Helen Cruz, an unhoused Grants Pass native, knows the indignity first hand. Over five years living in city parks before a nearby church took her in, she says she received more than $5,000 in camping related fines. “I was holding down two jobs when I was out here, and it’s still not enough to be able to rent a place,” she said. “The terms of low income housing here is $1,000 a month, and that’s not workable either.” Still, from Phoenix, to Los Angeles, to Seattle, city leaders and law enforcement groups — members of both political parties — have joined Grants Pass in urging the justices to make it easier to clear tent encampments from the streets. “Cities need to have these ordinances so that they can help incentivize people to accept offers of help,” Evangelis said. “That’s what these laws do.” In its brief to the high court, Grants Pass says lower courts created “a judicial roadblock preventing a comprehensive response to the growth of public encampments in the West” and that the situation threatens “crime, fires, the reemergence of medieval disease, environmental harm, and record levels of drug overdoses and deaths on public streets.”
Source: KAKE – News
