“It wasn’t that long ago that I was part of the community,” said Gutowski, sitting at a picnic table in a park about a mile from her old house. “But the more I’m out here, the more angry I get. … They’re not trying to make things better for us, or help us have another shelter, or keep us safe — or help us even medically or mentally. They’re just trying to push, push, push until we give up and say, ‘Fine, I’ll leave town.’”
This isn’t a homeless ban, this is a poverty ban. The Supreme Court considers whether it should be possible to make being poor illegal.
And what do we do with people convicted of being poor? Well, we house and feed them and provide basic medical care, but in a way that doesn’t allow them to maintain basic human dignity or to give back to society. Because, the cruelty is the point.
They’re too poor. The right amount of poor works two jobs to eat and pay rent. Anything less they want in a forced-labor prison.