Great points by Housing and Homelessness Director Jonathan Russell. This decision continues a recent and historically recurring trend that will exacerbate the conditions of our nation's unhoused populations, many of whom are formerly incarcerated and live with serious mental health illnesses. Even so, SHCLA believes it's more imperative now than ever to lean into our collective abilities to think and act communally, supporting our unhoused neighbors by treating them as neighbors in our daily interactions and creating quality housing that addresses their needs. The public/private/nonprofit sectors and the general public have an opportunity (and added incentive now) to be the change we want to see. #unhoused #community #communitylandtrusts #mentalhealth #formerlyincarcerated #housingthatheals
Director, Housing and Homelessness, Alameda County Health | Executive Leader | Housing, Homelessness, and Behavioral Health Policy, Programs, and Advocacy | Systems Strategist
The Supreme Court ruled as we expected. The nation and California in particular will no doubt be rocked by its actions, but this is not new. It is but another chapter in a long, deeply racialized story. In the same way the 1960s war on poverty quickly became a war on the poor, and the 1980s war on drugs a war on largely Black and urban communities, criminalizing homelessness amounts to a war on the unhoused, when we should be warring against the forces depriving them of housing. When the original plaintiff in this case, Debra Blake, passed away in 2021 after a decade of homelessness precipitated by job loss, she’d been saddled with more than $5,000 in fees and fines simply for having nowhere to go. Debra’s story is that of countless others. More than a decade ago on Skid Row, this was the explicit “broken windows” policing strategy for the Safer Cities Initiative which dolled out thousands of tickets to homeless residents for things like jay walking, their low level crimes and fines often snowballing into insurmountable debts. If we want to make progress in a post-Martin v. Boise world though we cannot simply villainize the cities grappling with this issue and seeking to preserve their public spaces. No one, including those living in them, wants parks and alleyways to be neighborhoods. But we should be clear. This ruling is not a “tool” to address homelessness. It is a tool that will only further dispossess and disenfranchise the already dispossessed, and another chapter in the long, sordid history of blaming the poor for their poverty. #endhomelessness #housingforall #housingjustice #SCOTUS https://lnkd.in/g_7BuV_u
