People who are homeless as a class may well be the most disadvantaged Americans of all. But alas, there are contenders for this status. Equally disadvantaged, if not more so, are Americans with disabilities. Some live with a double whammy — they are homeless, and as well, live with a disability1.
And yet a lawsuit recently filed in Portland, Oregon appears to pit this pair of America’s vulnerable populations against each other. It would seem as if the disabled are suing the homeless.
At issue are the survival modes of people abandoned almost completely by American society — those without shelter. Precarious existence for many people who are homeless means pitching tents close to centres of population, often on public land including sidewalks, plazas and parks.
These efforts to stay alive without adequate shelter are on a collision course with the hard-won guarantees of equality won by Americans with disabilities in 1990. As expressed by a National Geographic article headline (and readable for the price of an email address): How The Americans With Disabilities Act Transformed A Country. There is also a great deal of information available without restriction on the internet, which covers the aspirations of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, together with its successes and failures since it was passed.
The problem: people with disabilities, especially mobility disabilities, cannot skip on and off a sidewalk, or wend their way through a thicket of tents on their way across a plaza or through a park. What kind of remedy do they and their supporters have for insuring they can carry on with daily activities like shopping for food?
For activist groups that support people with disabilities, suing people who are homeless is both highly distasteful as well as financially pointless. Instead, people with mobility disabilities are challenging the city of Portland to account for its minimalist support to people who are homeless (which, in fairness to Portland, has been more forthcoming than the efforts of many, if not most, American communities).
Portland has been handing out free tents and other supportive materials to those with nothing. Those materials can now be found infringing on the rights of people with disabilities, so Portland is a convenient and well-heeled target for a lawsuit.
Portland has responded by encouraging those pursuing the suit to broaden it, targeting not only city, but as well including county, state and federal governments as co-perpetrators of this sorry state of affairs. Read more at KGW8: New details on ADA lawsuit against Portland finds Multnomah County gave thousands of tents and tarps to homeless campers
Footnotes
- In a recent survey of women experiencing homelessness in Canada, 79% reported a disability. You can access the survey results at the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network: The Pan-Canadian Women’s Housing & Homelessness Survey
