Arresting homeless people is a tool for addressing homelessness in much the same way bashing your head against a wall until the point of losing consciousness is a tool for addressing headaches.

You may not know the headache is there for a while, but when you wake up, it’ll be worse than before.

Though the cognitive dissonance from years of railing against the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority to suddenly applauding its efforts may last longer than a headache for Oregon officials and business lobbies, that’s not the point of this letter.

This letter reiterates some of Street Roots’ editorial guidance regarding the criminalization of homelessness. Two tenets of good journalism come to mind: 1. If something is objectively true or false, it’s worth stating as much; and 2. What’s legal isn’t necessarily ethical.

Journalists often fancy themselves as truth-tellers — selfless crusaders in pursuit of a more just and honest society. Hell, ethics lending themselves to these ideas are baked into our profession’s most prominent code, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. The code is often atop journalism curricula from high school journalism classes onward.

“Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.”

“Boldly tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience. Seek sources whose voices we seldom hear.”

“Avoid stereotyping. Journalists should examine the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting.”

It is objectively false to say arresting homeless people reduces homelessness. It’s objectively true to say it makes matters worse. I covered the phenomena at some length in my May story about the city's new ordinance seeking to arrest, fine and jail homeless Portlanders. This is old hat for service providers, experts and even the federal government (aside from the Supreme Court, obviously).

“There is no benefit that I can see,” Katie O’Brien, Rose Haven executive director, said when asked about arresting, fining and jailing homeless Portlanders. “It's focusing on the wrong thing. It's not going to end homelessness.”

O’Brien went on to discuss how arrests, citations and convictions create new challenges for homeless people attempting to obtain stability. Even low-level offenses can impact employment, services and housing applications. Again, this isn’t an opinion. It’s a fact and one that has been studied and proven ad nauseam.

“A large number of individuals who enter emergency shelters and other homelessness services were recently discharged from jail or prison,” a 2016 U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness report found. “Some communities have adopted or are considering local policies and measures that criminalize homelessness and its associated behaviors — like sleeping outdoors — only perpetuating the cycle of criminal justice involvement and homelessness.”

I understand a lot of journalism takes the “both sides” approach. It outlines an issue, presents “both sides,” and leaves it at that. Street Roots outlines the issue, presents “both sides,” and then provides the necessary context for either side, something the SPJ code also encourages.

The broader issue, and why our coverage may seem different, is that other coverage sometimes fails to include “necessary context” and instead unintentionally paints “both sides” as equally relevant and credible. It’s understandable because, of course, cities won’t cite sources that essentially say, “Hey, this approach doesn’t work.” Service providers and people with lived experience rarely cite those sources because their first-hand experience also proves the approach doesn’t work.

A reporter slams those two anecdotal sides together into a 500-word story on a deadline, and you’re left with what seems like a normal policy debate with two equally valid arguments.

However, what’s lost is arresting homeless people — while as American as apple pie and baseball — is older than baseball, and the United States, too.

“Originating in 16th-century England, vagrancy laws came to the New World with the colonists and soon proliferated throughout the British colonies and, later, the United States,” Risa Goluboff, University of Virginia law professor, wrote in a 2019 study examining the history of anti-vagrancy and anti-loitering laws. “Taken together, vaguely worded vagrancy, loitering, and suspicious persons laws targeted objectionable ‘out of place’ people rather than any particular conduct. They served as a ubiquitous tool for maintaining hierarchy and order in American society.”

These laws aren’t a break from the status quo; they’re a return to it. And it’s a failed status quo. A newspaper wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) imbue equal credibility to both sides of a debate on whether our planet is hollow and filled with shapeshifting reptilians (something some people actually believe), and it shouldn’t imbue equal credibility for arguments in favor of a failed policy. Street Roots doesn’t, and regardless of what the Supreme Court rules, it won’t start now.

The other piece of this comes down to discerning between what’s legal and what’s ethical. Sometimes, there’s overlap, and sometimes, there’s not.

Much like providing “gratuities” to public officials after they do something you like, or ‘paying off a bribe’ as most normal people would say — another practice the court green-lighted in recent weeks — arresting, fining and jailing people for being homeless is legal but unethical. It’s especially unethical when considering that people of color, members of LGBTQIA2S+ communities, people escaping domestic violence, people with disabilities and military veterans are overrepresented in the nation’s homeless population.

The Supreme Court argued Grants Pass’ ordinances aren’t discriminatory because it’s theoretically as illegal for a housed person to sleep on public property as it is for a homeless person to sleep on public property. That’s how conservative justices subverted the very real and very valid argument that the ordinances violated a federal court precedent ruling it’s unconstitutional to penalize status, rather than conduct.

It’s like saying outlawing LGBTQIA2S+ relationships, something that used to be commonplace, wouldn’t be discriminatory because it theoretically applies to straight people. These two legal histories often converge. Vagrancy laws used to frequently target members of the LGBTQIA2S+ communities. Many of the same case precedence and questions, particularly around status versus conduct, were instrumental in weakening anti-homeless and anti-LGBTQIA2S+ laws.

“Their application changed alongside perceived threats to the social fabric, at different times and places targeting the unemployed, labor activists, radical orators, cultural and sexual nonconformists, racial and religious minorities, civil rights protesters, and the poor,” Goluboff wrote about how anti-vagrancy and anti-loitering laws were used to target other marginalized people and those the government wished to silence.

Criminalizing homelessness not only targets individuals with the least access to financial resources but disproportionately those who live at the intersection of multiple social, political and legal inequities. Taxpayers fund that targeting of marginalized communities with criminal enforcement when every shred of evidence suggests it will make the problem worse. On top of that, lawmakers don’t tell people they’re just reinventing a centuries-old wheel that has always crushed the downtrodden while failing to solve anything. Legal? Yes. Ethical? No.

Another layer of ethics to consider: The people most directly impacted by the criminalization of homelessness also have much less of a seat at the table when it comes to designing those laws compared to people with more money and social capital. Often, as we see in the city’s numerous expediting groups and task forces, as well as who it invites to testify in favor of its ordinances, it’s the developers and realtors who profit from the lack of affordable housing who are most often offered a seat at the table when talking about addressing affordable housing or homelessness. Does that seem ethical to you?

A newspaper is abdicating its most basic responsibility if it’s going to present these issues and ideas without context. Street Roots won’t do that.

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Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.

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