The recent Supreme Court ruling, Grants Pass v. Johnson, has effectively legalized the criminalization of homelessness in the U.S., allowing local governments to penalize unhoused individuals for camping without providing shelter alternatives. This has sparked concerns among housing rights advocates that such measures will lead to increased harm and fatalities, especially among disabled Americans who compose a significant portion of the homeless population. As a result, punitive approaches are gaining traction over evidence-based methods like Housing First, with even Democratic policymakers mirroring right-wing rhetoric on homelessness, while the number of unhoused individuals continues to rise dramatically.
"I'm terrified of being [detained] in an encampment when that starts happening, and I think that it will if things continue the way they are going," Finn, an unhoused and disabled resident of Portland, Oregon, expressed a deep concern about the escalating measures against those experiencing homelessness.
"We don't have a housing system, we have an unhousing system," says author and organizer Tracy Rosenthal, emphasizing the systemic failure to provide adequate housing and support for homeless individuals.
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