The task of regulating the places where the homeless can stay is weighted with political peril and strong emotions in play on all sides.
It’s a deep-rooted challenge that’s hardly unique to the Star City. However, tents pitched by the homeless on downtown Roanoke sidewalks in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns have led to new scrutiny, and new complaints to the city from downtown residents and business owners.
In an attempt to address the problem, the city could potentially be playing a game of chicken with the federal legal system.
At Monday’s meeting, the city council will mull a proposed ordinance that could impose fines of $250 for camping on downtown sidewalks, a ban that likely would be the first of its kind in Virginia.
A person who refused to move after receiving a ticket could be arrested.
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The constitutionality of this ban hangs on the notion that Roanoke’s homeless shelters — which are all run by nonprofit organizations — have more than enough space to accommodate those currently sleeping outdoors.
A recent federal court decision provides a safeguard of sorts for the homeless if they choose to camp on public property. The origin of this legal precedent dates back to 2009, when 11 homeless people sued the city of Boise, Idaho, over ordinances that banned camping and sleeping in public places.
They challenged the laws under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, arguing that they were being charged with a crime simply for resting, a basic bodily function.
The city attempted to disarm the lawsuit by making changes to those laws, declaring they would no longer be enforced during the day or when shelters were full. The idea was that the revised ordinances no longer criminalized the general state of being homeless.
This tactic worked at the district court level, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers the westernmost states, overturned the lower court ruling in 2013. The district court ruled in the city’s favor again, but that set up a more sweeping decree from the Ninth Circuit in 2018 that the Eighth Amendment “prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter.”
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, leaving it as the law of the land.
Roanoke Times reporter Jeff Sturgeon’s excellent Oct. 24 story about homelessness in Roanoke detailed a curious paradox. Though the tents arranged under overpasses and sleeping nests under the sheltered sidewalk along Church Avenue seem to make the city’s homeless people more visible than ever, homelessness has steadily declined in Roanoke for almost a decade.
That information provides a counter-narrative to a stereotype commonly assigned to Roanoke in a grumbly tone by its own residents, that the Star City’s abundance of services and shelters inspires surrounding rural localities to offload their own homeless by buying them one-way bus tickets to Roanoke.
In 2007, reviewing an increase of more than 350% in shelter occupancy over 20 years, then-Roanoke Councilman Bev Fitzpatrick came under fire for voicing the quiet part out loud in a council meeting, as he speculated that perhaps Roanoke was being too generous to homeless clients for its own good. “We’re letting people come here because we’re too daggone nice,” he said. “We’ve got to corral that.”
Former Roanoke Rescue Mission CEO Joy Sylvester-Johnson’s response in 2007 still applies. “People want a quick-fix answer, and that’s not going to happen in this case.”
Though the current council likely will draw ire regardless of what its members decide Monday, the members contemplating the enactment of this ban and citizens cheering for it, should remember that, like the rest of the country, the homeless constitute a diverse group, ill served by a “one size fits all” approach to the challenges they face.
The person who tries to aggressively shake you down for change when you walk past them on a downtown street is not necessarily connected in any way to the person dwelling in that tent under the overpass with the flap flanked by well-tended house plants. The former might not be homeless at all. The latter might be off working a day job, or two, struggling to save up after pandemic-induced unemployment led to foreclosure.
If those tents are successfully driven from the city’s streets, where will their occupants go? That question needs a definitive answer. Anyone who works directly with the homeless will tell you that some of them face challenges coping with mental illness or addiction that make it impossible for them to adjust to a shelter stay.
Anyone who judges addiction as solely a moral failing and a matter easily conquered if only the afflicted bothered to exercise their willpower could stand to binge-watch Hulu’s “Dopesick,” based on former Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy’s nonfiction book of the same name that does a deep dive into the opioid crisis in Appalachia.
The leading cause of homelessness is simply the inability to afford a home.
Organizations like Roanoke Area Ministries, Rescue Mission, Total Action for Progress, Council for Community Services and Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley are laboring to help people in danger of losing their homes as the pandemic and the lifting of the eviction moratorium made their situations even more precarious.
All of that said, city officials can’t ignore the complaints about unsanitary conditions downtown that could drive customers, tourists and even residents away. Not to mention a tent on a street is hardly a safe place, leaving the occupant vulnerable to robbery and worse.
The plight of San Francisco and other California communities provides an illustration that efforts to maximize the level of services and assistance for the homeless can have the perplexing effect of compounding the problem if not accompanied by a will to build affordable housing and a push to get people off the street and into homes.
Regardless, it’s counterproductive to assume every homeless person has the same story. They’re parents with medical debt. They’re business owners who had a turn for the worse. They have the potential to get back on their feet.
They might even have the potential to win a major civil rights lawsuit with national repercussions.