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Johnson v. Grants Pass Communications Toolkit

June 28, 2024
Criminalization doesn’t solve homelessness — it only makes it harder to escape.

This resource aims to provide leaders of Built for Zero with communications tools about the Johnson v. Grants Pass Supreme Court ruling.

Please contact comms@community.solutions with any questions.

Despite widespread understanding that everybody needs a safe place to sleep, the Supreme Court shamefully ruled today that people experiencing homelessness are not included in the Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 

This sets a dangerous precedent for the quarter of a million people who sleep outside each night in America and for the millions of families who are just one missed paycheck away from experiencing homelessness. 

Sadly, this ruling makes it easier to jail or ticket people without homes for sleeping outside, which will make homelessness worse. 

We must be clear: communities cannot arrest or fine themselves out of homelessness. But there are proven solutions to homelessness that America can act on now.

Topline Messages

Despite widespread understanding that everybody needs a safe place to sleep, the Supreme Court shamefully ruled today that people experiencing homelessness are not included in the Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 

  • This sets a dangerous precedent for the quarter of a million people who sleep outside each night in America and for the millions of families who are just one missed paycheck away from experiencing homelessness. 
  • Sadly, this ruling makes it easier to jail or ticket people without homes for sleeping outside, which will make homelessness worse. 

We must be clear: communities cannot arrest or fine themselves out of homelessness. But there are proven solutions to homelessness that America can act on now. 

Today’s decision is out of step with the values of the vast majority of Americans who reject jailing, ticketing, or fining people for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.

  • This ruling must lead to meaningful action to address the dire lack of affordable housing and the resulting increase in homelessness. 
  • To solve homelessness, we call on elected officials at every level to focus on housing and other proven solutions, such as rental subsidies and eviction prevention. 

Homelessness is solvable. 

  • Communities across the country are making progress in reducing homelessness, proving that it’s solvable with the right strategies. Here’s what it takes:
  • A shared, community-wide definition of what solving homelessness looks like and the belief that it’s possible
  • A collaborative, community-wide team that is accountable and working together as a command center
  • Comprehensive, real-time, by-name data on who is experiencing homelessness to continuously track progress and improve system performance
  • A racial equity focus to overcome racial disparities
  • Investments to address the nationwide shortage of safe, deeply affordable homes

We’ve seen cities make tremendous progress in solving homelessness with these approaches. 

  • Houston — the nation’s fourth largest city — reduced homelessness by 63% from 2011 to 2023 by collecting real-time data and moving 25,000 people into housing since starting a housing-first program in 2015. 
  • Milwaukee has decreased the number of residents experiencing unsheltered homelessness by 92 percent. 
  • Cincinnati reduced chronic homelessness by 54% between 2021 and 2023. 
  • The Metro Denver area — home to 3.2 million — has reduced veteran homelessness by 30% since 2020.
  • Mississippi’s Gulf Coast region — spanning six counties with 450,000 residents — reduced unsheltered homelessness by more than 40% since 2018, thanks in part to using by-name data and working with police to move from criminalization tactics to more effective solutions.
  • 14 U.S. communities have reduced homelessness so much that it’s become rare and brief for certain populations. Rockford, Illinois, was the first community in the country to achieve this for both veterans and people experiencing chronic homelessness. That means that homelessness is rare and brief for these groups because the community has an effective system in place to connect people to housing and resources.

When people face hard times they should be helped, not punished.

  • More people than ever are just one accident away from losing their homes. Rent is the biggest bill families pay each month. The housing crisis impacts most Americans. 
  • Recent studies show that half of Americans pay more than they can afford in rent and that one in four people worry about becoming homeless. 
  • Seniors are the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homelessness in the United States.
  • For every $100 increase in rent, there is a 9% increase in homelessness. 
  • Three out of four Americans agree that housing, not handcuffs, is the best solution to homelessness. Moving people into housing quickly and connecting them with the services they need solves homelessness. 
  • Black people and other people of color are overrepresented in the homeless population. Solving homelessness and addressing the housing crisis are key steps toward racial justice. 
  • It’s time for our elected officials to ensure everyone has a safe place to call home.

The Supreme Court was never going to solve homelessness and this ruling will make a terrible situation even worse. 

  • We call on our elected officials to invest at least $356 billion in the next year to ensure that everybody has a place to live that they can afford. To end the nation’s homelessness crisis we need to invest in proven solutions: 
  • Universal rental assistance for the lowest-income households 
  • Repair and preservation of public housing
  • The National Housing Trust Fund 
  • Eviction and homelessness prevention
  • Wrap around and crisis response services that are needed to solve homelessness.
  • State and local governments must do all that they can to address homelessness. This includes things like increasing funding for truly affordable housing, changing zoning laws to allow for more housing, expanding health care coverage, and, at the bare minimum, rejecting the false notion that jails and fines solve homelessness. 

Backward policies are on the rise

  • Across the country, cities and states are passing cruel and counterproductive laws that will make homelessness worse. These policies propose to throw people in jail for sleeping outside, and they divert desperately needed funds from creating housing. 
  • Today’s decision shows that there is growing momentum for real solutions to homelessness.  
  • We must be clear: throwing people experiencing homelessness in jail or fining them for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse. To solve homelessness, we call on our elected officials to focus on housing and other proven solutions.

Over Policing Policy Brief 

Background: This policy brief investigates the involvement of the police in responses to homelessness in cities across the country. It amasses a wide array of data, including a novel survey of mayors and details of Homeless Outreach Teams from the nation’s 100 largest cities.

Advocates and researchers agree that solutions to homelessness must address the root causes. Communities need to increase access to quality, affordable permanent housing, and they must provide the necessary social and medical services to support unhoused people remaining stably housed. 

Yet, local governments may not always follow these evidence-based housing policy programs, instead pursuing punitive policing or the criminalization of homelessness. Such policies do not end homelessness; instead, they may actually promote cycles of homelessness.

This policy brief shows that the police are frequently involved in implementing homelessness policy, with findings such as:

  • Cities’ police departments are highly influential in homelessness policy-making. Seventy-eight percent of mayors say that the police have at least some influence over their homelessness policies — more than people experiencing homelessness and public housing authorities.
  • City staff dedicated to homelessness are commonly located in police departments. Twenty-two percent of mayors housed their homelessness staff in police departments, the second most popular option after social services (38%).
  • Homeless Outreach Teams (HOTs) are frequently either housed in police departments or include formal roles for police officers. Seventy-six percent of HOTs in the nation’s 100 largest cities formally involved the police.
  • A majority of HOTs (59%) include enforcement of civil or criminal infractions or quality of life crimes, as a goal or mission; 43% include encampment removal (including removal of persons and belongings). HOTs featuring police involvement are far more likely to have a dedicated enforcement goal (75% of police-involved HOTs compared to 12.5% of HOTs without designated police involvement).

Built for Zero Community Survey

Background: Community Solutions is committed to lifting up the voices of those providing services to people experiencing homelessness. In early March, we surveyed communities in the Built for Zero network. We heard back from 170 leaders across our communities.

Prominent themes:

When asked what has worked best in your community to reduce the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness:

  • 79% said coordinating between systems like the VA, Housing Authority, Continuum of Care, behavioral health, etc.
  • 78% said having affordable and supportive housing available
  • 76% said social services focused on street outreach and assessing individuals to find out what services they need
  • 72% said a coordinated local strategy with everyone working together

One leader told us they stopped using punitive interventions ten years ago and started investing in temporary and permanent housing options. Since then, homelessness has declined in their community. 

When asked about the impact of ticketing, arrests, or other criminalization actions to address homelessness:

  • 91% said it was traumatic and stigmatizing for individuals who are unhoused
  • 83% said individuals ended up with criminal backgrounds that made it harder to get jobs and housing
  • 76% said individuals experiencing homelessness lost important documents and paperwork (birth certificates, IDs) which are essential for obtaining housing and employment
  • 76% said they lost the trust of individuals they were trying to connect to treatment or services

If you choose to develop your own messaging, please include the hashtags #HomelessnessIsSolvable and 
#JohnsonVGrantsPass. You can also tag @cmtysolutions or @BuiltForZero.

Google doc
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This document is for communities that want to leverage earned media to join the national campaign to combat harmful narratives about homelessness and advocate for data-driven solutions.
Please contact media@community.solutions with any questions.

Proactive Earned Media Plan

  • Create a proactive media plan to elevate your work and advocate for data-driven solutions:
    • Review national key messages to combat harmful narratives about homelessness and advocate for data-driven solutions 
    • Write localized key messages that:
      • Provide broader context about local homeless response system efforts to measurable and equitable solve homelessness 
      • Highlight the community’s progress on solving homelessness (examples: population-level reductions, sustaining functional zero, achieving real-time, by-name data, joining Built for Zero, etc.)
      • Outline the solutions that communities can take now to humanely solve homelessness 
    • Identify and equip community-wide spokespeople with key messages
      • Reporters will often want more than one source for their story. Have a main spokesperson for the results, but work with your homelessness response team to see who else can do interviews and reinforce the key messages. 
      • Here are media tips and best practices 
    • Create a targeted media contact list with reporters who have worked with your organization before, cover homelessness in your community, or are   general news reporters. 
    • Send individualized email media pitches to the reporters pitching your spokespeople to provide local context for the Johnson v. Grants Pass SCOTUS case. Strong media pitches include:
    • As news stories come out, share them with your improvement team and on your website, social media, and email newsletters as appropriate. 
  • Have a protocol for responding to inbound media requests. In addition to having an affirmative media plan, it’s important to have policies and protocols in place for how to engage with the media when they reach out to staff for interview requests on their own.
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