Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Being from East Los Angeles, I grew up not 20 minutes from Skid Row, Los Angeles, a neighborhood spanning 50 city blocks that is home to one of the largest unhoused populations in the United States at about 4,400 unhoused people.

Depending on where you’re from, the income per capita as well as what homeless services are offered where you live, you may or may not have seen unhoused people in public areas: whether in the streets, in parks or outside of storefronts. But regardless of where you live, homelessness is a national problem, even if you don’t see it.

Not only was seeing unhoused people in and out of Skid Row commonplace for me, but I also witnessed all the ways that we punish homelessness in every aspect of public life. While it’s not technically illegal to sleep in public, there are a myriad of ways the government discourages it, like banning overnight parking or sleeping at rest stops and public parks.

And don’t forget about the whole genre of “hostile architecture,” which is meant to keep unhoused people from finding shelter or camping by erecting barriers on public seating. This includes spikes on curbs and benches, placing giant rocks on grass and unnecessarily separating park and bus seats with armrests.

In more ways than one, we’ve normalized cruelty against unhoused people in public spaces.

If this wasn’t enough, the United States Supreme Court announced this past month that they were evaluating the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson in what could be a landmark case. It involves Grants Pass, Oregon, and two unhoused individuals who were fined for anti-camping and illegal parking ordinances — even though the city doesn’t have any kind of public shelter. This directly violates a similar case from 2018, Martin v. Boise, which made it illegal for cities to criminalize camping on public grounds if they didn’t have enough shelter beds available for their unhoused population.

If the court decides to rule in favor of Grants Pass, it could overturn Martin v. Boise and completely criminalize homelessness across the country. According to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruling, Grants Pass could not enforce local ordinances that prohibit homeless people “from using a blanket, pillow, or cardboard box for protection from the elements.” The decision applies across nine states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

It would have major implications for unhoused people who are already vulnerable to the natural elements, worsening climate change, pre-existing anti-homeless laws and public space policies. It would virtually make it illegal for them to exist.

Under capitalism, I’d actually argue that it’s actually easier for homelessness to be an ongoing issue because of how fragile the system has been designed. As soon as we lose one part of our livelihood, like a steady job, insurance, stable housing or form of transport, everything else comes tumbling down.

It’s no accident that as we’ve seen COVID-19 ravage the world for the past four years, we’re also witnessing a national economic crisis, which is bordering on a recession and is making the risk of homelessness that much more of a local issue.

Rent and housing alone are expensive, and while the New York state minimum wage has yet to see a significant increase, tuition and cost of living — including gas, groceries, healthcare and other necessities — have risen. Additional expenses may also include water, as people in low-income housing are more likely to have contaminated or unsafe pipes that require them to rely on bottled water rather than tap water.

In recent years, more people are living paycheck to paycheck, using what wages they have to spend on basic human needs like food, without opportunities for potential savings or investments. Despite the U.S.’s campaign of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” the system of capitalism has been designed to keep people, especially those in already vulnerable communities including LGBTQIA+ youth, BIPOC folks and veterans, in a continuous cycle of poverty and survival without upward mobility.

Cole Ross | Digital Design Editor

Now more than ever, it’s easy for anyone to become homeless and even easier to keep them there. In fact, from 2022 to 2023 alone, the unhoused population rose 12.1%, increasing the number of people living in shelters, hotels or motels, cars, abandoned buildings and the streets. When it’s nearly impossible for them to shower, find safe places to sleep, get a job, earn money to eat or pay fines from the police for a city violation, how can they be expected to escape homelessness when the entire system has been built against them from the beginning?

With City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a ruling in favor of Grants Pass could mean catastrophic consequences for unhoused people all over the country. They are going to become a target, yet another group whose existence the government has declared illegal following ongoing campaigns against undocumented immigrants and other marginalized groups.

Unhoused communities, after being subjected to police raids and fines for decades, will be incarcerated, filling up prison cells and funneling money into private prisons so that law enforcement can incarcerate more unhoused people and continue a dangerous, destructive cycle.

It will affect housed people too, not through the supposed integrity of our neighborhoods and public spaces but through our own risks of becoming unhoused ourselves. How many of us only have somewhere to live because our parents allow us to live with them? How many pro-Palestine student protestors have been evicted from their on-campus housing as punishment for occupations and encampments? How many of us are in loan debt or don’t have jobs or are at risk of losing them?

We’re witnessing a new stage of capitalism that may have disastrous results for everyone. Yet it’s hard not to imagine that, through restrictive laws and policies, this is a moment that the national government has been waiting for, to push toward criminalizing the act of existing in public entirely. The reality is that it shouldn’t be illegal to live the best way we can, especially at the hands of a system that puts us there.

Sofia Aguilar is a first-year grad student in the Library and Information Science program. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at saguil07@syr.edu.

Published on April 30, 2024 at 1:08 am