Maria Torres lived in encampments in and around downtown San Antonio for five years, where she said she felt safer than in local shelters operated by nonprofits.
“It’s better to be in a camp because you can be in charge of your own property,” Torres said. “There’s not enough security. Not all the people there are good.”
The same could be said for encampments, she acknowledged, but there’s a stronger sense of community there.
“They are my people,” she said.
Torres was one of fewer than a dozen people who gathered outside City Hall on Monday morning to demand “housing not handcuffs” for San Antonio’s unhoused population while passing out food and hygiene products to those in need. It was one of dozens of rallies of various sizes held throughout the country as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, regarding criminal penalties for sleeping or camping in public.
The lawsuit calls into question whether fining and jailing people experiencing homelessness for camping overnight when there’s nowhere else to sleep constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Advocates for people experiencing homelessness argue that it criminalizes the basic human need, and therefore right, to sleep.
Initial reports after the court hearing indicate that a majority of justices may be inclined to uphold local ordinances across the U.S. that criminalize camping, but a final ruling isn’t expected until late June.
If the court sides with the City of Grants Pass — which imposed ordinances that ban using blankets, pillows or cardboard boxes while sleeping in public — existing laws in San Antonio and Texas won’t likely be affected.
Camping in public without a permit has been banned in San Antonio since 2005. People can be charged with a class C misdemeanor and fined up to $500 for violations. In 2021, Texas enacted a statewide ban with the same punishment.
Watching SCOTUS
A ruling from the Supreme Court that prohibits camping bans would “be a surprise,” said Greg Zlotnick, supervising attorney for the Housing Rights Project at the Center for Legal and Social Justice at St. Mary’s University School of Law. “But we certainly have been surprised by court rulings before.”
If the majority-conservative Supreme Court overturns Grants Pass’s ordinances, San Antonio’s camping ban would likely, depending on the details of the decision, be entirely overridden as well. The plaintiffs in the Grants Pass, who have experienced homelessness, argue that people who are “involuntarily” homeless — meaning there’s no access to low-barrier shelter — should not be penalized. If the court’s ruling wades into this distinction, which seems unlikely, there could be nuances added to future camping bans.
Because San Antonio already has a camping ban in place, a SCOTUS ruling in favor of such bans would only “reinforce the framework that is already in place and underscore the permissibility, the constitutionality, of such criminal or civil penalties,” said Zlotnick, who serves on the board of the nonprofit Close to Home San Antonio (formerly known as the South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless).
Neighboring city Leon Valley’s ordinance, which also prohibits people from sleeping in vehicles, would also likely not be affected.
Zlotnick worries that a ruling from the court that upholds punishment for being homeless may “reinforce a mindset that views addressing homelessness through a punitive lens rather than collaborative and restorative lens,” he said, “and reinforce the [false] idea that people experiencing homelessness are inherently criminal.”
There has been some bipartisan support among lawmakers across the nation for maintaining ordinances that criminalize camping or sleeping in public, citing the need for policies that provide opportunities as well as penalize certain behaviors when it comes to mitigating homelessness.
“The Supreme Court has an opportunity to strike a balance that allows officials to enforce reasonable limits on public camping while treating folks with compassion,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, which has also faced a significant homelessness issue, said on social media Monday morning.
In San Antonio’s case, the city and nonprofit partners have established something close to that balance, Zlotnick said.
“[San Antonio’s] policy approach in the past decade … has really tried to lead with accommodating folks experiencing homelessness as opposed to treating them as adversaries,” he said. “We’ve built up a really strong culture of working toward sustainable solutions to homelessness that I don’t think a Supreme Court decision could take away.”
San Antonio cleanups
The city’s ramped-up encampment cleanup program, put into effect earlier this year, offers people services and housing while letting them know a cleanup is coming. Often they are gone before the crews and police arrive.
But local community members and volunteers for the group Mootual Aid SATX, which organized the local rally Monday, said the cleanups, also called “sweeps” should be halted altogether.
“Abolish them — no more sweeps,” said a volunteer, who goes by “H.”
“They are … traumatizing and absolutely unnecessary,” she said. “That amount of energy could just be placed into securing stable and accessible housing.”
Recent investments in permanent supportive housing and low-barrier shelters have added to the city’s inventory of options for people experiencing housing, but these types of projects have faced neighborhood backlash and are typically at capacity with long waitlists.
Fines and jail time are not the best way to address homelessness, in fact, debt and criminal records are just more barriers to housing and employment, Zlotnick said. The best way is through a “compassionate, person-centered housing first approach.”
Last year, Torres, 54, moved into an RV at Towne Twin Village, the city’s largest single-site permanent supportive housing community for chronically homeless older adults.
The transition into housing has been difficult, she said, noting her mental and physical health issues, but “Towne Twin changed my life.”
“… I never knew [I was] going to be on the streets of San Antonio,” she said. “I always said: When that happens, I’m gonna die because I don’t know how to survive. … Look at me. I’m here and I feel so happy.”
