As the cost of housing has exploded, so has the number of people experiencing homelessness. And unfortunately, instead of trying to house people, more states and cities are criminalizing people simply for lacking a safe place to sleep.

According to the National Homelessness Law Center, almost every state restricts the conduct of people experiencing homelessness. In Missouri, sleeping on state land is a crime. A new law in Florida bans people from sleeping on public property—and requires local governments without bed space for unhoused people to set up camps far away from public services.

Laura Gutowski, from Grants Pass, Oregon, lives in a tent near the home where she resided for 25 years. Soon after her husband unexpectedly passed away, she became unhoused. “It kind of all piled on at the same time,” she told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Flipped my world upside down.”

The underlying issue is how we treat those who struggle to meet basic needs in the wealthiest nation in the world.

Grants Pass, like most cities today, lacks enough shelter beds to accommodate its unhoused population. It’s now the subject of a Supreme Court case: Grants Passv. Johnson, which started when Grants Pass began ticketing people for sleeping in public even when there weren’t enough shelter beds.

People can be fined hundreds of dollars and face criminal charges “simply for existing without access to shelter,” said Ed Johnson, an attorney for the unhoused residents of Grants Pass. The Supreme Court’s decision will have far-reaching ramifications as communities grapple with rising homelessness and housing costs.

If the court rules in favor of Grants Pass, local governments will get more authority to clear homeless encampments and penalize those who sleep on streets, only exacerbating the problem.

Alternatively, the court could prohibit these “camping” bans and remove criminalization as an option. Back in 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals took that route in Martin v. City of Boise, which held that it is “cruel and........

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