In matters like free speech and (intellectual) property rights, the world is interested in US law because it is a pioneer. A recent ruling by the US Supreme Court on homelessness, the crime of not owning or renting living spaces, would have gotten attention overseas if it were not for the uproar about Donald Trump, who is being shielded from prosecution by the apex court for bizarre actions committed while in office.
The Trump case reduces the accountability of the world’s most powerful person, and it is occasioning restless debate and angry editorialising everywhere. The uproar has overshadowed the court’s opinion on homelessness, the second since it was first perceived to be a problem in the 1980s. In a polarising judgement from which all liberal judges dissented, the court essentially told people without a roof over their heads: don’t fall asleep or you could be arrested.
Homelessness is painfully visible in prosperous nations because it looks like a cruel paradox. It is normalised in poorer nations, especially where development causes mass displacement. But as more nations, both developed and developing, tilt to the right, there will be more homelessness, because right-wing economics hardens property rights and widens the divide between the rich and poor. The US law’s response to homelessness could find takers in, say, Italy or India, because it’s easier to criminalise a problem than to solve it.
The legal trail began in Boise, Idaho in 2018. The population is about 2.35 lakh, of which about 600 were homeless. The majority were sheltered by the state, and only 60 ‘slept rough’, out on the streets. Of these, six opposed the city in America’s biggest appellate court, on an ordinance criminalising using “streets, sidewalks, parks, or public places as a camping place at any time”. Camping is defined as the “use of public property as a temporary or permanent place of dwelling, lodging, or residence”.
The plaintiffs argued that this amounted to preventing homeless people from sleeping, violating the Eighth Amendment to the US constitution that bars “cruel and unusual punishments”. This triggered another case against the City of Grants Pass, Oregon—population about 40,000, of which 600-odd are homeless, which had a similar ordinance concerning camping. Last week, the US Supreme Court upheld the ordinance. Which means, outrageously, that no homeless American can sleep in public any more without running the risk of arrest.
This case affects few people but is significant as by criminalising an action that homeless people cannot help doing, it saves governments the bother of forming a policy response—cheap housing, in this case—to a social problem. If this is acceptable to the apex court of a nation that invests heavily in welfare and subsidies, believing that it is profitable, it would be welcomed by governments like India’s, which think of welfare as wasted expenditure.
The number of homeless and migrants have been increasing in both rich and developing nations. For instance, San Francisco is a city in crisis partly because money flowing in from Silicon Valley has made housing unaffordable. In India, we camouflage our crisis by calling homeless “pavement dwellers”. They are not homeless, please. The pavements of the cities they are forced to migrate to are their homes. The slightly more fortunate live in slums and shanties, and Sanjay Gandhi was only the first politician to dream of making them vanish.
A full life requires more than shelter. People need three distinct places in their lives, urban sociologist Ray Oldenberg proposed in the 1980s (precisely when homelessness became a problem)—a home (first place), a workplace (second place), and a third place, a commons that could be a street corner, a public park, library or playground, or even a role playing game online—any place where everyone is a visitor, therefore equal. These are spaces we inhabit when we take time off from building a home and career, activities that consume our lives.
Third places are psychologically important because they let us loiter without the pressure of goals, competition or commerce. Oldenburg believed they foster democratic sentiments, civil society and a sense of belonging. Their importance became obvious during the pandemic lockdowns, which conflated the first and second places—the workplace and the home merged. The third place was erased because no one could venture out, and cities became sprawls of dwelling units in isolation. Millions of people went quietly mad.
The ruling against homeless people sleeping in public places signals that the third place is now threatened in the country where it was discovered. America dislikes loitering. Signs in semi-private areas, like pedestrian thoroughfares through campuses, urge police to act against loiterers. McDonald’s outlets have signs warning patrons to clear out in 30 minutes.
It’s all right for munitions to loiter, but people must not. They must go to work or go home. If they go to a third place, they must pay for the privilege, as in a cinema, a restaurant or mass transit. And if they have lost their jobs and their homes, they must be penalised for living their lives in public, without any commercial transaction. Just as the urban poor in India are picked up in a police dragnet every time a foreign dignitary loiters by. Poverty is a great equaliser. Nobody who’s privileged, no matter where, wants it to be visible.
Pratik Kanjilal
For years, the author has been speaking easy to a surprisingly tolerant public
(Views are personal)
(Tweets @pratik_k)