New Mexico preparing for Supreme Court ruling on homeless camping in public spaces
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – The U.S. Supreme Court appears to be leaning towards a crackdown on homeless camps. Legal experts KRQE News 13 spoke to say this decision could change how the state approaches homelessness moving forward. Depending on how the court rules, it could be left up to each state on how to handle the encampments on public property.
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court began to hear arguments over local laws that ban the homeless from camping in public. This after Grants Pass, Oregon began to charge people for sleeping in city parks.
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“If the US Supreme Court were to tell the local entities, hey, this does not violate the Eighth Amendment, then it’ll be similar to what’s happened with Roe vs. Wade and the Dobbs decision, where it’ll be kicked back to the states,” said Attorney Daymon Ely.
Ely has been helping the City of Albuquerque with plans on how to fix the city’s homeless problem. He says if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the law in Oregon, each state could be left with decide how they’ll handle homeless camps.
The American Civil Liberties Union is hoping justices will rule against the law.
“If they do decide to criminalize people, people’s very existence in public when they don’t have anywhere else to go, we are able to make an argument in New Mexico, under our it’s our state constitution. That would be a cruel and unusual punishment and counterproductive,” said Laura Schauer Ives, a co-councilor with the ACLU.
In 2023, Albuquerque had 2,394 homeless people, according to the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness. “Ultimately, the real problem that’s been shown again and again, in communities that have a large homeless population or growing one is lack of affordable housing,” said Ely.
Ely says even if states are allowed to ban camping in public places, it’s still not going to solve the problem. “This took us a long time to get in about 20 years, people are going to have to understand it’s going to take us a long time to get out.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in late June or early July.
The City of Albuquerque is facing its own legal battle that reached the state Supreme Court that the city violated the constitution when it collected belongings owned by the homeless. That case has been put on hold pending the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
