The United States Supreme Court will be starting a hearing this week to consider the rights of people who are homeless. The media is absolutely humming in anticipation. To mark this historic event, affordablehousingaction.org is offering five posts this week. Three are about the case itself and two are about the people who will be directly affected by the outcome.
As early as 2013, the citizens of Grants Pass, Oregon were dreaming up ways to run the riff-raff out of town. Hats off to those brave, unknown pioneers and the local government that supported them. Their apparent objective: to capture the spirit of ‘ugly Americans1,’ bring it back from foreign countries where the term is well-known and install it at the heart of local communities.
So, has this damning accusation become the quality of American civic personality? Since a 2018 lawsuit against Grants Pass, one man in particular has fought long and hard to prove otherwise.
Lawyer Ed Johnson is litigation director at The Oregon Law Center. Since 2018 he has pursued another, more compassionate vision of American communities. In April, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether American communities have a right to criminalize the behaviour of the unhoused who own no land or shelter and have no place to protect themselves, except by attempting to survive on public property.
Read more in OREGONLIVE: With Oregon homelessness case headed to Supreme Court, spotlight falls on Portland lawyer, unhoused people in Grants Pass
Footnotes
- If you are unfamiliar with this term, Wikipedia provides articles about the novel and the motion picture
