Mandy Lancaster: Criminalizing homelessness is a heartless response to a complex issue
Imagine you are a young adult struggling with a toxic, dangerous environment at home. You flee but there is no permanent, safe place to go. You couch surf for as long as you can, you can’t afford an apartment, and beds at youth-oriented shelters are hard to secure because they have limited space with no open beds. Your only alternative is to sleep in a park or on a city street.
Thanks to a decision issued by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28, your lack of options could now lead to arrest or a costly citation. In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the court overturned a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which had held that it was unconstitutional to subject people experiencing homelessness to criminal and civil penalties for sleeping in public spaces.
The Grants Pass decision does nothing to solve the problem of homelessness. Simply because an unhoused person has no option other than sleeping on a park bench or in a tent on a public sidewalk, they could now be issued citations with fines they cannot pay and may face a future that is forever hampered by a criminal record. When our society should be extending a helping hand, we are instead delivering a slap in the face.
Ariel Hayes is director of sustainability and a past co-director of the Youth Success Project, which is spearheaded by young people who draw from their own lived experience to end youth homelessness in New Hampshire. She does not mince words about the Supreme Court decision, saying “When we are harassed and charged for just trying to survive, it becomes even harder for us to gain housing, employment, and get our needs met. Young people like us will be more likely to stay in dangerous places or domestic violence/trafficking situations because we fear being arrested. Criminalization also disproportionately impacts marginalized communities that are already overrepresented in both the homeless and incarcerated populations. This ruling is not only cruel and unusual punishment, but directly opposes commonsense and evidence-based practices shown to help reduce and end youth and adult homelessness.”
Homelessness is a complex issue, made even more challenging by the housing affordability crisis in New Hampshire and elsewhere. Yet there are solutions that lift people up rather than hold them down. This benefits not only the individual but our communities.
Some people advocate building more emergency shelters and affordable housing, so individuals removed from public parks and streets have a place to go. While these initiatives are needed, they will take time to implement and only address the outcome of homelessness rather than the cause. Supportive services and prevention programs need to be part of the solution as well. At Waypoint, we have helped young people experiencing homelessness by taking a deeper approach focused on providing stabilizing preventive services so that homelessness is rare; offering easily accessible emergency and intervention resources so homelessness is brief; and creating enough support to avoid relapse so homelessness does not recur.
Waypoint is piloting a youth homeless prevention program in Manchester that provides resources and support to youth and families before they are unhoused. We have also found that rapid rehousing paired with supportive services is an effective way to both get and keep young adults off the streets. Despite New Hampshire’s tight rental market, Waypoint has had great success working with local landlords to provide housing for young people ages 18 through 24. Local landlords provide rental housing for up to 24 months with rental support from Waypoint while the young adults participate in supportive counseling and skills development to become self-sufficient tenants.
The Supreme Court’s Grant Pass decision created a conundrum: Unhoused people can’t sleep outside in public spaces, but what if there is nowhere else to go? Criminalization and citations may remove homeless encampments, but at what cost?
Incarceration is a massive drain on taxpayer dollars with long term impacts and will make it even harder for our unhoused citizens to build a brighter future.
Early interventions and creative housing programs paired with support services provide long-term solutions, in response to a complex issue, as well as being more humane and cost-effective. Effective programs take time. As we develop solutions, criminalizing homelessness is not the answer.
Mandy Lancaster is the director of the Homeless Youth and Young Adult Department at Waypoint, a statewide nonprofit human services and advocacy organization, and is based in the Dover office.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Mandy Lancaster: Criminalizing homelessness is a heartless response to a complex issue
