This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which upheld laws in the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, that prohibit people from sleeping outside on public property even when there are no available shelter beds. This disappointing and harmful decision allows cities to enforce civil and criminal penalties against individuals who have no choice but to sleep outside, despite the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, the court’s ruling abandoned “its role in safeguarding constitutional liberties for the most vulnerable among us” by allowing the enforcement of laws that criminalize the status of being homeless.

In the wake of the Grants Pass decision, it is critical to reflect on current approaches to addressing homelessness in Philadelphia. The Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP) has worked since its founding in 1990 to advance and protect the rights of unhoused individuals, and our legal work provides a client-centered approach that aims to reduce the frequency and duration of homelessness. HAP meets its clients where they are; in the past year, HAP held almost 100 legal clinics in neighborhoods all over the city. HAP advocates know firsthand what studies across the country have long shown—laws like the ones at issue in Grants Pass that take a punitive approach to homelessness are ineffective and counterproductive. Encampment closures and law enforcement sweeps that target unhoused individuals result in arrests, fines, and loss or destruction of personal property, which, in turn, result in criminal records and debts and impose additional barriers to treatment, employment and housing. Medically vulnerable individuals are particularly at risk, as evidenced by Amanda Cahill’s tragic death in custody in September following her arrest during a law enforcement sweep in Kensington.