To the editor,
A case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court asks whether ticketing and arresting unhoused people for sleeping outside is cruel and unusual punishment. We think the answer is clearly yes, it is.
Unsheltered homelessness has been increasing since the pandemic, due to decades of underinvestment in affordable housing, healthcare, and community-based services. In our region, this is exacerbated by an aging housing stock, a lack of living wage jobs, and increased pressure on our limited housing stock as the rapid economic development in Central Ohio pushes buyers and renters south.
In Athens County, we are very fortunate to have law enforcement who employ more compassionate tactics when encountering unhoused people and, whenever possible, seek to provide supportive services and avoid unnecessary punitive measures. Unfortunately, some communities are not immune from more aggressive measures. The punitive approach makes it even more difficult for people to escape homelessness. Once you have a criminal record and debt, it’s much harder to find landlords willing to rent and employers willing to hire. And people often lose the documents they’ll need to obtain housing and jobs when their encampments get raided.
This month, oral arguments begin as the Supreme Court will weigh in on the constitutionality of an Oregon city’s efforts to penalize unhoused people who sleep outdoors, without alternatives. We hope the court will recognize the cruel and unusual nature of this law and rule accordingly. Laws that punish people for sleeping outside not only violate the U.S. Constitution, they violate human dignity.
We all want clean streets. We all want to eradicate homelessness. But criminalizing homelessness just pushes people around from one place to another. The most effective way to end unsheltered homelessness is to provide stable, affordable housing with case management, voluntary mental health and substance use treatment, and employment services. In Athens County, we offer a robust range of services and programs, but our efforts are hindered by the fact that we lack an emergency shelter.
As a community, we are seeking to tackle this need head on, through a coalition of community stakeholders including representation from the behavioral health system, health department, libraries, philanthropic sector, local government, domestic violence shelter, Ohio University, and more. We are pursuing efforts in advocacy, education, fundraising, and identifying innovative solutions that span the housing continuum. This includes an aggressive goal to open a low-barrier shelter in Athens as soon as we possibly can.
If you care about this issue and want to get involved, please reach out. We need all hands on-deck to ensure that every member of our community has access to safe, decent, secure, and affordable housing.
Sincerely,
Kerry Pigman, Executive Director, The Athens County Foundation
Megan Riddlebarger, Executive Director, The Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development
Kelly Hatas, Executive Director, Hocking, Athens, Perry Community Action Agency
