Outside our offices at Hesed House in Aurora, there are people sleeping in tents.
Even though Hesed House is the second-largest homeless shelter in Illinois with a legal capacity of 279 individuals, there is not enough room inside for everyone who needs a safe place to sleep. On nights when our shelter is full, the next best option for some people is to sleep outside nearby.
Everywhere you go, homelessness is on the rise and Aurora is no exception. Since 2020, the number of people who are unsheltered in Aurora has increased 666.67%. In 2020, Hesed House served 142 people per night, on average. By 2023, these numbers more than doubled and Hesed House was serving 293 people per night.
For the first time since its opening 41 years ago, Hesed House now needs to turn people away and resort to a wait list.
On April 22, the Supreme Court of the United States will consider a case that has very real impacts on the people Hesed does not have capacity to help as well as others like them around the nation. At issue in the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson is a city ordinance in the town of Grants Pass, Oregon, that bans the use of stoves and sleeping bags and/or bedding in city parks and other public places.
Our Supreme Court justices will decide whether laws that impose civil and criminal penalties on the homeless, simply because they are homeless, violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Laws that criminalize people who do not have permanent housing take many forms. In the Grants Pass case, the court will examine whether unhoused people can be fined or arrested for sleeping outside if no shelter is available to them in their communities. In other places around the United States, cities have enacted ordinances that ban people from the following – camping, sleeping, sitting or lying down in public; begging; living in vehicles; and sharing food with homeless individuals.
Laws and city ordinances that criminalize unhoused people do nothing to solve our nation’s homelessness crisis.
First, these ordinances are not cost-effective. In Illinois, median rent for a studio is $989/month or $11,868 annually. In contrast, it costs approximately $37,000 per year to incarcerate an individual in Illinois. Focusing on housing people instead of punishing them saves money.
Second, laws that criminalize people who do not have housing negatively impacts their health and well-being. For example, often times, a municipality may force unhoused people to leave a place where they have been camping through what is commonly referred to as an “encampment sweep.” The Journal of the American Medical Association published a 2023 study that people who have been forcibly displaced from a location or who were required to leave an encampment have an 11% reduction in life expectancy and a 50% increase in hospitalizations.
During these “sweeps” people may lose access to life-saving medications, medicine that may take weeks to replace.
Third, criminalization laws make it more difficult for people to transition out of homelessness. Many cities impose fines on unhoused people who do not have financial resources to pay them. When people cannot afford their fines, states refer those debts to collection, which harms their credit. This practice, in turn, prevents people from obtaining housing when prospective landlords perform credit checks after they apply for housing.
Similarly, charging people with crimes related to being homeless makes obtaining employment more difficult when potential employers perform background checks. If those who are working end up in jail, they may lose their jobs and any progress that they had been making towards being able to afford a permanent place to live.
Policy makers need to decide how to respond to the lack of affordable housing that is at the root of our current homeless crisis. The Illinois Homeless Bill of Rights provides legal protections based on an individual’s homeless status and prevents discrimination by state and municipal agencies.
This is a good step, but does not do enough to solve underlying causes of homelessness. Rather than spend money criminalizing and fining the homeless, our government, at the local, state and national level, should invest in affordable housing.
Both of us have worked with thousands of homeless individuals throughout our careers. We have never met anyone who wants to be homeless. As a society, it is time for policy makers to stop criminalizing unhoused people and instead, help solve the problem. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will agree.
Joe Jackson, executive director of Hesed House
Colleen Boraca, Northern Illinois University College of Law Health Advocacy Clinic
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