The Grants Pass v Johnson decision at the Supreme Court came after an appeal of a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which banned cities and states from enforcing camping bans.
The argument of the 9th circuit judge was that moving people off public property who were camping there was “cruel and unusual punishment” if there was no designated place for them to go that was safe and secure.
But Jesse Rabinowitz with the National Homelessness Law Center said that’s changed.
“A year ago, the Supreme Court shamefully decided and ruled that people can be arrested, thrown in jail and given fines for sleeping outside, even if they have nowhere else to go," Rabinowitz said.
That didn’t change things for North Carolina because it’s outside the 9th circuit, but it did embolden governments across the country to enact bans they were wary of before the ruling — including in the town of Monroe, NC, in February.
Rabinowitz said the impact has been terrible.
"It's human whack-a-mole. People are displaced. They are made sicker. They are made less safe. Communities are made less safe, and at the end of the day, nobody's helped because no one's getting housing," he said.
Other advocates echoed those concerns. Assistant Director of Outreach for Veterans Services of the Carolinas Benjamin Horton said it’s not just new camping bans in the past year — he said local law enforcement agencies have been emboldened to increase their homeless encampment sweeps.
"You're now worrying about those law enforcement officers coming through, tearing it down, taking all of your stuff. You're losing everything you have multiple times, especially if you're not there, if you've gone to a soup kitchen," he explained. "You come back and all your stuff's gone, right? You might not even have your birth certificate, social security card, or ID anymore."
Horton says those losses can set a client back months when it comes to securing housing. These kinds of sweeps destabilize his homeless clients, and make it much harder to serve them or help them find housing.
Jason Black from Coastal Horizons agrees — clients are getting harder to physically locate.
"People are moving every three to five days because they're hyper vigilant to being disrupted or moved," he said. "The more people move, the less able they are to engage in treatment services, it's harder for outreach staff to reach them, it's harder for case managers to reach them, because their location is inconsistent.”
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank, has been pushing anti-homeless legislation across the country, including two bills in North Carolina. The two bills would create drug-free zones around homeless shelters and create a public camping ban.
Rabinowitz said that’s not surprising.
"In the one year since the Grants Pass decision, we have seen at least 320 anti-homeless laws introduced around the country, about 260 of which have passed," he said.
Cicero has offered model legislation on many of these bills in states across the country. Rabinowitz also said the founder, Joe Londsale, has ties to the White House.
"Joe Lonsdale, the founder of the Cicero Institute, is friends with JD Vance. He's friends with Elon Musk, he's friends with Peter Thiel, and he actually met with folks at the White House a few weeks ago," he said.
Devon Kurtz is the Director of Public Safety Policy at Cicero, and defended the organization’s efforts to ban camping across the country.
"Cities in California, after Grants Pass, have been moving towards this model because they understand that you get more of what you tolerate. And we really need to be more assertive in saying, it's unacceptable to have people living on the street," he said.
The think tank also opposes the housing first policies that many homelessness advocates say are the best option for helping end an individual's homelessness. Instead, it pushes for housing tied to drug and mental health treatment, with non-compliance being criminalized. Advocates are pushing back hard against that pendulum swing — but in the wake of the Grants Pass decision, it’s an uphill battle.
