June 28, 2024 NEW YORK — Today, Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director David Giffen issued the following statement on the United States Supreme Court decision to grant local municipalities the ability to criminalize homelessness in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson case: “If communities don’t want to see people sleeping in public spaces, they need to provide affordable housing for all who need it – and at very minimum, enough decent, safe and accessible temporary shelter beds so that people without homes have a reasonable alternative to bedding down on the streets and in parks. Criminalizing homelessness and penalizing people for simply trying to survive in a system that does not allow people of limited resources to meet their most basic human needs is cruel. It is unfortunately no longer unusual.”
