In which I write for Jacobin about an upcoming SCOTUS case that will decide whether or not constitutional rights are only for property owners:
”On most nights, John Logan drives his pickup truck to a rest stop five miles north of Grants Pass, Oregon. A licensed home care provider, Logan has lived without permanent housing for the last twelve years. For a time, he was able to spend his nights in the spare room of a client for four to five nights a week, but that job ended in 2019, and these days he must make his way to the Manzanita Rest Stop off I-5 in order to get a night’s sleep in his truck.
Gloria Johnson, a retired nurse who is living off social security, also leaves the city each night to park her van on Bureau of Land Management (BLM)–owned land or on county roads. The trip is not far, but it costs gas money that people like Johnson and Logan can barely afford, and the extra miles accelerate wear and tear on their vehicles, which serve as their only protection from the elements at night.
Both Johnson and Logan would prefer to sleep within the city limits of Grants Pass, where they for all intents and purposes live — but to do so would risk harassment, fines, and criminal prosecution from a local government whose only solution to its growing problem with homelessness is to drive people in dire need of support and resources out of their city limits.
In 2018, Johnson and Logan joined Debra Blake, who was disabled and unhoused and slept on the street without a vehicle, in a class-action lawsuit against the city of Grants Pass. They argued the city was trying to force homeless people out of town with a set of punitive city ordinances. In 2020, a district court ruled that the city’s anti-vagrancy ordinances were unconstitutional, depriving the unhoused of their Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
In 2021, Blake passed away, but the lawsuit lives on. In 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld and clarified the lower court’s injunction against Grants Pass. This year, the Supreme Court will decide whether constitutional rights depend on one’s ability to afford housing. The case will potentially have life-altering implications for the nearly seven hundred thousand Americans who don’t have homes, and the millions more who are one eviction notice away from joining them.”
Read the rest at Jacobin.com
this is easy to visualize which makes it even more painful to read. it's such a vivid description of one aspect of one side effect of the rampant capitalism we call democracy, and such a stark description of treating people not like people, as though they have no value, due to lacking in what is valued in a system like ours, $$$$. it's an internal manifestation of the same deprivation that drives refugees to struggle so hard to get into this country where they hope to find a home.