The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SCOTUS to hear case banning unhoused from sleeping in public
States struggle with growing homeless encampments.
WASHINGTON — The most significant case in decades on homelessness has reached the Supreme Court as record numbers of people in America are without a permanent place to live.
The justices today will consider a challenge to rulings from a California-based appeals court that found punishing people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
A political cross section of officials in the West and California, home to nearly onethird of the nation’s homeless population, argue those decisions have restricted them from “common sense” measures intended to keep homeless encampments from taking over public parks and sidewalks.
Advocacy groups say the decisions provide essential legal protections, especially with an increasing number of people forced to sleep outdoors as the cost of housing soars.
The case before the Supreme Court comes from Grants Pass, a small city of just under 40,000 nestled in the mountains of Southern Oregon, where rents are rising and there is just one overnight shelter for adults. As a growing number of tents clustered its parks, the city banned camping and set $295 fines for people sleeping there.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely blocked the camping ban under its finding that it is unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping outside when there is not adequate shelter space. Grants Pass appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the ruling left it few good options.
“It really has made it impossible for cities to address growing encampments, and they’re unsafe, unhealthy and problematic for everyone, especially those who are experiencing homelessness,” said lawyer Theane Evangelis, who is representing Grants Pass.
The city is also challenging a 2018 decision, known as Martin v. Boise, that first barred camping bans when shelter space is lacking. It was issued by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit and applies to the nine Western states in its jurisdiction. The Supreme Court declined to take up a different challenge to the ruling in 2019, before the solidification of its current conservative majority.
If the decision is overturned, advocates say it would make it easier for cities deal with homelessness by arresting and fining people rather than helping them get shelter and housing.
“In Grants Pass and across America, homelessness has grown because more and more hardworking people struggle to pay rent, not because we lack ways to punish people sleeping outside,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director for the National Homeless Law Center. Local laws prohibiting sleeping in public spaces have increased at least 50% since 2006, he said.
The case comes after homelessness in the United States grew by 12%, to its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more people, according to federal data. Four in 10 people experiencing homelessness sleep outside, a federal report found.
More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using the yearly pointin-time survey in 2007. People of color, LGBTQ+ people and seniors are disproportionately affected, advocates said.
Two of four states with the country’s largest homeless populations, Washington and California, are in the West. Officials in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco say they do not want to punish people simply because they are forced to sleep outside, but that cities need the power to keep growing encampments in check.
“I never want to criminalize homelessness, but I want to be able to encourage people to accept services and shelter,” said Thien Ho, the district attorney in Sacramento, California, where homelessness has risen sharply.
San Francisco says it has been blocked from enforcing camping regulations because the city does not have enough shelter space for its full homeless population, something it estimates would cost $1.5 billion to provide.
“These encampments frequently block sidewalks, prevent employees from cleaning public thoroughfares, and create health and safety risks for both the unhoused and the public at large,” lawyers for the city wrote. City workers have also encountered knives, drug dealing and belligerent people at encampments, they said.
Several cities and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged the high court to keep some legal protections in place while reining in “overreach” by lower courts. The Martin v. Boise ruling allows cities to regulate and “sweep” encampments, but not enforce total bans in communities without enough beds in shelters.
The Justice Department also backed the idea that people shouldn’t be punished for sleeping outside when they have no where else to go, but said the Grants Pass ruling should be tossed out because 9th Circuit went awry by not defining what it means to be “involuntarily homeless.”
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June.
The Gwinnett County school board tentatively adopted a $3.2 billion total budget for the upcoming fiscal year in a split vote Thursday.
Board members Adrienne Simmons and Tarece Johnson-Morgan raised concerns about the budget before voting against it. Both said they want to see efforts to reduce class sizes, more support for multilingual learners and ideas for financial incentives to recruit and retain teachers in schools with more low-income families.
The general fund, which pays for day-to-day operations, is proposed to be $2.5 billion, up from $2.4 billion in the current budget. The combined millage rate would remain flat at 20.65 mills, although higher assessed property values are expected to drive more property tax revenue.
Teachers and certified employees would receive a pay raise of $500 on top of a $2,500 raise from the state. Other staff would receive a raise of at least 4%. All eligible employees would also receive a salary step increase.
Deputy Superintendent Walt Martin spoke with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the vote and said the district added 2,100 teaching jobs in the past four years, which has helped reduce class sizes. Many of those positions used federal pandemic dollars that will expire later this year. In the proposed budget, the district is using its general fund to keep those jobs.
The last several budgets saw a major influx of funds from state and federal
sources, along with unexpectedly high revenue from property taxes, Martin said. With this budget, his team focused on maintaining what it had in place rather than adding new programs or new jobs. Board Chair Steve Knudsen said the district will be in a place to focus on class sizes in the next budget.
Board member Mary Kay Murphy said the board should not be trying to solve problems in the district. Its role, she said, is oversight of the superintendent. Board Vice Chair Karen Watkins thanked staff for “trying to salvage as much as you could from items that were once budgeted” using federal funds that are now gone.
Staff members also highlighted new district-level positions for multilingual programming and instructional support within schools, but Simmons and Johnson-Morgan indicated the district should do more.
Thursday’s vote was the first of two required to adopt the budget. The final vote will be June 20, and the budget would take effect July 1. The district will have public hearings May 18 and June 20.
The board also approved
contracts for two construction projects listed in the budget — $2.6 million to build out the fourth floor of Central Gwinnett High School and $41.4 million for a new middle school in the Archer cluster. Those projects were part of SPLOST VI, a penny sales tax for education projects approved by voters in 2020.
The board spent part of Thursday in training with the Georgia School Boards Association and discussed issues they’ve had in working together.
Watkins said conflict has consequences: “If we continue to cast doubt on public education, it fosters the voucher debate, it fosters (the public) not wanting to vote on the SPLOST” used to support district infrastructure. Staff said they may ask for a special purpose local option sales tax on the November ballot this year or in 2025.
Watkins said it is important to “articulate factually what we are doing as good stewards of our public’s taxpayer money so they continue to want to invest in us.” The board agreed to a group training on April 27.
Most people go to college to improve their financial prospects, though there are other benefits to attending a postsecondary institution. But as the average cost of a four-year degree has risen to six figures, even at public universities, it can be hard to know if the money is well spent.
A new analysis by HEA Group, a research and consulting firm focused on college access and success, may help answer the question for students and their families. The study compares the median earnings of former college students, 10 years after they enrolled, with basic income benchmarks.
The analysis found that a majority of colleges exceed minimum economic measures for their graduates, like having a typical annual income that is more than that of a high school graduate with no higher education ($32,000, per federal Scorecard data).
Still, more than 1,000 schools fell short of that threshold, though many of them were for-profit colleges concentrating in short-term credentials rather than traditional four-year degrees.
Seeing whether a college’s former students are earning “reasonable” incomes, said Michael Itzkowitz, HEA Group’s founder and president, can help people weigh whether they want to cross some institutions off their list. Someone deciding between similar colleges, for example, can see the institution that has produced students with significantly higher incomes.
While income isn’t necessarily the only criteria to consider when comparing schools, Itzkowitz said, “it’s a very good starting point.”
The analysis found that schools where students earned less than their peers who never attended college were generally those offering nondegree certificates, which can often be completed in 18 months or less, as well as for-profit institutions, although the list also includes some public and private nonprofit schools. At 71% of for-profit schools, a majority of students were earning less than high school graduates 10 years after enrolling, compared with 14% of public institutions and 9% of private nonprofit schools, Itzkowitz said.
“College is, indeed, worth it,” Itzkowitz said, but paying for it can be “substantially riskier” depending on the type of school you attend or the credential you seek.
Jason Altmire, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group representing for-profit career colleges, said lumping together schools offering mainly short-term certificate programs with colleges offering four-year degrees didn’t make sense. People who want to work in certain careers — hairdressing, for instance — generally can’t work in the field unless they earn a certificate, he said.
Altmire also said that income data from forprofit certificate schools might be skewed by “gender bias” because the programs had a higher proportion of women, who were more likely than men to work part-time while raising families, lowering a school’s reported median income.