Judge Lays Down Law on Phoenix’s Homeless Mess
Citizen Lawsuit Opens Door to Cleanups of Homeless Encampments Nationwide
By Sam Stone
A potentially landmark ruling on homelessness has just touched down in Phoenix, Arizona. About a year ago, residents and business owners adjacent to what has become known locally as “The Zone” sued the city of Phoenix alleging numerous failures by the city to abate the impacts of the sprawling informal homeless encampment, including environmental destruction, prostitution, public drug use, and rampant violence among a number of other issues. Yesterday, Judge Scott Blaney of the Superior Court of Arizona for Maricopa County agreed, finding Phoenix at fault for every single claim and ordered the city to:
The City of Phoenix is prohibited from continuing to maintain a public nuisance on the public property in the Zone.
The City of Phoenix shall abate the nuisance it presently maintains on the public property in the Zone.
The City of Phoenix shall maintain its public property in the Zone in a condition free of (a) tents and other makeshift structures in the public rights of way; (b) biohazardous materials including human feces and urine, drug paraphernalia, and other trash; and (c) individuals committing offenses against the public order.
The City shall devise and carry out as soon as is practicable a plan that achieves compliance with this Order. The Court recognizes that the City has discretion in how to comply with this Order and does not direct with specificity any of the myriad actions that would lead to compliance.
The City is enjoined from further, arbitrary enforcement of Phoenix City Code Section 31-9(B) against Phoenix Kitchens – a named Plaintiff in this case – regarding the artistic sculptures Phoenix Kitchens installed next to its building. See Finding Nos. 28-30. The existing sculptures shall remain in place until the City has abated the public nuisance in the Zone or until further order of the Court.
The City shall be prepared to demonstrate to the Court at the July 10, 2023 Bench Trial in this matter the steps it has taken and the material results it has achieved toward compliance with this Order.
That is a complete and utter slap-down of Phoenix, and long overdue. Residents have a right to live in peace and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Local governments across the country though – including Phoenix – stopped enforcing the law on homeless individuals and have allowed chronic street homeless in the grip of drugs and mental illness to destroy the quality of life for law-abiding, hard-working citizens from coast to coast. Instead of treating the issue, cities have been enabling it.
And that’s what makes Judge Blaney’s ruling in this case so significant, potentially setting several legal precedents that open the door for cities across the country to start addressing chronic street homelessness in a serious, sustained way. Phoenix, like most cities, had been relying on a very narrow (and largely fallacious) interpretation of a 9th Circuit court case, Martin v. Boise, that they held prevented Phoenix from doing anything to criminalize common elements of homelessness – such as camping on the sidewalk or public urination - until the city had more shelter beds available than the total homeless population in the area. Like many other liberal cities, Phoenix then extended the interpretation of Martin to mean that the city couldn’t enforce virtually any laws at all on the homeless population. Martin became the justification for the city to ignore prostitution, theft, destruction of property, public drug use, even violent crimes committed by Phoenix’s homeless population.
Judge Blaney’s ruling takes an axe to that logic, ruling that not only can the city enforce the law in these areas, but that they have an obligation to do so. That ruling alone is noteworthy, because it takes away the legal shield that anti-police activists and leftist politicians have been using to try to browbeat jurisdictions into pulling back enforcement of most laws. But the ruling also does two other things that are enormously significant.
First, it obliquely takes to task the homeless industrial complex - the people profiting off enormous annual public funding while delivering near zero positive results – for their culture of enabling chronic street homelessness rather than trying to address it.
Second, and this is potentially the most significant part of the ruling, Judge Blaney clearly delineates a difference between service-resistant chronic street homeless who are choosing an anti-social lifestyle, and individuals who end up on the streets due to circumstance who are willing to accept shelter and services:
“…the Court has not received credible evidence that every individual in the Zone lacks access to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they do not have sufficient means to pay for it or because it is unavailable to them for free.2
Conceivably, a large portion of the homeless in the Zone likely lack access to shelter. But in the absence of credible evidence, the Court will not infer that every individual in the Zone that engages in the conduct detailed below lacks realistic access to adequate temporary shelter. For example, a service resistant individual could not be said to lack access to adequate temporary shelter if he or she is refusing the service.”
This is a potentially enormous precedent with wide-ranging implications for the approach to dealing with chronic street homelessness nationwide. It basically eviscerates the legal arguments that cities have made when foisting this travesty off on their populations by removing the protections Martin placed on homeless individuals unless those individuals are willing to accept treatment and services to address their physical, mental, and living challenges. Local governments can no longer cower behind their misguided interpretation of the law.
It’s highly likely this case will be challenged on appeal, either by the city or the various homeless advocacy groups whose work product has been essentially taken to task by this ruling, but the door is now open for cities across the country to take significant steps to get our homeless population off the streets and into treatment.
Sam Stone is the co-host of Breaking Battlegrounds
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