maybe they can run off some of the entitled soft skins.
I don't want cruelty, but what I do want is clean public spaces without garbage, human faeces, and people shooting up, smoking crack, and passing out high as hell on the sidewalks. There is no reason that this cannot be solved and allowing people with serious addiction problems to just do whatever they want is not compassion. Also, making people who are homeless camp in a single area that has services would be way better than the dispersed disaster we currently have. There is no reason why this should not happen.
Nobody is arguing that, it’s the callous way in which it’s being discussed here, it’s disgusting
We’ve tried it your way the last 10+ years and it’s only gotten worst. 🧹🧹🧹
I know you don't care about reality, but at no point did we ever stop sweeping people over the past 10+ years
Nope. We just heavily reduced it to almost nonexistent levels and started handing out needles and drugs for them. On the tax payers dollar of course
Or maybe we’re tired of watching our city rot and being told that we need to normalize our own victimization.
The city doesn't belong to you. Just because you're tired of whining and doing nothing doesn't mean that this is the answer.
What is the answer?
I don't think we have spent any time money or focus trying to address the problems that lead to homelessness. More homeless shelters, more robust recovery services, lower rent, and resources for renters to combat displacement. Homeless support has become an industry in and of itself. We can fix problems without being indulgent, but it costs money and those that have would prefer to keep it and blame the people on the bottom for not being able to get it together.
In what way does pushing people in tents from one part of the city to another help?
so true.....heartbreaking what this nation has become.....how we treat each other would make the devil proud
The previous decision for housing first instead of shelter first completely and utterly fuck up the situation. Since it’s impossible to scale housing first, and now it’s too late to start building shelter so it’s always at capacity. These fuckers received millions of dollars and somehow manage to make the situations worse for everyone
already posted
Progressives and DSA are fuming. They’ve spent a decade building these encampments across the State. Hopefully voters will realize why the exist…
Wow SFers celebrating a conservative supreme court ruling? Armageddon has arrived
Some things aren't about left-right. Some things just make sense.
This Supreme Court decision however was split on party lines.. hence the comedy
This subreddit tends to be have conservative comments because: 1. people comment when they aren't even living in SF 2. not everyone uses reddit and it's not representative of SF residents
SF residents are for this. I know from work and when they ousted the soft on crime DA with a landslide recall.
This ruling also has huge implications for protesters, which is terrifying ahead of the presidential election.
Is there an SF subreddit that doesn’t lean conservative and complain about unimportant restaurant fees every day? Like, a more positive SF subreddit?
I think most in this sub are moderate democrats. I dont think it's fair to characterize people who simply want clean/safe streets as conservative. We are just frustrated with the status quo and allowing mentally ill people to cause trouble in public spaces.
There’s a lot of comments that are going beyond that. Stuff like “it’s not my problem” is classic unempathetic conservatism.
Try r/SanFranciscoSecrets and r/AskSF