The U.S. method to addressing homelessness within the wake of a current Supreme Court docket ruling will maim and kill individuals, housing rights advocates and specialists inform Truthout. It should disproportionately hurt disabled People, who comprise more than a quarter of the nation’s inhabitants and about half of its unhoused population.
The court docket’s choice in Grants Move v. Johnson, issued in June 2024, allows local governments to quote or jail unhoused individuals for tenting on public lands even when there isn’t a shelter out there to them. The ruling de facto criminalized homelessness nationwide.
In the meantime, because it got here down, state governments have also given the green light to ramped-up policing as a response to homelessness. The Trump administration has additionally expressed assist for carceral approaches, together with banning city tenting and forcibly relocating homeless people into psychiatric establishments or detention camps.
“I’m terrified of being [detained] in an encampment when that begins taking place, and I believe that it’ll if issues proceed the way in which they’re going,” Finn, an unhoused and disabled resident of Portland, Oregon, who’s utilizing solely their first identify as a result of security considerations, informed Truthout.
Homelessness within the U.S. reached a file excessive in 2024, with the Division of Housing and City Improvement recording greater than 771,000 unhoused Americans throughout its annual point-in-time depend. That marked a staggering 18 % improve from the variety of unhoused individuals recorded on the earlier annual depend.
On the identical time, coverage makers have begun to show away from the evidence-based Housing First model for addressing homelessness and embrace punitive approaches. Proper-wingers have lengthy advocated for the carceral method, and Democratic lawmakers have begun to echo them in recent times, with cities, together with San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, corralling unhoused residents in encampments and implementing tenting bans.
Disabled People are at specific danger from the nationwide pattern to criminalize homelessness. They’re overrepresented among the many nation’s unhoused inhabitants as a result of a number of components. Insurance policies that enable employers to pay subminimum wages to disabled employees and place caps on the savings or revenue of recipients of Supplemental Safety Revenue (SSI) and some Medicaid benefits contribute to increased poverty amongst disabled individuals and render them less able to prepare financially for a disaster.
Individuals with disabilities additionally experience discrimination in housing, health care, employment and wages, making it tough for some to secure stable housing and earn the revenue wanted to fulfill their fundamental wants. These types of discrimination are compounded for girls, people of color and trans people. The U.S. additionally has a significant shortage of reasonably priced and accessible housing.
Consultants warn that much more disabled individuals are more likely to slip into poverty and homelessness because the Trump administration eyes cuts to Medicaid, slashes funding for cover and advocacy companies, undermines public health packages and pursues pharmaceutical tariffs which might be more likely to make medications more expensive. These are considerations that maintain David Zoltan, a Chicago-based human rights activist, awake at night time. “I’m measuring my life proper now in months,” they informed Truthout.
“No person goes by way of homelessness unscathed.”
Zoltan, an amputee who lives with power sicknesses, together with advanced post-traumatic stress dysfunction, skilled homelessness for a number of months nearly a decade in the past. Whereas they’ve been off the streets for years, the roof over their head has by no means stopped feeling tenuous, and circumstances have worsened since Donald Trump started rolling again federal assist packages. “I survive as a result of I’ve SSDI, Medicare, Medicaid, a housing voucher and SNAP advantages,” Zoltan informed Truthout. “And nonetheless, I’ve actually needed to cease paying my electrical invoice simply to have the ability to make the remainder of my payments work.”
Supplemental Safety Incapacity Revenue (SSDI) supplies month-to-month funds to people with well being circumstances that restrict or stop them from working. SSI supplies funds to disabled and older adults with low incomes. These advantages have misplaced 20 % of their buying power since 2010 as rising shopper costs outstrip annual cost-of-living changes to the funds, in accordance with an analysis by The Senior Citizens League.
Like Zoltan, a number of disabled individuals who spoke to Truthout for this text expressed concern about rising residing prices outstripping assist packages. Janine Harris, an unhoused resident of Grants Move, Oregon, the city that introduced the now notorious Supreme Court docket case, additionally famous the disproportionate share of medical debt shouldered by disabled People. “There are disabled individuals out right here and aged individuals out right here who can’t afford to dwell in a home as a result of the rents have gotten so excessive, and a few of them are utilizing bank cards to repay medical debt,” Harris informed Truthout. “They don’t have the cash or the medical or housing advantages to cope with that, and they also find yourself dropping their properties, they usually’re on the road.”
As soon as a disabled particular person loses their housing, they face having to navigate homelessness providers which might be typically inaccessible. Obstacles to accessing homeless shelters are ubiquitous, in accordance with specialists and advocates who spoke to Truthout. “They will not be bodily accessible. They could not enable individuals to carry service animals. They could not enable individuals to retailer drugs or get different kinds of actually elementary lodging,” Tom Stenson, deputy authorized director at Disability Rights Oregon (DRO), informed Truthout.
Miranda DeNovo, a New Yorker who has spent the final yr advocating for a buddy with myalgic encephalomyelitis/power fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and lengthy COVID who was made homeless by caregiver abuse, informed Truthout that the pair have been in touch with over a dozen housing and case administration organizations, none of which has been capable of present the assist wanted to assist DeNovo’s buddy transition into housing. DeNovo’s buddy was not capable of entry home violence shelters as a result of they require common visits from a caregiver, which the shelters couldn’t accommodate as a result of privateness considerations.
“Once we requested them to advocate alternate options, each single service supplier simply stated my buddy would wish to enter a nursing residence,” DeNovo informed Truthout. “I’m simply so pissed off on the lack of knowledge of this problem, that sick individuals are nonetheless being pushed into institutions though we fought for programs to stop that.”
For a lot of long COVID patients and others who’re immunocompromised or involved in regards to the risks of COVID-19 and different infectious ailments, the crowded indoor setting and lack of an infection management measures at most communal shelters make these areas inaccessible.
In the meantime, Finn — the Portland, Oregon, resident — informed Truthout that they as soon as left a shelter though they’d nowhere else to go as a result of they witnessed shelter workers bodily abuse different disabled residents and feared for their very own security.
When shelters are inaccessible or hostile to disabled individuals, people are sometimes pressured to remain outdoor in circumstances that may exacerbate well being points. Harris struggled to dwell in an area communal shelter as a result of her claustrophobia, which manifests in panic assaults. Different shelters wouldn’t settle for her service animal. Since she started residing outdoor, her arthritis and power migraines have worsened. “My well being is deteriorating each single day; I can really feel it,” she informed Truthout.
Jeffrey Dickerson, one other unhoused resident of Grants Move, has had an identical expertise. Dickerson has been intermittently unhoused since experiencing an aneurysm that left him unable to work in 2006. He’s unable to avoid wasting sufficient from his SSDI funds to cowl the primary and final month’s lease and safety deposit wanted to maneuver into most residences.
“These proposals aren’t simply criminalizing being poor, however they’re criminalizing having a incapacity.”
However sleeping outdoors on a gravel lot, the place Grants Move lawmakers have sequestered the city’s unhoused inhabitants after banning city tenting, has worsened Dickerson’s power nerve ache. That ache is a symptom of neuropathy, which additionally causes weak point in his toes, making it tough for him to stroll on the uneven gravel. “It’s not simply bodily both,” Dickerson informed Truthout. “It’s emotional, it’s hectic.”
Zoltan informed Truthout that for nondisabled and disabled individuals alike, the expertise of homelessness can result in new well being issues. “No person goes by way of homelessness unscathed,” they stated. “To what extent it’s disabling, that’s going to vary from individual to individual, however I’d argue that it has an impact on all people.”
For disabled individuals residing on the road, the current proliferation of insurance policies criminalizing homelessness has compounded risks. At least 150 cities in 32 states have handed or strengthened ordinances banning outside tenting for the reason that Grants Move v. Johnson choice final summer time.
“Cities on the market are creating restrictions on tenting, and sitting, and mendacity down in public that carry with them some implicit understanding that you’ve to have the ability to transfer round, you could have to have the ability to carry your tent round, or you could have to have the ability to transfer throughout a specific space that’s not paved or doesn’t have a secure manner for individuals who use wheelchairs to get round,” DRO’s Stenson informed Truthout. “These proposals aren’t simply criminalizing being poor, however they’re criminalizing having a incapacity.”
Those that can’t meet the brand new calls for usually tend to be swept up in crackdowns, elevating the prospect of citations, arrests, police violence and confiscation of belongings. Unhoused people interviewed by Truthout reported having requirements — together with mobility aids, drugs and identification paperwork — taken in police sweeps. Recent reporting in San Francisco confirmed that town confiscated dozens of wheelchairs and walkers in sweeps of homeless encampments in 2024.
The incapacity group isn’t solely on the entrance traces of accelerating violence towards unhoused individuals nationwide, however additionally it is entrance and middle in fighting anti-homeless policies within the courts. A lawsuit filed in February 2025 by DRO and the Oregon Legislation Middle towards the Metropolis of Grants Move is one instance. Harris and Dickerson are each plaintiffs within the swimsuit, which asserts that the town’s new policies on homelessness violate Oregon legal guidelines, together with legal guidelines prohibiting discrimination towards disabled individuals. A choose halted enforcement of town’s guidelines on March 28, 2025, whereas the lawsuit strikes ahead.
Whereas Grants Move Police proceed to quote unhoused individuals for non-enjoined sections of the regulation, resembling for leaving out trash or having a too-large tent footprint, there isn’t a indication that they’ve violated the court docket’s order, in accordance with DRO.
Authorized battles like this one have been made extra advanced by final yr’s Supreme Court docket choice, which advocates stated has empowered anti-homeless contingents inside authorities and the general public. Nonetheless, Stenson informed Truthout that the lawsuits ship a message that “the rights of individuals with disabilities should be revered.” If current anti-homeless laws goes unchallenged, Stenson fears that underneath the insurance policies, “it will simply be unlawful for a whole lot of individuals to exist.”
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