EDITORIAL: Tough luck for homeless people on the receiving end of Aurora’s ‘tough love’

Aurora’s 6-4 council vote this week over whether to provide 72 hours’ notice before clearing homeless encampments reveals more than a policy disagreement.

It exposes a troubling willingness by some lawmakers to embrace cruelty as governance, and to justify it with myths, impatience and political theater rather than facts.

Being homeless is not a crime. It is a human condition, often caused by economic hardship, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence or just bad luck.

Treating it as a criminal act does nothing to solve it. It only compounds suffering.

That, however, is just what some council members are effectively endorsing when they argue for immediate camp sweeps. They demand no notice, no time, no dignity, and it creates a situation where a person’s few remaining possessions can be confiscated and discarded on the spot.

Supporters of such policies point to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in “Grants Pass v. Johnson” as justification.

An errant ruling does not make bad policy good, nor does it make cruelty constitutional in any moral sense. 

In a 6-3 decision on Dec. 18, 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the internment of Japanese Americans was constitutional, declaring it a “military necessity” rather than racial discrimination.

It was a stupid, racist decision, and it was cruel.

Forcing people into life-threatening situations, such as exposure to extreme weather, loss of medication, separation from identification and essential documents amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in practice, even if the court has foolishly looked the other way.

Punishing people for existing without shelter does not reduce homelessness. It just hides it, displaces it and deepens it.

Equally flawed is the argument that immediately confiscating a homeless person’s property somehow makes it easier for them to transition out of homelessness. This is not just wrong, it is nonsensical. Destroying what little stability a person has, whether it’s a tent, clothing, medications or identification, only makes it harder to access services, secure employment and return to living a life of the housed.

The notion that people will more readily “move along” if their belongings are seized without warning defies both logic and humanity. If anything, the opposite is true. A 72-hour notice offers a sliver of agency, time to gather possessions, consider available services or relocate with some semblance of order.

A sudden sweep, however, is destabilizing and traumatic, leaving people worse off than before.

City council critics of this change live with a persistent fantasy that giving abatement notice creates a “whack-a-mole” effect, as if homeless residents are simply gaming the system, shuffling from one spot to another, because of the waiting period.

City officials themselves acknowledge that this happens regardless of notice. Moving people “along,” with or without warning, does not solve homelessness. It just relocates it.

Overall, some lawmakers continue to be making decisions based on caricatures of the homeless, rather than reality. The image of homeless individuals as defiant scofflaws who refuse help and exploit leniency is largely fiction, shaped by television tropes, social media memes and bad data.

It’s no secret that many people experiencing homelessness struggle with mental health and substance abuse disorders. For some, those problems led to their homelessness. For others, it keeps them there.

There is no credible evidence that harassment, displacement or punitive measures aid in recovery. “Tough love” is not a treatment. It is neglect and cruelty masquerading as discipline.

Real solutions require patience, resources and a commitment to evidence-based approaches, which include outreach, supportive housing, mental health services and addiction treatment.

There are no easy answers to homelessness. There just aren’t, but there are certainly wrong ones. And immediate, no-notice camp sweeps rank among the most ineffective and inhumane.

It doesn’t mean that someone camping on a highway or avenue median can’t be immediately moved for their safety and that of others. The law has always allowed for such intervention.

Ideally, the city could support a camping ban linked to safe and humane shelter facilities or campgrounds for everyone who needs them.

That doesn’t exist right now.

We agree, however, with critics saying city officials have been unclear about justification for what they say is a change in city regs to reflect the reality of enforcing them. It’s an easy fix. Simply change the law to reflect the city’s intention. If immediate abatements are neither feasible nor desirable, and the evidence shows they are neither, then the law itself should say so plainly.

Aurora’s ordinances should reflect both the practical limits of enforcement and the moral obligations of a community that claims to value human dignity.

Homelessness is not solved by force. It is not solved by confiscation. And it is certainly not solved by pretending that people without homes are criminals to be chased out of sight, only to become someone else’s concern.