The Faith-Justice Institute hosted a St. Joe’s alum who discussed how a U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down this summer will impact the lives of people experiencing homelessness. In the case, Grants Pass Oregon v. Johnson the Court considered whether the city of Grants Pass violated the Eighth Amendment when it arrested, fined, and jailed people without homes for sleeping outside.
About 40 students and faculty attended the event that was part of the William & Madeline Eberle Klein Fund dinner discussion held Oct. 3 in Doyle Banquet Hall South in Campion Student Center.
Daniel Soucy ’18, a research analyst at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the impact of the ruling could be quite bad on some of the most marginalized people in society.
“The ruling doesn’t necessitate or require communities to criminalize homelessness,” Soucy said. “So there is an opportunity for communities to follow the evidence and really lean into solutions to homelessness that we know work.”
Soucy said some of the solutions include building affordable housing, investing in the homeless response system, and ensuring that everybody has access to the support services that they need to thrive.
“I’m hopeful that communities move in that direction and recognize that that’s both the best investment of their resources and time, but also what serves their residents the best,” Soucy said.
Among the attendees was Joan McConnon, adjunct professor of accounting, and co-founder of Project HOME, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that provides services to people experiencing homelessness, who said “homelessness is a tragedy” but is solvable.
“The solutions are the building of affordable housing and increasing incomes to bridge the affordability gap,” McConnon said. “Providing a quality education for every child in America would go a long way to providing opportunities for future generations to earn income sufficient enough to rent or own a home.”
Lauren Tauber ‘27 said she attended the event as an extra credit opportunity for her sociology class and said she was shocked when she learned about data on poverty rates and homelessness.
“I had no idea the topic of homelessness was even up for debate as far as criminalizing those who use public spaces to live,” Tauber said. “I was not aware of the extent to which they worsened the situation for those fluctuating around the poverty line.”
Soucy said they realized this was work they wanted to be involved in during their time as an undergrad student at St. Joe’s through their work as a service scholar as well as director of the Philadelphia Service Immersion Program.
“And so for me, that lined up exactly with what I was learning in my classes at St Joe’s about caring for our community and really taking the education that we receive and we have the privilege of accessing and putting it back into the community that has uplifted us and has really supported us,” Soucy said. “So I think in that sense, it felt really clear to me that housing and homelessness were directly tied to a Jesuit education.
McConnon said she is concerned about the impact of the Grants Pass Oregon v. Johnson decision on people experiencing homelessness.
“Unfortunately, I believe the ideology of today’s Supreme Court will lead to further erosion of the rights of marginalized people in our communities,” McConnon said. “We need to demand, through our votes and our voices, that our representatives make housing easier to access than the criminal justice system.”
