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RULING ON HOMELESSNESS RAISES RISKS FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SURVIVORS
 
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Jennifer Gerson
July 1, 2024
Scheer Post
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_ Gorsuch continued “Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do
not criminalize status. It makes no difference whether the charged
defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a
backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm _

Homeless advocates take part in the “Housing Not Handcuffs” rally
organized by the National Homelessness Law Center during the Johnson v
Grants Pass oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.,
in April 2024. , Kevin Wolf/AP Images for National Homelessness Law
Center

 

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled in the case of Grants
Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson, to uphold a law enacted by a small
Oregon town that bars those experiencing homelessness from using
blankets, pillows and cardboard boxes while sleeping outdoors within
city limits. Those who are found doing so can impose fines for camping
in public on first-time offenders and up to 30 days of jail time for
repeat offenders. It’s a case that has major implications for
survivors of domestic violence, experts say. 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in this case have argued that barring
camping on public property effectively criminalizes people for being
unhoused. The case before the Supreme Court focused on the question
whether the enforcement of the Grants Pass law constitutes cruel and
unusual punishment.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said in his opinion,
that the law in Grants Pass does not constitute “cruel and unusual
punishment” because such laws “are not designed to
‘superad[d]’ ‘terror, pain, or disgrace’” and “because
similarly limited fines and jail terms have been and remain among
‘the usual mode[s]” for punishing criminal offenses throughout the
country.’”

Gorsuch continued in his opinion, “Grants Pass’s public-camping
ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit
actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no
difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person
experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who
abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a
municipal building.”

The court in April heard oral arguments for the case, one of the most
significant Supreme Court cases on the unhoused in over 40 years, as
“camping ban” legislation exists not only in Grants Pass, but in
municipalities nationwide. The ruling means that all jurisdictions
with these laws are free to enforce them, and others looking to
address the homelessness crisis in America through punitive measures
now have a court-ordained model for doing so. According to the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than 600,000 people
in the United States were houseless on any given night in 2023.

But experts tell The 19th that the Grants Pass case, and today’s
ruling, has implications beyond the criminalization of housing status
and could further limit options for safety and security — and the
possibility of stable housing — for survivors of domestic
violence. Fifty-seven percent
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unhoused women report domestic violence as their immediate cause of
homelessness. 

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited this rationate, pointing
to the “almost 60% of those experiencing homelessness [that] report
that fleeing domestic violence was the ‘immediate cause.’”
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Sotomayor in her
dissent. “For people with no access to shelter, that punishes them
for being homeless. That is unconscionable and unconstitutional.
Punishing people for their status is “cruel and unusual” under the
Eighth Amendment,” the dissent reads.

Kate Walz, a senior staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project
(NHLP) and an expert on housing rights and domestic violence, told The
19th that throughout her 20 years as a Legal Aid attorney, she
routinely saw situations where domestic abusers would try to make
their victims homeless — “and they know how to manipulate systems
to make that work.” They may call the police on their victim, or
call the public housing authority and self-report that they are living
in the home of their victim when they are not supposed to, even though
they’re not — all to jeopardize a victim’s housing status.. 

“They will take steps to sabotage whatever minute stability a victim
might have so that they’re homeless, because then they know there is
an increased chance that the survivor will return to them.”
Criminalizing being unhoused, Walz said, only serves to enact more
barriers for survivors by creating a set of “impossible choices”
that often lead them with few viable options for securing their and
their family’s safety. 

“If local governments are authorized to enact local policies that
allow them to find and arrest people because they are living outside,
they are really being complicit in the increase of gender-based
violence against survivors without homes,” Walz said. “Maybe a
park looks cleaner and safer to sleep in than a home that might
increase the risk of violence to a person’s body. This law says that
we as a society should accept a person having to accept the risk of
violence.”

Keri Moran-Kuhn is the associate director of the Oregon Coalition
Against Domestic Violence, which helps fund and manage a
community-based, non-governmental domestic violence program in Grants
Pass, including a family shelter there. “They’re always full,”
she told The 19th. “It’s just the need. It’s as great there as
it is across the country.”

Moran-Kuhn stressed that one of the key facets of domestic violence is
isolation — and many survivors do not have family and friends or
have been isolated from them and have no one to turn to for help. And
for housing, “if they do not have a place to go, if their local
domestic violence program has a full shelter or there is not another
safe area to go, they will potentially become homeless.”

For many survivors, this looks like sleeping in your car, moving it
nightly to avoid detection from an abuser. But in many parts of rural
Oregon, and for those who may not have a vehicle, this looks like
camping outside, Moran-Kuhn said. “Being fined, ticketed, arrested
and punished for living outside when they have no other place to go,
that’s just adding to the trauma that they’ve experienced and
it’s also pushing them further into poverty.”

In Oregon, the situation is particularly acute right now, she said.
“Our cities are struggling, our rural areas are struggling — in
Oregon, we have a severe housing crisis. And what that looks like on
the ground, both in our urban and rural areas in Oregon, is that there
are not enough shelter beds,.” Moran-Kuhn explained. “If there’s
a waitlist and they can’t get in and they’re calling in the middle
of the night when they’ve left with nothing but the clothing on
their back and now there’s not a bed for them — where do they
go?”

The domestic violence shelter in Grants Pass is small, housing a
maximum of 15 families. She said that many people drive from more
rural parts of the state, often for an hour and a half or two hours,
to get to it because of a lack of shelter services where they are.

Homeless shelters, Moran-Kuhn explained, don’t provide the level of
trauma-informed care that domestic violence survivors and their
families need, particularly for children. “It can actually be more
dangerous to go to a shelter depending on what type of shelter it is
and what safety structures exist around them. Transition services are
few and far between and permanent housing is at an all-time low in
Oregon right now.” 

Monica McLaughlin, the senior director of public policy at the
National Network to End Domestic Violence, told The 19th that  the
Grants Pass case ignores what she describes as a “simple solution”
to the situation in which so many survivors find themselves. “It’s
housing. We need more housing stock to be created. We need more
housing subsidies to be created. We need our housing protections for
survivors to be strengthened and implemented.” She notes that there
are many existing federal housing protections for survivors of
domestic violence — and  investment in strengthening and
implementing those is especially critical right now.

McLaughlin points to a recent HUD rule her colleagues submitted
comment on, to not deny people housing based on criminal records.
“That’s a huge step from our perspective. Survivors of
gender-based violence who have any sort of criminal record have a hard
time accessing housing.” Criminalizing being unhoused only further
perpetuates that cycle. “If we criminalize folks whose crime is
living outdoors, then do they just not get any housing?” 

In the meantime, she said, the Grants Pass ruling feels like a
societal and cultural gesture of “throwing their hands up around
domestic or sexual violence, like saying, ‘Well that’s just
what’s going to happen,’ rather than having any solution for
survivors of violence.” 

Walz explained that the issue is even more critical for survivors who
are also parents, whose housing status can trigger the involvement of
child welfare services — and can result in a survivor losing custody
of children. McLaughlin added that in understanding the stakes of the
Grants Pass decision, it is critical to remember that moving to
another town isn’t a simple option — especially for those who are
parents and often trying to make decisions that allow their children
to stay connected to their schools, trusted child care options, and
neighborhood support systems while navigating how to survive and leave
a violent situation. 

Given the limited number of family shelter beds available, many
survivors opt to sleep outside with their children in the hopes that
this will keep them safe from the violence they are experiencing in
their home. 

McLaughlin adds that in a child welfare investigation, case workers
look for a child having a habitable, comfortable and safe home to live
in. A criminal record can preclude someone from accessing the kind of
housing that would meet these kinds of standards. Without a shelter to
go to and given the risks of taking children to sleep outdoors, many
survivors are then forced to stay with or return to an abuser to
guarantee the presentation of stable housing for their children. 

Writing in her dissent, Sotomayor said, “Criminalizing homelessness
can cause a destabilizing cascade of harm,” pointing specifically to
the impact of a criminal record on being able to access government
benefits, including housing.

Many people also become unhoused, Walz said, because of other forms of
gender-based violence. In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme
Court by NHLP, the group tells the story of a woman who was sexually
harassed for years by her landlord, who routinely demanded sex for
rent. “She didn’t tell anybody, because she was finally in a home
after years of being unhoused,” Walz said. “She didn’t feel safe
enough that if she spoke up, there was a system that would hold the
landlord accountable, protect her, and keep her housed somewhere
else.”

Walz said that these are the kinds of choices survivors routinely face
on a daily basis, weighing the risks of safe shelter that might expose
them to violence against the risks of living outside, of going back to
an abusive partner and being able to keep their children or facing the
risk of arrest in sleeping outdoors and inviting the child welfare
system into their lives. She said she also thinks about the level of
economic abuse that many survivors experience. “It’s not just
about being hit — it’s about power and control over a person’s
finances. I think most people don’t understand how easy it is to be
in a position where you cannot get rental housing, your credit’s
been destroyed, you have an eviction history related to the violence
and the economic abuse, you may have a criminal history related to the
violence — and all of those things are on full display to
prospective landlords.”

In sanctioning the law in Grants Pass, the Supreme Court has
“increased the risk of continued violence against survivors in this
country. This will give a crude weapon to harm-doers to further
control them, because they have this power that if you are unhoused,
you could go to jail,” Walz said. 

But she stressed that the Supreme Court is not saying that a
jurisdiction must do what Grants Pass has chosen to do in banning
camping outside in public places, but rather that it is something they
legally can do. For other municipalities watching today’s news, Walz
said, “We would urge a different outcome, a different outlook, one
with more compassion, more education, and more understanding.”

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JENNIFER GERSON is a reporter on our breaking news team. She was the
recipient of the 2015 Maggie Award for her reproductive and sexual
health reporting work at Yahoo Health. In 2019, she was twice
nominated by the American Society of Magazine Editors for her work in
Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan. She was also one of the founding
editors of Jezebel.com.

* Grants Pass
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* Oregon v. Gloria Johnson; Homelessness; Domestic Violence;
Housing;
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