Tribune editorial: Supreme Court ruling on homelessness should not tempt Utah to take the easy, and wrong, way out
07/07/2024 08:00 AM
According to the United States Supreme Court, it is not a violation of anyone's basic constitutional rights to arrest people for the simple act of sleeping on the street, even if there is nowhere else for them to go.
That doesn't mean that trying to arrest our way out of homelessness is any less cruel or ineffective than it was before the court's 6-3 decision.
The good news is that, even if the new standard gives Salt Lake City and other communities a greater range of options for keeping their streets clean and safe, Utah's political and civic leadership seems to have realized that criminalizing homelessness is not the way to go.
State and city officials, along with civic groups such as the Utah Impact Partnership, are realizing that providing not only emergency shelter, but also long-term services to address the causes and effects of homelessness, is necessary if the problem is to be solved, not just swept around from one neighborhood to another.
Getting someone off the street, and keeping them off, means seeing to the needs of the whole person, not just the roof over their head.
It is taking longer than anyone would like, but our leaders are also coming to see that, as the cure for homelessness is homes, we need to build a lot more of them. From deeply affordable, high-density projects and tiny homes to townhouses and starter homes that working class families can actually have some hope of buying.
The court's ruling should not be seen as encouragement for communities facing a homelessness problem to take the quick, easy and, over time, ineffective way out.
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