Street Roots
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News
ACLU, from page 4
There is an entire legal infrastructure in
Oregon that makes meeting basic survival
needs illegal in public spaces,” the report
found. “Oregon law has made almost all
aspects of basic survival and daily living a
crime for unhoused people.”
In March, the Eugene City Council
* passed an ordinance banning dogs from a
12-block radius in downtown Eugene for six
months (the ordinance expired in
November). Supporters of the ordinance
cited safety concerns, especially after a high-
profile incident in which the dog of an
employee of the Eugene Public Library was
killed by a larger dog. And downtown
business owners complained that the
presence of dogs, often owned by homeless
people, in the downtown core negatively
affected business.
Three weeks passed between the
ordinance s passage and its effective date in
April. By the time the ordinance went into
effect, hardly any homeless people or dogs
could be seen within the ban zone, which
included places such as the public library
and the main bus terminal.
Over the six months the ordinance was in
effect, Eugene police officers made 69
“stops,” meaning the officers stopped
someone with a dog and talked to that
person about the ban without giving a
citation.
A total of 15 people were given citations
for violating the ban. All but one o f them
were hom eless.
OREGON
According to the ACLU of Oregon’s
“Decriminalizing Homelessness; Why
Right to Rest Legislation is the High
Road for Oregon,” 69 Oregon cities
have 224 laws that directly affect
Number of laws related to camping;
125
sitting and loitering:
Nur
ling laws:
20
Nur
camping;
31
restrict car
national trend. Last year, the National Law
Center on Homelessness and Poverty
released a report, “Housing Not Handcuffs,”
that surveyed laws that 187 U.S. cities have
adopted and put into practice since 2006.
The report found that laws prohibiting
“loitering, loafing, or vagrancy” increased by
88 percent. Adoption of laws that ban
homeless people from living in their cars,
which can lead to vehicle impoundment and
a person losing possessions, saw the most
marked increase in the last decade: 143
percent.
Violating these laws and interacting with
the police can create a growing amount of
citations, arrests, court fees and criminal
Page 5
successful.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is
considering a case challenging Boise,
Idaho’s camping ordinance. The case, filed
in 2009 by the National Law Center on
Homelessness and Poverty and Idaho Legal
Aid Services, challenges the legality of the
city’s camping ordinance, which makes it
illegal to camp in public spaces at any time
of the day and makes doing so disorderly
conduct.
In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice
filed a “statement of interest” in the case,
noting that camping bans are bad policy and
are often found unconstitutional on the
grounds they violate the Eighth
Amendment, which prohibits excessive fines
and cruel and unusual punishment.
It was the first time that the Department
of Justice issued an opinion on camping
bans, which “is really influential,” Bauman
said. It inspired a lot of people who were
interested in bringing challenges under the
Eighth Amendment.”
In August, a U.S. District Court judge
issued a temporary restraining order to
prohibit the city of Houston from enforcing
its anti-camping ordinance, the result of a
lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Texas and the
National Law Center on Homelessness and
Poverty.
When granting the restraining order, U.S.
District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt said the
homeless plaintiffs “are involuntarily in
public, harmlessly attempting to shelter
themselves - an act they cannot realistically
re c o rd s, w hich can c re a te b a rr ie rs to g e ttin g
cam p in g o rd in an c e, w h ich m a k e s cam ping
forgo, a n d th a t is in te g ra l to th e ir s ta tu s as
unsheltered h o m e le s s individuals.
a jo b , a c c e s s in g s o c ia l s e r v ic e s a n d g e ttin g
or sleeping in a car parked in public spaces
illegal anywhere in the city and can come
with a fine up to $500, has dramatically
increased. More than 300 citations have
been filed in the Ashland Municipal Court
this year, compared to 145 citations in 2016
and 129 in 2015. There are 679 homeless
people living in all of Jackson County,
according to state data.
The increase of laws directly affecting
homeless people in Oregon reflects a
h o u sin g .
E n f o r c e m e n t o f t h e C it y ’s b a n a g a i n s t t h e
In Ashland, enforcement of the city’s
“You don’t see these laws solving any
problems,” McCullough said.
If laws such as Eugene’s dog ban simply
move homeless people from one part of the
city to another, “the truth of the matter is
that you’ve moved the problem, instead of
actually solving the problem, which is that
folks can’t access housing,” she said.
Legal challenges to bans on camping,
loitering and panhandling have been
plaintiffs may, th e re fo re , c a u se th e m
irreparable harm by violating their Eighth
Amendment right to be free from cruel and
unusual punishment due to their status of
‘homelessness.’”
In Portland, enforcement of the city’s
camping ban became less strictly enforced
after the city settled a case brought by the
Oregon Law Center, a nonprofit law office
that represents lower-income people, which
sued the city in 2008 over its camping
ordinance, arguing that the camping
ordinance violated the Constitution’s Eighth
Amendment.
The Oregon Law Center would not
comment for this article.
In 2012, the lawsuit was settled after the
city agreed to hold confiscated property of
homeless campers for at least 30 days and
notify homeless people of how their
possessions could be recovered.
For years, Portland had a “sit-lie”
ordinance, which prohibited people from
sitting or lying on a sidewalk between 7 a.m.
and 9 p.m., and from putting their
possessions on a sidewalk unless the person
was less than two feet away.
In 2009, a U.S. District Court judge ruled
the ordinance to be unconstitutional, finding
that enforcement of the ordinance was
arbitrary and discriminatory.
A year later, the Portland City Council
created the city’s Sidewalk Management
Plan, which includes the “pedestrian use
zones,” which are intended to “ensure
unimpeded movement for pedestrians” by
prohibiting “immobile activities such as
sitting or lying.” There are two pedestrian
use zones in the city, which encompass all of
downtown Portland, most of the Pearl
District, and the area around the Rose
Quarter and the Lloyd District.
McCullough and dos Santos would not
definitively identify particular laws that the
ACLU of Oregon is planning to challenge.
“W e w ould b e m o s t in te r e s te d in lo o k in g
at where there are laws like this being
e n f o r c e d a n d t h e r e a r e n ’t a n y a d v o c a t e s
w o rk in g on it,” M cC ullough said.
“There is developing case law around, in
particular, targeting folks for sleeping and
camping, ... There is also certainly case law
against the panhandling laws,” she said.
“I think there’s a whole bunch of different
places where the Constitution can step in to
protect people from having their existence
criminalized, from being treated differently
because of their (socio-economic) class.
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