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Notes -
The End of Homeless encampments?
My consumption of mainstream or traditional news is always a little slow and awkward. I mostly just read headlines, and I barely trust the headlines half the time. Local news is at least often verifiable by me directly or directly by someone I know in person.
One of the items I have been seeing more of is "homeless encampment in [local park / forest] cleared by city". I mostly just read these with a tentative mental "yay?" and moved on. Well once of those news headlines referred to a homeless encampment that is just down the street from where I live, so I've gotten more curious about what is actually going on with these stories.
I have a couple theories but I'm not sure where the truth lies:
This may be a case of liberal progressives having their cake and eating it too. Non-profits can continue to help with a Delegitimize SCOTUS Campaign while municipal governments can accept the court's ruling that allows them to deal with a problem they had been forbidden from dealing with. The Republican SCOTUS made homelessness illegal message still gets sent by media, NGOs, and activists. I predict we will not see many successful city political campaigns run on "bring back the encampments" message. If you do see this campaign then you'll have your answer as to where the voter preferences lie.
I searched and found previous Motte discussion when the ruling came out. "It will be interesting to see whether this leads to rapid improvement in the homeless schizo situation in big West Coast cities." Maybe?
Getting to a point where authorities can offer you a choice to go to jail, or in a Christian shelter, or another town has potential to be a huge improvement for the West Coast. I'm not mean spirited about it. More deprogramming programs. Good. That homeless people require sleep thus can sleep wherever, but only being homeless bestows this protected status/privilege, seems not-very-constitutional. Sotomayor said cities could still regulate fire in public spaces, but don't homeless people also have a biological need to not freeze to death?
I support the charity of Americans to reach the homeless population and provide them a place to sleep. Broadly, if some of us have the right
not be cruelly and unusually punished forto camp out in a public space indefinitely, then this should be a freedom all Americans share. On a more practical level, enforcement seems like a necessary part of every step of the process: remove vagrants, offer them a place somewhere safe, force decisions upon them, and attempt to get them off the streets. This is not Freedommaxxing, but if the courts say the Constitution prohibits cops from moving anyone sleeping in places, that'd be fine too.More options
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