If I understand it correctly, this is basically the defacto situation elsewhere based on ACLU and other org lawsuits. Local governments in affected areas must treat the massive piles of trash as the personal property of the unhoused and cannot relocate them without providing for their property.
New York has a relatively unique situation where they can legally compel the unhoused into shelter, but I don't know how they deal with the property aspect
NPR had a bit about how overdoses increase after police do drug dealer raids, so I sense a prohibition is the worst thing ever push, and Nicaraguans running open air Fentanyl markets are a good thing actually.
The United States experienced a dramatic 12% increase in homelessness to its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, federal officials said Friday.
About 653,000 people were homeless, the most since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. The total in the January count represents an increase of about 70,650 from a year earlier.
The latest estimate indicates that people becoming homeless for the first time were behind much of the increase.
A growing number of Americans are ending up homeless as soaring rents in recent years squeeze their budgets.
According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country's unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said.
Homelessness, long a problem in states such as California and Washington, has also increased in historically more affordable parts of the U.S.. Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas have seen the largest growths in their unsheltered populations due to rising local housing costs.
People earning between $45,000 and $74,999 per year took the biggest hit from rising rents — on average, 41% of their paycheck went toward rent and utilities, the Joint Center for Housing Studies said.
Although the rental market is showing signs of cooling, the median rent in the U.S. was $1,964 in December 2023, up 23% from before the pandemic, according to online housing marketplace Rent. By comparison, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for the median worker rose 1.7% between 2019 and 2023, government data shows.
More vouchers?
Rent control?
Government owns and operates the (rent controlled) housing?
Relaxed building permit process?
Higher density zoning?
Let the market just figure it out on its own?
Bammer wrote:What is a right to shelter amendment?
It’s broad and poorly defined. It could constitute anything from “you have the right to live in an RV on a public road” to “homeless kids can stay in a shelter without parental consent.” It’s like “cancel culture” or “regenerative agriculture” — ideologically pointed in one general direction, but the implementation is hugely dependent on the people advocating for it, and the place they’re trying to make it happen.
How far off is it from a guvment agent knocking on my door and teling me I have to board someone I don’t know in my spare bedroom?
Massachusetts has a right to shelter and zero third amendment court cases. It just obligates the government to address the shelter needs of the unhoused.
It's not THE solution, it's just a tool like everything else in that post that reduces the number of people on the street.
Everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?
