Supreme Court Addresses Homelessness: The issue is key in a Sundown Town, Where Blacks Couldn’t Live
News Talk
By BlackMansStreet.Today | Special to Trice Edney News Wire
(TriceEdneyWire.com/BlackMansStreet.Today) – The U.S. Supreme Court is taking on the issue of homelessness, which affects large numbers of Black people nationwide because, as a group, we comprise the nation’s largest homeless population.&
On Monday, the court argued whether local officials could ban homeless men and women from sleeping in the city’s public parks by charging them a fee. The city of Grants Pass, Oregon, charges& its homeless residents $295 per night for sleeping outside.
But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in San Francisco, enjoined Grants Pass from barring the town’s officials from charging men and women who sleep in the parks.
A brief, filed on April 3, argues that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment does not allow cities to issue fines or to arrest people for sleeping outside in public when they lack adequate shelter and the means to obtain it.&
The center of the storm is Grants Pass, Oregon, a town of nearly 40,000 with an estimated homeless population of almost& 600.& A footnote is that Grants Pass is or was a sundown town where Blacks were prohibited from living like...
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