What does the Supreme Court’s ruling on homelessness mean for Houston?

The Supreme Court ruled Friday morning that homeless people can be fined and arrested for sleeping in public, even if there is no shelter where they could sleep instead.

The 6-3 decision maintains the status quo, say housing advocates, who present the decision as a call to action: we must invest more in housing.

Texas has had a law banning camping since 2021, and Houston made it illegal in 2017. In Houston, individuals have racked up fines totaling tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars from high-earning officers above the median in overtime. But the city rarely sees the money. Instead, fines are typically dismissed, according to municipal court records. Those who have received tickets say the dismissals often come after spending a night in jail.

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“We can’t force our way out of this crisis,” said Mandy Chapman Semple, who was instrumental in Houston’s early successes in reducing homelessness. She is now a managing partner of a consulting group that has helped cities move people directly from encampments into housing. Semple touted the strategy as a more effective alternative to criminalization in reducing homelessness.

“No one should be forced to sleep outside,” she said in an emailed statement. “But at the same time, people have real concerns about the health and safety of encampments in their communities… This is the solution everyone is looking for.”

Kelly Young, executive director of the Houston and Harris County Homeless Coalition, agrees. The Coalition coordinates the strategy of the region’s many homeless service providers; since the pandemic, she has helped the Houston area reduce the number of homeless people on the streets by a third.

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“We were able to do this by providing permanent housing options for people living in encampments,” she said in an emailed statement. Since 2021, the region has closed more than 120 encampments, she said, helping more than 500 people find housing.

But the Houston region’s efforts to combat homelessness are facing a budget shortfall, leading the coalition to warn that progress could be short-lived. It predicts that the number of homeless could increase by as much as 60% by the end of 2026 unless the region finds a way to address the looming budget hole: By the end of this year, coalition members will have spent all $165 million in funding from the CARES Act, the American Rescue Plan Act and private money that poured in after the pandemic.

The Coalition predicts the Houston area’s homeless population will increase significantly after pandemic relief funds run out, unless the city finds a way to plug a $50 million-a-year budget hole. Without this funding, the Coalition projects it will be able to move a third fewer people into housing each year.

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The Supreme Court’s decision, delivered by Neil Gorsuch, held that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment “has always been considered, and rightly so, to be direct on the method or type of punishment. …and not on the question (of) whether a government can criminalize particular behavior in the first place.”

In response to arguments that it might be considered cruel and unusual to punish someone for an “involuntary” act because there are no other options (in this case, no other place to sleep), the court pointed to a Texas case from the 1960s. In that case, a man claimed that his drunkenness was involuntary because he was an alcoholic and that a law prohibiting being found drunk in a public place therefore constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The court disagreed.

“This case is no different,” Gorsuch wrote.