Homeless in Modesto: A Tale of Two Cities

The last week of April in Modesto featured two of the city’s biggest public events, the State of the County report and, “Love Modesto,” the annual rite where volunteers display their civic pride with a citywide cleanup of trash and grafitti, while planting gardens, handing out hygiene kits and donating food packages, among other charitable deeds.

The State of the County report was held in front of the Stanislaus County Library in downtown Modesto. It drew an overflow crowd and may have reminded at least a few people of the value of the public sphere, that place in a community where citizens can come together, discuss the latest news and gossip, and form public opinion.

One block west, two homeless women shared an early dinner. Unlike those who attended the State of the County event, they were not welcome on the public sidewalk where they parked their shopping carts.

One of the lesser-known practices of “Love Modesto” is the forced removal of homeless people from places they may have found to stay for a while. Modesto may be loved, but certain of its citizens are not. On the day when public-spirited citizens come out to honor their city, many of its residents are swept aside like trash, ordered to move along by local authorities.

While it’s reasonable to have ordinances against such behavior as loitering, punishing people on the basis of economic status seems to many of us a violation of fundamental human rights. Especially since it’s now widely agreed that the chief factor in homelessness is a dire housing shortage, penalizing people for “existence crimes” like sleeping on public property when there’s nowhere else to lay down looks to be more cruel than loving, far more cruel.

In 2018, justices at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that penalizing people with nowhere to go for camping in public places constitutes a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment. That decision, Martin vs Boise, made it illegal to sweep homeless encampments unless alternative shelter was available.

Today, cities throughout the nation await a Supreme Court verdict on Grants Pass vs Johnson, a case that challenges the decision in Martin vs Boise. Should the United States Supreme Court overturn Martin vs Boise, state and local authorities will find it much easier to treat homelessness as a crime.

No one believes there’s enough emergency shelter in California for its 180,000 people experiencing homelessness — there simply isn’t. Nonetheless, despite the lack of alternative shelter, sweeps and rousts continue to be the most favored tactics for managing homelessness, even when the law prohibits such tactics.

History has shown that we’ve been wrong in every case when we’ve oppressed people for reasons of race, gender, age, or national origin. Today, however, we routinely deny people fundamental human rights based on their economic status.  Modesto, like most other California cities, has two distinct populations. One is a broad coterie of civic-minded citizens. The other is ostracized, stigmatized, and denied a safe place to lay their heads.

It will be a dark day for humankind if and when the U.S. Supreme Court codifies the denial of fundamental rights to exist as the law of the land. We’re already under a looming shadow cast by those who would make criminals of the poorest among us.