A Belly Laugh About the Homeless

The homeless problem in America is not funny. It’s serious and apparently growing. It helps little to call people “unhoused” instead of homeless. Under either name, they’re still on the street and need shelter.

But I got a belly laugh recently when it was announced that the reactionary U.S. Supreme Court has solemnly ruled that homeless people could not sleep outside. That struck me as funny. If they can’t sleep inside because they’re homeless, and now the Supreme Court forbids them to sleep outside, then where in the world can they sleep? People have to be somewhere, either inside or outside.

Then I realized it’s not a laughing matter after all. Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, officials in California, Oregon, and several Western states are now moving quickly to force people off the streets and into city shelters. If they don’t have a place to sleep, they have decreed, they must be rounded up like sheep and put into official sheepfolds.

Can Americans summon the compassion for their fellow citizens—for the estimated 650,000 men, women, and children in the U.S. who are currently homeless—to seek a lasting solution to this situation?

That makes a certain amount of sense, and seems to be compassionate, but it isn’t. First, there aren’t enough shelters. Then the cost to city and state budgets is sure to be high. Under this ruling, people become pawns of the civic authorities. When they resist they’re inevitably treated roughly by police, who don’t like herding people instead of fighting crime.

Now California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a possible vice presidential candidate, has announced that the California state police must become involved in rounding up the homeless. What a brilliant move—a bit like the slogan, “Whippings will continue until morale improves.”

But there’s a more sober—even ominous—dimension to this issue. We are all protected by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution in our Bill of Rights, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Under the legal implications of this decision, that right has now been taken away from all the rest of us.

The MAGA-tilted U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the case filed by the town of Grants Pass, Oregon, was that homeless people—(who can’t sleep inside because they have no home) have no right to sleep outside either. The court said that forcing them into state or city-run shelters is not cruel and inhumane. What does that mean for them—or for us, if we find ourselves in that perilous condition? We just can’t sleep anywhere we choose. One of our rights has been taken away.

I have a friend who rebuked me for giving money to beggars and the “unhoused” homeless. He said, “There are plenty of government programs and service agencies dedicated to helping those people.” I inquired further and found that there is no “one size fits all” solution when it comes to the indigent. People on the street face multiple problems in getting appropriate aid. Each person has his or her own story to tell. “One size fits all” is not an appropriate answer.

What’s needed is more money to address the problems these people are facing. That includes counseling, better healthcare, adequate social security payments, improved socialization activities, opportunities for useful employment, and above all neighborly treatment. Each person is a child, brother, sister, spouse, parent, or grandparent—“somebody’s darling”—after all. For our own sake as well as theirs, let’s not allow public policy to strip them of their remaining shreds of human dignity.

Can Americans summon the compassion for their fellow citizens—for the estimated 650,000 men, women, and children in the U.S. who are currently homeless—to seek a lasting solution to this situation? Doing so is timely—and requisite for our own humanity.