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A Judge in Oregon blocked the city in the heart of a US Supreme Court ruling on homeless campers to enforce its camping rules unless it complies with certain conditions, as part of a lawsuit filed by advocates.
According to a preliminary order issued by Josephine County County Court Court Judge Sarah McGlaughlin on Friday, the awards pass must increase the capacity on the city-throw sites to camp and ensure that they are physically accessible to people with disabilities.
Unless these conditions are met, the order prevents the city from calling, arresting or fining people for camping on public property; of forces people to leave campsites; of the removal of campsites that were not clearly abandoned; or to ban camping in most city parks.
With the order, the city can still enforce rules to sleep on sidewalks and streets or in alleys and doors.
Mayor Clint Scherf told The Associated Press that he was “discouraged” by the decision, and Mike Zacchino, which is transferred by the information, said via email that the city “revised all aspects to ensure that we make the best decision for our community.”
The lawsuit was filed by Oregon of disability rights, accusing the City of discriminating against people with disabilities and violating a constitutional law that requires the cities’ camping regulations to be ‘objectively reasonable’. Plaintiff also passed five homeless people in grants.
Grants Pass, a small city of about 40,000 along the Skelm River in the mountains of southern Oregon, has been struggling to address the crisis of homelessness for years and becomes an emblem of the national debate on how to handle it.
The parks have become a flash point in particular, with many of them becoming the place of campers who have been disabled by drug use and junk.
Last June, in a case brought by the city, the US Supreme Court ruled that communities could ban sleep outside and fine people because they did, even if there were not enough shelter beds.
It overturned a decision in the California Court of Appeal which ruled that the ban on camps when there is no shelter space amounts to cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment of the US Constitution.
In that case, officials from all over the political spectrum have submitted an assignment and said that they are in their power to handle campers.
After the Supreme Court ruling, Grants Pass camped at all city property, except places appointed by the City Council, which set up two sites for the town’s hundreds of homeless people to move them off the parks.
When the new mayor and new councilors were appointed in January, the larger of the two sites, which housed about 120 tents, closed according to the complaint. Meanwhile, the smaller one saw that his working hours were reduced between 17:00 and 07:00, which means people had to pack their belongings every morning.
According to the complaint, the two areas were regularly overcrowded, with poor conditions and inaccessible to people with disabilities due to loose gravel.
“It is unconscious for me to allow people to live there,” the city councilor Indra Nicholas said before the vote to close the larger terrain.
After the lawsuit was filed, the city reopened a second, smaller terrain and extended the time that people could stay up to four days.
McGlaughin’s order says the city should increase the capacity to what it was before before the larger terrain closed.
Tom Stenson, Deputy Director for Disability Rights Oregon, called the decision a win.
“It’s not a radical solution. The court basically says: “Go back to the amount of space and places for people who are homeless you only had three months ago,” he told AP.
Homelessness rose 18% last year, mostly driven by a lack of affordable housing, as well as devastating natural disasters and an increase in migrants in some parts.
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