Free Republic

In a Supreme Court showdown Monday over whether the homeless have a "right" to camp in public, almost no one mentioned the actual victims of that crazy idea. Homeless advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, told the court that living on the streets is a "victimless" crime. Victimless? Everyone who has to step over needles and human poop and navigate around half-conscious humans while walking to work or taking their kids to school is a victim. Every store owner whose entrance is blocked by makeshift cardboard shelters is a victim.

Oral argument before the Supreme Court this week showed why it is nonsense to claim that anti-vagrancy laws violate the Constitution‘s Eighth Amendment provision against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Indeed, in the vernacular sense, what is cruel and unusual is a judicial edict that says law-abiding citizens must put up with public spaces featuring major health hazards, including even the plague. Yet that’s what some lower courts, bizarrely, say citizens must do. By any normal reading, the Eighth Amendment is intended to forbid overly harsh penalties, not to determine what sorts of conduct can or can’t be outlawed. Unfortunately, the...

A 27-year-old homeless woman was killed recently when a lawnmower ran over her while she was sleeping in a park in Modesto, California. Christine Chavez was killed in Beard Brook Park on July 8, according to KXTV-TV. “My mom had to pick up pieces of her. That’s not correct,” Randy Chavez, the victim’s brother, said, according to the Modesto Bee. “We want ordinances to change so it doesn’t happen again. Regardless if they are homeless they are still people and should be treated the same as any other people,” he said. The park had been public, and at one time...

San Jose, Calif. has the highest ratio of unhoused young adults in the nation, according to a new study. The nonprofit United Way of the National Capital Area analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development on the number of people experiencing homeless and vacant housing units in 100 major cities. The results of the analysis were broken down in a recently released report. There were 582,462 people experiencing homelessness in January of last year marking a .3 percent increase since 2020, according to HUD data. But while anyone can experience homelessness, there...

Welcome to the Third World… especially if you live along America’s West Coast. After all, it was really closer than you once thought it was. “Encampments” of squatters abound in parks, parking lots, under and along freeways, wherever they can get away with it. Why? Nothing more complicated than the combination of mild weather and a woke political establishment. A fact of climatology is that the west coasts of continents have much milder weather than the east coasts. A fact of politics is the existence of guilty middle-class liberals who form a base of support for all kinds of dystopic...

When the coronavirus emerged in the U.S. this year, public health officials and advocates for the homeless... ... scrambled to move people into hotel rooms, thinned out crowded shelters and moved tents into designated spots at sanctioned outdoor camps. [R]esearchers don’t know why there appear to be so few outbreaks among the homeless. More than 200 of an estimated 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco have tested positive for the virus, and half came from an outbreak at a homeless shelter in April. One homeless person is among the city’s 69 deaths. In other places with large homeless populations, the...

A very disturbing video was posted on Twitter this weekend. A homeowner in Los Angeles claims the local government is preventing him from removing a homeless encampment from his property.

Let's get a little tactile input on the vagrancy problem.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Trump on Wednesday said he expects the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to slap San Francisco with a violation notice in the coming days related to pollution associated with the city’s homeless population. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump again took aim at Los Angeles and San Francisco over the volume of homeless people in each city. But he escalated his rhetoric, saying an announcement citing San Francisco for environmental violations would come in the next week.

Basically anyone who has ever been to an airport knows that finding an open power outlet can be one of the most stress-inducing aspects of flying. So it should come as no surprise that people are freaking out over this power outlet sticker prank. Thanks to one beleaguered traveler’s commitment to exposing this diabolical trick to the world, a photo of one of the fake sockets has gone viral. “Whoever put up this fake sticker of an open outlet at the airport, you are now my enemy for life,” Twitter user Brandon Ewing captioned a photoset of himself discovering the...

Starbucks announced a new policy Saturday that allows anyone to sit in its cafés or use its restrooms, even if they don’t buy anything. The new policy comes five weeks after two black men who hadn’t bought anything were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks. Company executives have said its previous policies were loose and ambiguous, leaving decisions on whether people could sit in its stores or use the restroom up to store managers. […] The company said anyone can use its cafés, patios or restrooms without buying anything, but it noted workers should still call the police if someone is...

With a 5-0 vote, a Colorado city has approved an ordinance that will make it illegal to sit or lie down on downtown sidewalks, curbs or other public areas. The measure passed at the May 15, 2018 Durango City Council meeting. The city council acted after hearing numerous complaints from business owners and visitors about people laying in the middle of the sidewalks in the downtown business district. Exemptions include people experiencing medical emergencies, people with disabilities, children in strollers or those attending parades, festivals, performances or other special events

Alex Berezow, a microbiologist from the University of Washington, is leaving Seattle after fourteen years in what he believed was the most beautiful city in the world. He has penned an eloquent column on his decision for the Seattle Times. It makes for startling reading no matter where you live in the U.S. For starters, Seattle's policies have created a larger homeless population than in the past. Berezow was so concerned about this that he made an appointment with Debora Juarez, the District 5 City Council member for whom Berezow had voted, to talk about the matter: I believe strongly...

New York City's city council is set to dilute a host of criminal laws including laws against public urination and excessive noise because council members believe too many members of minorities are getting arrested.

It appears Victor Frost isn't the only Palo Alto panhandler willing to fight to defend his turf. On Monday, police said, one female beggar drew a knife and threatened to stab another who had taken her favorite spot, in front of Starbucks on University Avenue. Terry Barber, 51, was arrested and booked into jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, police Sgt. Wayne Benitez said. Authorities were called to the scene at about 3:30 p.m. by the victim, a wheelchair-bound woman who said she had been threatened with what looked like a butcher knife, Benitez said. She said...

The Town of Herndon announced yesterday that it would close its 21-month-old day-laborer center next week instead of complying with a judge's ruling that the site must be open to all residents, including those who might be illegal immigrants. The decision to close the site, which became a flash point in the national debate over immigration, was reached late Tuesday by Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis and the six-member Town Council after a 2 1/2 -hour closed-door session. It brings the western Fairfax community virtually full circle in its attempts to regulate -- critics say drive out -- its large population...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's High Court struck down a 19th century law against begging on Thursday, ruling in favor of a beggar who had argued that his arrest violated a right to free speech, broadcaster RTE reported. Justice Eamon De Valera rejected the argument made by Niall Dillon that the law discriminated between rich and poor. But the judge agreed that a section of the Vagrancy Act of 1847, enacted during the Great Famine, was unconstitutional because it interfered with the rights of freedom of expression and freedom to communicate with other people. Dillon was arrested for begging in Dublin...

We are the compassionate city. We are a city of refuge to illegal aliens; we love 'em all. Pot smokers make us their home. We won't cooperate with the feds on terrorism investigations. And we let homeless die on the street like dogs. We are a fun-loving city. We associate the cause of homelessness with some trauma such as a loss of a job or an eviction that led a person to live in on the street. This allows us to give the homeless the patina of a certified "victim" group. The reality is quite different. The typical homeless person...