Supremely Insane
Another way of looking at the Supreme Court’s homelessness deliberations
I’ve never been at the Supreme Court for their deliberations. But I sure as hell wanted to be there this past Monday, April 22, 2024, as they pondered whether or not communities have the right to criminalize homelessness. I was part of the hundreds gathered safely away from the resplendent structure where important decisions are rendered.
As I drove back to North Carolina, I pondered what to write about that wouldn’t be redundant. I listened to the hearing (official transcripts). I read (and highly recommend) articles, including this in the Bucks County Beacon by my friend and journalist Pat LaMarche inside during the testimony, and this in TruthOut by Eleanor Bader, also inside.
First, a few observations:
- The Supremes’ blanket cluelessness reflects that of most Americans, who don’t understand homelessness, but they think they do. Outside the courthouse, about 100 handmade blankets adorned the parkway, assembled as one of the Charles Bruce Foundation’s ongoing #MemorialBlanket displays. The blankets, filled with love, were later distributed to people who needed them.
- Attaching addictions and mental health to virtually all people without homes seems to be in vogue. The Supremes assumed such. Not true.
- The theory of what should happen to people in homeless situations — i.e., go to the shelter — is rarely that simple. Nor do all police officers turn into helpful social worker-types when they encounter someone who looks homeless to them.
- The behind-the-scenes discussion of local officials dealing with street homelessness, as revealed in the Grants Pass hearing, can be far removed from a compassionate, humane response. Justice Sotomayor astutely observed,
“And didn’t the city council president say [at a public meeting], our intent is to make it so uncomfortable here that they’ll move down the road, meaning out of town, correct?” Correct.
My years of running Illinois shelters exposed me to the good, bad, and ugly sides of public safety personnel and community leaders faced with managing homelessness. Not all were compassionate. And those who weren’t could be scary-cruel. (See “trauma” below)
- It’s “easy” to drill down into a homeless person’s life from a comfy chair in a courthouse, seeming to know exactly what life is like on the streets. Not.
Now for my different take on this complex topic.
Instead of banning and criminalizing homelessness, how about banning the common cause of this growing problem?
What’s a common source of afflictions tormenting people on the street?
Trauma.
Where does trauma originate? Dr. Gabor Maté, a renowned expert on trauma, points to some sources of trauma,
“…emotional loss in childhood, and in the case of severe addicts, you can see — and large-scale population studies show — that there is significant childhood trauma such as family violence, addiction in the family, sexual and emotional abuse, physical abuse, a parent being mentally ill or in jail.”
Maté attributes addictions as the primary response to trauma.
“All addictions — alcohol or drugs, sex addiction or internet addiction, gambling or shopping — are attempts to regulate our internal emotional states because we’re not comfortable, and the discomfort originates in childhood.”
BUT…
Not all addicted people are homeless.
Not all people experiencing homelessness are addicted.
The Supremes obsessed on addictions. And mental illnesses, also a byproduct of trauma.
So, let’s take a leap here, at least as ambitious as the leap of those wanting to criminalize or otherwise ban homelessness.
Let’s ban sources of trauma, at least the ones where society has some control — family poverty, violence, sexual, emotional and physical abuse.
Lately I’ve watched a spate of documentaries of famous people — Joan Baez, Sly Stallone, Quincy Jones — talking freely about their childhood traumas that they attribute to their intense lifestyles and their pursuit of performance excellence. They also connect trauma to their addictive behaviors.
While they managed to channel energy and focus to some positive behaviors, they also had “issues” attributable to their rough childhoods.
To be clear — a point not taken up by SCOTUS — not all addicted, mentally ill people are homeless. Some are quite wealthy, insulated by power and position. If we could handpick those public officials whose behavior seems, um, off the charts, you’d likely find a history of childhood abuse. Case in point, the former president.
A common story in newsfeeds is sexual abuse of minors. Just what do people think happens to the young person traumatized by their abuser?
The abuser may turn out to be someone who experienced abuse themselves when they were younger. The priest. The doctor. The cop. The legislator. The coach. And so on.
Pull back the curtain on someone’s cruel, abusive behavior, and you’d likely find them being on the receiving end of abuse in their early years.
Causes and perpetuators of homelessness
A while back I had time to compile a daunting chart of things I’ve learned that contribute to homelessness. It would do the Supremes well to take a look at how complex this issue is. Maybe they’d have a bit more sympathy for the unhoused.
In the meantime…
Those of us involved in the world of homelessness advocacy would like you and our justices to understand a few key facts:
Housing crisis. It’s beyond a crisis. We’ve long been involved in a steadily deteriorating housing market, adeptly explained in Thom Hartmann’s article. Among other astute observations,
“Forty-three years into America’s Reaganomics experiment, homelessness has gone from a problem to a crisis. Rarely, though, do you hear that Wall Street — a prime beneficiary of Reagan’s deregulation campaign — is helping cause it.”
Broken systems. Case in point, Richmond, VA’s housing authority evicting families willy-nilly, creating homelessness in a city bereft of emergency resources. They need to explain what’s happening to “more than 100 residents who RRHA took to eviction court in recent weeks and dozens who already received judgements.”
Look upstream. The consequences of childhood abuse and homelessness reflect much of what we see on the streets today. Again, not every person experienced homelessness/abuse as a child. But countless people I’ve interviewed for my film projects, or those staying at shelters I ran, if we were able to comfortably talk about their childhood, would share their experiences of these hardships.
Many didn’t recognize that their housing situations were actually homelessness. But when you ask about losing housing, moving around with no regular place to live, staying with family/friends or acquaintances irregularly, frequent evictions, etc., the “aha” look comes over their faces.
Invisible, ignored homelessness. I’ve ranted for years about how conflicting federal definitions of homelessness almost totally ignore (80%) families who’ve lost housing and aren’t “lucky” enough to be counted because they’re not staying in a HUD-funded shelter. Like these families in Idaho. The oft-cited HUD count of homelessness, now about 650,000, barely touches the reality, which far exceeds 7–8 million.
Dealing with homelessness.
The $1 million-plus cost for the Supreme’s peering into homelessness is a small price compared to the millions invested by groups like the Cicero Institute who spare no effort to get municipalities to clamp down on homelessness. States are coached by these heartless folks on how to make homelessness a crime — sleeping on public lands is illegal in a growing number of states.
The justices drilled down on this issue. I found myself fuming as I drove home across North Carolina after my national and state advocacy activities. We’re obsessing about Grants Park, OR, and we’re going to let the entire vulnerable population of unhoused people die because we cannot do right by them. Supremely stupid.
We’re working on an awesome book project, The Three Melissas’ Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness (Making Bad a Little Better).
