We can’t let it be illegal to be without a home

Our country’s inability to provide for a stable supply of housing that minimum wage earners and retirees can afford to live in has long seemed to me a national embarrassment. And I’m not alone. Just this past November, San Francisco was cleared of its homeless encampments in advance of Xi Jinping’s visit, presumedly to save us the embarrassment of China’s leader seeing the state of housing (or lack thereof) in the U.S.

While not a constitutional right, for some, housing is considered a human right. More recently, to lack housing has been considered a crime. That’s right, the Supreme Court has heard arguments in a case about the criminalization of the homeless. That case is Johnson v. Grants Pass.

Reminiscent of debtors’ prisons, Grants Pass’s so-called “anti-camping” ordinance subjected individuals who slept on public sites with blankets (i.e. camping) to hefty fines and jail time. This, despite the fact that the city lacked alternative indoor shelters. A federal judge struck down Grants Pass’s ordinance as a violation of the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment to a given class of people.

As if it weren’t already obvious that the people behind the “anti-camping” ordinance were cruel and unusually thoughtless, the judge’s decision codified it. And yet, the case now sits with a new set of judges who will decide if justice can be enacted upon the homeless simply because they are too poor to afford a home. If the justices, too, decide that it is perfectly legal for towns to be cruel, here in Illinois we must push back against such attempts and pass legislation that recognizes our common humanity and our place on this earth we all call home.

Kathy Cortez

Palatine