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The Official Podcast for the Minnesota Law Review - https://journals.law.umn.edu/mlr
00:00:37:14 - 00:01:00:55
Unknown
Welcome to the Experto Crede podcast. I'm your host, Lee Silverberg, volume 106 online editor. Today I have a very special guest with me, Mr. Daniel Souter. Dan Souter is one of my favorite classmates, and he's written a fantastic note. You don't have a home to go to, but you can stay here. A bill of rights for unhoused Minnesotans. Welcome to the show, Dan.
00:01:01:00 - 00:01:18:12
Unknown
I'm just proud to be here. Lee. Happy to have you. So before we start out, I think it'd be really wonderful. You told us a little bit about your background. You know, where you come from and what brought you to write this review note. Because it is it is a monster. It's it's big. And it could have been bigger.
00:01:18:16 - 00:01:43:50
Unknown
I think the first draft I submitted was in word, 118 pages and like 670 footnotes. Or maybe 640. But, you know, I grew up in southern New Hampshire, a very different place than Minnesota in a lot of ways. Like a lot of families, we we did really well for a while. We had a period of economic instability. I don't think we were ever in danger of becoming unhoused.
00:01:43:51 - 00:02:08:09
Unknown
But I, you know, my parents always pushed me in like a very soft way, just like a compassion for other people. And, you know, as one of my first experiences with the legal system was living with law students when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, and my my friend Claire, her very first client as a as a baby PD public defender, was a was a house person.
00:02:08:14 - 00:02:35:00
Unknown
It was a really good guy who definitely did what he did. And she gave him a good defense and he lost. But it really was incredible to see the challenges that unhoused people face in the legal system and that their advocates have, and fighting with both hands tied behind their back. And that really started a long process that led me to this piece where, you know, you just see fundamental unfairness.
00:02:35:04 - 00:02:57:19
Unknown
It's one thing to have rights. I would say the animating force behind this piece was it's one thing to have rights. It's another thing to enjoy them. You you just can't. You know, as a person, force your rights. This is all civil litigation. We don't have a right to civil litigation. There's no incentives to represent unhoused people because simply put, I don't have any money for for the vast, vast ultra majority of them.
00:02:57:19 - 00:03:28:40
Unknown
If they had any money, they wouldn't be homeless. So they shouldn't be spending it on lawyers. They should be spending it on an apartment, you know, say should, but they will. You know, and that's what I and that's. Yeah. And one of the things that other things I wanted to do is and that's in my background section pretty heavily, is fight the kind of socially punitive notions we have of unhoused people, where you always hear, well, they want to be homeless or, you know, they it's personal choice or it's, you know, we're all so much closer to homelessness than any of us want to believe.
00:03:28:48 - 00:03:49:31
Unknown
And, you know, what do they say? The average you know, the fishery has that study. The average person has $400 in available liquid assets. You know, if you had to call somebody for $1,200 in rent tomorrow, could you, you know, maybe we could call our parents, you know, but a lot of people don't have those resources. And so we're all so much closer to being homeless than we think.
00:03:49:33 - 00:04:09:45
Unknown
And it's very comforting to think, you know, that could never be me, but, like, kind of there but for the grace of God go we. And I think that animates a lot of the political policy behind the treatment of unhoused people. I absolutely think that's very true. In college, I spent quite a lot of time as part of a nonprofit that had been founded by some of the upperclassmen.
00:04:09:45 - 00:04:38:50
Unknown
And one of the things that I did was to interview a significant number of unhoused people, and we'll get to it in a second. I would say to the differences between the terminology that I'm sure many people probably aren't necessarily well informed about, but that was one of the biggest parts of the conversations I had in interviewing those individuals was that in many cases, one of the statements was I was much closer to homelessness than I ever thought I was before I had experienced homelessness or before I was in housed.
00:04:38:52 - 00:04:57:38
Unknown
It was quite a shock to me in college because I, of course, grown my enclave. I had my parents to turn to, and then hearing these stories, I realized that really, we were two medical catastrophes away from having to move in with someone else and then three away from just not having anybody. And yeah, I think you really hit on something that's important.
00:04:57:38 - 00:05:19:55
Unknown
And it's about network depletion. People oftentimes survive the first income crisis. They lose a job. They have a big medical expense. Usually it's medical expenses, but there can be other expenses to a car. Cars are necessary for work in this country for the most part. So people often times they're so resourceful. They survived the first, the second, third network depletion.
00:05:19:55 - 00:05:54:16
Unknown
They've depleted all the available liquid assets within their social network and even their financial network, even through, you know, formal means. And it's really kind of the, you know, becoming becoming homeless is the is the culmination of a long sequence of events. It's it happens very slowly. Then all of a sudden and, you know, to touch on the language piece, I in the, in the piece, I in the note, I use the word unhoused when referring to somebody you know as a noun.
00:05:54:21 - 00:06:22:14
Unknown
There's a lot of debate in activist communities about what the proper terminology is. I, I most of the it's tricky because most of the writing and most of the law uses homeless as, as a noun. I use homelessness as like the state of being in housed. And I used unhoused for the noun just because. When in doubt, why not pick the less verbally punitive option and you know it'll come up on Google anyway?
00:06:22:14 - 00:06:51:57
Unknown
There's enough uses of all the words to be search engine optimized. I just saw no, there's no margin in doing something that could hurt or if and somebody when there's a perfectly valid rhetorical option available. So don't pack that a little bit. Can we walk through a little bit of the language that you used? Absolutely. In terms of differentiating between homelessness, being unhoused, lacking shelter, the kinds of, I would say almost a tier system of the catastrophe of experiencing homelessness.
00:06:52:07 - 00:07:18:12
Unknown
Yeah. So unhoused, I would say the way I use it is the broad term. There are, like you said, a lot of striations in there. You know, there are there the sheltered unhoused, which is, you know, and this goes to HUD's actual working definitions. The housing Department of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is the federal agency charged with studying and remediating homelessness in America.
00:07:18:16 - 00:07:41:48
Unknown
Sheltered, unhoused means, you know, you have some sort of place to live indoors, but it's it's not the ideal situation. Usually, it's not fit for human habitation. You might be living in a bus station, maybe living in a shelter. There's a lot of push, at least on the social services side, to kind of define, you know, I think when you're, when you're a well-off person is called couchsurfing.
00:07:41:52 - 00:08:04:12
Unknown
But the technical term forward is called doubling up when you're living with somebody because, you know, in sleeping on their couch, sleeping in a spare bedroom, even though it's, you know, not your formal living arrangement that is considered homelessness in a lot of in a lot of ways, it's at the very least it's extremely precarious. We see it a lot, especially with homeless women.
00:08:04:16 - 00:08:26:36
Unknown
So much of their so many of their outcomes are tied up in their domestic situation. And so you see a lot of people who are homeless, fleeing domestic abuse and not just women, but fleeing domestic abuse, or they get into a situation and they think it's going to work out and there's sexual harassment or coercion, and they have to leave the situation.
00:08:26:36 - 00:08:47:48
Unknown
So, you know, you have your that's your sheltered unhoused and kind of a slight tick above that is you're doubled up where they're maybe not sleeping in a bus station, but that's like they're sitting in a friend's house. And then kind of they oftentimes and this is an older term, they call it rough sleeping. That's your unsheltered unhoused who are essentially sleeping outdoors.
00:08:47:52 - 00:09:08:50
Unknown
Minnesota does a decent job of controlling its unsheltered unhoused. In the winter. You see a lot of emergency shelters, and they will take emergency action in the larger counties to open things up and get people inside to some extent. But this is, you know, where the worst health outcomes are. And these tend to be the people who are chronically unhoused.
00:09:08:50 - 00:09:32:40
Unknown
And that's kind of a whole other side of it. But the chronically unhoused are people who have a disability in are unhoused for a long period of time, usually over a year. And so for these people, they may not be able to utilize the shelter system. They may not have a social network to double up. And they're oftentimes sleeping outdoors.
00:09:32:52 - 00:09:55:55
Unknown
You know, in in we wouldn't call it shelter, you wouldn't call it shelter. And they tend to have the worst health outcomes and mental health outcomes in the worst legal outcomes. Moving to that last part, the legal outcomes, one of the things that I really enjoyed about your note is that you have a very, I would say, granular approach to each of the kinds of bills of rights that are given really walk through them.
00:09:55:55 - 00:10:27:19
Unknown
So in your mind, walking through those bills of rights, what are the differences between them and what do they give to individuals who are experiencing homelessness or that are unhoused or not sheltered, that lacking these bills of rights they really wouldn't enjoy? Yeah. So, you know, the unhoused Bill of rights was a form of law that that that got a little traction in the early part of the last decade, about ten years ago, really, in the aftermath of the recession, where homelessness really spiked because of people's loss of their homes.
00:10:27:33 - 00:10:56:43
Unknown
And so kind of this was pioneered in Rhode Island, which had a which is an interesting state because it's a very small, compact state with a small population, but it's fairly dense because it's a tiny place. And so it's kind of got a small town, big attitude situation. And they had a lot of homelessness after the recession. And so they really felt the felt it necessary to enact this kind of unhoused bill of rights, which is really all about negative rights.
00:10:56:43 - 00:11:33:24
Unknown
It's really a recording of existing constitutional rights. And sometimes they're particularized, you know, to kind of fit unhoused people's situation. But it even says in the law, you know, these rights don't extend past what anyone else in this state enjoys. It's really just kind of particularized it. And it should have it should benefit from a from being a state law cause of action, being a statutory cause of action and having particular remedies attached to it, like attorneys fees and punitive damages.
00:11:33:24 - 00:12:08:52
Unknown
And and Connecticut and Illinois also adopted essentially the same law. Connecticut's is slightly different, but they're functionally the same. Rico's is very fascinating to me. I don't know enough about the Puerto Rican system of laws to think about how to import it, but there are great lessons to be learned about implementation, because in Puerto Rico, they have this vast administrative scheme that constitutes an unused bill of rights that really stems from their constitution, which has much more protections for human dignity than ours does, but they haven't been able to execute it.
00:12:08:55 - 00:12:34:00
Unknown
Kind of all the all the administrative departments with responsibility are also the departments that would be fined for violations. And so it seems like there's a lot of stuff about conflicts of interest there really. There hasn't been a lot of study on this, at least at least in English language resources. And that's, you know, I really did look for any update on these schemes, though it seems they've been largely neglected.
00:12:34:02 - 00:12:57:26
Unknown
And California's is fascinating because it really reflects the positive rights end. Like let's grant rights to unhoused people, like let's take positive policy proposals, incredibly ambitious policy proposals. And of course, they failed. It's really politically and expedient to advocate for unhoused people. It's kind of one of the few things that conservatives and liberals can agree on is that they don't like seeing unhoused people.
00:12:57:31 - 00:13:16:31
Unknown
Whether you're a Nimby living in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood or you're somebody living in the suburbs who doesn't want your money going to lazy homeless people, that's I mean, that's their point of view. It's something pretty much everyone can agree on. So, you know, I took from California. I took I ripped a lot of policy proposals directly from their law.
00:13:16:33 - 00:13:41:38
Unknown
And I kind of scoured other local measures that people have tried. There's a lot of local push on these things. You know, there's a in the know. There's a big list of cities like Baltimore and some cities in Michigan and New Haven that have Connecticut that have tried to do local unhoused Bill of rights. Duluth here in our in our home state, tough to do big positive policy on a local level like that where funding is always an issue.
00:13:41:50 - 00:14:04:26
Unknown
But I when I look at that and I try to synthesize these things, you really try to look at, okay, codifying these rights and really reinforcing these rights for people. That's Rhode Island. Get those, you know, for Puerto Rico, you really have to think about people's incentives and who's going to enforce this? Why should it be enforced? And kind of the failure of that scheme, the apparent failure of that scheme is really a lesson.
00:14:04:28 - 00:14:26:31
Unknown
And then in California, when you think about what are the positive policy proposals that can make a difference for people like in their daily life? And some I took from California, some I took from other, other sources of, of law. And I think if I could be said to add anything to this process personally, it would be a belief in procedural incentives.
00:14:26:36 - 00:14:48:43
Unknown
So I did some research and a little bit of synthesis in the paper about really how can we get litigation under these laws? Because the fascinating thing I found is that with the Rhode Island laws, there was basically no litigation under them. They weren't they weren't even cited, you know, in like a drive by a citation, like, you know, in constitutional rights litigation for unhoused people.
00:14:48:48 - 00:15:21:12
Unknown
I think it's like four total in the collective at this point. Three laws in ten years. If you think of it as 30 years on the books, there's like four reported cases on the topic. So it was how do you actually get the law used, get about getting it passed? I'm just presuming that I don't think that'll happen, but got to get the law used on on that point almost in terms of use, one of the things that struck me was that the Rhode Island law or the their model, I should say, is almost exclusively substantive rights.
00:15:21:16 - 00:15:53:40
Unknown
You really don't see a lot in terms of procedure. But that was one of the things I was thinking about as I read the different models. Was that really the substantive rights turn on how you can procedurally enjoy them? Almost, which is a weird way of putting it, but that's how I think about it. And so I'm kind of curious, do you think that the activity in terms of substantive rights is there because people like the substantive aspect of them, that we're saying you get these protections, even though many of these protections would already be enjoyed under our federal Constitution or our state constitutions.
00:15:53:55 - 00:16:34:31
Unknown
But the procedural side isn't a sexy, let's say. And so it's not as delved into in terms of a big policy change or a big win for a legislature who's trying to engage in this, or a single legislator who's trying to gain traction on this issue. There's a very pessimistic way to look at it, which is that it was all always aspirational, is that it was always all, you know, flouting our, our, our closely held values to help those less fortunate than us and that the lack of procedure, the lack of any real, you know, tangible outcome for unhoused people under these laws was always the intent, or at least it didn't matter.
00:16:34:36 - 00:17:03:31
Unknown
I think the way probably the closer way to look at it is the chiseling effect, the chiseling effect of of legislative process. You know, in there were some stronger provisions in the Rhode Island, specifically the pardon me, there were some provisions in the Rhode Island law, specifically the Rhode Island law that involved law enforcement and the ability to sue law enforcement and certain things like that.
00:17:03:31 - 00:17:35:21
Unknown
And it was stripped out in the legislative process when it was originally passed. So I think I think something this is just something that probably non-lawyers don't necessarily think a lot about. They go, well, you just go sue. But if you're an unhoused person, how do you sue? Well, you probably got to get legal aid to take your case in the in kind of the, the, the through line case I use in this note, which is Barry versus Hennepin County, that's the ACLU and Zaca, which is a Islamic charity in in the Twin Cities.
00:17:35:21 - 00:18:00:26
Unknown
And I believe there is some legal aid involvement. But unless you catch a big case like that, get a big civil rights organization on board, how are you going to enforce these rights? And so I think the procedure is really boring in a lot of ways. You know, I mean, it involves citing the AG's statute, the 8.31, and kind of importing those provisions and duplicating those provisions and figuring out how much money will get someone to take a case.
00:18:00:26 - 00:18:21:33
Unknown
And I work now and I work in landlord tenant law, and there's just a total lack of a private bar for tenants. And again, it's kind of the same problem that unhoused people have is if they had any money, they wouldn't need lawyers. Usually if you're getting evicted 95% of the time, I believe it's it's for unpaid rent.
00:18:21:33 - 00:18:43:52
Unknown
I believe that's the statistic in Minnesota, it's 90 plus is for unpaid rent. So if you had the money you wouldn't need a lawyer. You'd you'd pay the rent. And so I think there's just this competing set of incentives. And the most you can do is kind of throw money at the problem. One of the good things about the adversarial system is when you make it in damages, it's somebody else's money.
00:18:43:55 - 00:19:06:40
Unknown
And the idea is to incentivize contingent fee arrangements to but with statutory damages provisions with thinking about what gets submitted by a jury. I think that was probably the breakthrough I had. That was the biggest. That's the one where the real heads, whenever I talk to somebody who is practicing and I took some interviews around this stuff, the people who were practicing were like, oh, that's a good idea.
00:19:06:43 - 00:19:38:19
Unknown
Don't submit statutory damages to a jury, because then they're going to feel like they got enough. I think we all have social biases. I'm not immune from that. You know, I, I certainly I think it's worth acknowledging that there's a huge intersection between race and homelessness, especially in Minnesota. Are are people of color are far more disproportionately homeless than nationwide, especially when it comes to black people and native people, especially the urban native population in the Twin Cities.
00:19:38:19 - 00:20:17:02
Unknown
And so these are, you know, these are problems that disproportionately affect people of color. And so this, you know, this law is really like a secret social justice law is if you can use these things to avert homelessness or to quickly interrupt the process of homelessness, this litigation or the threat of this litigation, I really I really think there are tangible outcomes that come from procedure because the rights are the right, you know, they're they're they're positive policy grants in the law, which I can only imagine how gleefully the, the, you know, people in the Minnesota House of Representatives would tear those out based on cost.
00:20:17:07 - 00:20:43:43
Unknown
And I think they'd have a big difference to some of these are zero cost policies that I think would prevent discrimination. So that's a that's a long walk to say. I think you're fighting all of the soft problems in society and defined legal procedure. Judges want to be told what to do. They don't like to they don't like to admit that, but they really want to have a clear road road roadmap.
00:20:43:43 - 00:21:12:33
Unknown
And from working in landlord tenant law, I can tell you if there's any uncertainty, it will be resolved in favor of capital. And so that's, you know, maybe that tips my political hand a little bit, but I, I think that providing at least a very strong roadmap to start from an a draft law, it'll, it'll convert this nice statement of values into actionable law for people on that point, a little bit actionable law.
00:21:12:38 - 00:21:30:57
Unknown
So the way that your note I would almost describe it, I was going to say prescribe it. But in this case I would say describe it. Your note goes on to the policy side of why there isn't a lot of political will around this. And you just touched on that, but I want to dive a little bit deeper into that.
00:21:31:02 - 00:21:58:33
Unknown
So from your notes perspective, the political will is necessarily there because these aren't really easy win situations to create actual remedies. Really, what a lot of it is seems to be, according to your view, a lot of patting oneself on the back, writing something they can't really be used very well. And when it is used, you get the Powderhorn Park situation, which your note describes as people coming together and saying, we really don't like the issue of homelessness.
00:21:58:36 - 00:22:25:45
Unknown
We hate the fact that people experience it. But if you're going to experience it, please don't do it in our backyard. Yeah. So in your mind, is there a push in some way to incentivize legislators to deal with this issue in a way that won't backfire? Because I can see the the mentality of individuals who say, I really care about this issue, but I would really rather care about it over their care at a distance.
00:22:25:50 - 00:22:49:52
Unknown
And, you know, the story of Powderhorn Park. I won't reiterate the whole thing, but I live a couple blocks from Powderhorn Park, and I was, you know, around that summer, you know, in the summer of 2020 when a huge encampment of unhoused people kind of rose and was, was really brutally evicted by the city. When you when we I think I do want to say, I think that oftentimes people enter into this with good intentions.
00:22:49:52 - 00:23:07:26
Unknown
I do think that probably most of these laws, and I've dug up some draft laws that are usually more ambitious at first, and I think they're usually more useful at first. But if you're not unhoused and it's not your problem, yeah, you bargain with it a little bit here and there, maybe pass up the provision about providing bathroom services.
00:23:07:28 - 00:23:31:07
Unknown
It's so expensive anyway. And a lot of it comes down to expense. Well, when I, I for me, treating your neighbors well and taking care of people and that's a, that's a firmly held personal belief. And maybe it makes me a little bit Pollyanna, you know, but I, I really did put the I put the New Colossus by MLS or the poem that's on the base of the Statue of Liberty.
00:23:31:07 - 00:23:47:43
Unknown
I put that as the epigraph for my note for a reason, because it was something I was just looking at to motivate myself and like reading and, you know, you're at like 130 in the morning, you're like, yeah, I can get another four footnotes out tonight before I go to bed. And I would look at it and I would really it really meant a lot to me.
00:23:47:55 - 00:24:19:48
Unknown
And so I think I'm a person who is oftentimes very frustrated when you can't move people on the inherent justice of a matter. But if that doesn't move someone, frankly, it's more expensive to treat unhoused people this way than it is to put them in houses that they've. There are countless studies that just show putting people in houses is cheaper than what we're doing now jailing them, prosecuting them, keeping them on the streets because now they have a criminal record and they can't get a they can't get an apartment, they're not eligible for benefits.
00:24:19:50 - 00:24:40:04
Unknown
You know, it's hard to get benefits when you're in housed. So I think that translates. That was that translates into policy. When you talk about getting somebody to agree to this, if you just show people this, this is a win for everybody. It's a win for the unhoused people. It's a win for the people who secretly don't want to see these people in their neighborhood.
00:24:40:07 - 00:24:59:19
Unknown
You know, there's a great New York Times article getting quotes from people who are ultimately my neighbors in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood. I don't know them personally, but they're my neighbors and they well, this is so sad. But can't they be sad somewhere else? Essentially is what they say. And I think NIMBYism is kind of the liberal side of this.
00:24:59:24 - 00:25:18:31
Unknown
The and you have your you have your just you know, the we're at the tail end of a 50 year march of the conservative destruction of the American social safety net, and that's their prerogative. And if you can just show people that it saves money, I don't even think it would actually make a difference. But it's a better argument.
00:25:18:31 - 00:25:49:24
Unknown
I think there's just a strong bias against quote unquote, handouts about giving anyone anything they didn't earn. And we view homelessness as punitive. We have a punitive view. It's a moral failing if you're homelessness. And that is like the core gut reaction people have. I don't know if it's socialized or evolutionary or what, but I to overcome that, you really have to show people that this outcome is better for all involved, is cheaper for all involved, and ultimately you make a better, more productive society.
00:25:49:28 - 00:26:17:40
Unknown
I do one of the things I wrote this and I started writing this in 2020, and most of my substantive writing was done in early 2021. I do wonder how much American attitudes are changing towards government financial intervention with, you know, we all joked about our our pandemic stimulus books are our pandemic dollars. But I do think you're seeing it also with people.
00:26:17:48 - 00:26:48:26
Unknown
The I mean, wealth has gone up during the pandemic for people of all socioeconomic strata, and it's made people more choosy with their employment. And I do wonder how much government financial intervention, I wonder how much this will stick in people's minds. And in ten, 15 years, when we're making decisions about social policy, when the people who were really helped by this were making decisions about social policy, whether they're in, in office or whether they're voting, do you wonder if that'll that'll make a difference?
00:26:48:26 - 00:27:09:55
Unknown
But I, I have to say, I have a generally pessimistic view of political change and of of large scale systemic change. And of course, I wrote a book. I wrote a note proposing a law because I'm like a very pessimistic optimist, I guess, is how I would put it. So I think we should we should hit on that.
00:27:09:55 - 00:27:31:38
Unknown
Actually, that was one of the parts of this that I thought was remarkable was that you proposed the solution that you would want in a tangible method. And so I'm kind of curious if we could kind of walk through what you would do if you were a legislator and you had the legislature and the palm of your hand, you really had gotten the interest of other individuals on this issue, and they want to work with you.
00:27:31:43 - 00:27:55:38
Unknown
What would you pass? What kind of a law would you enact that you think would really, I would say, alleviate the issue to a large degree. Yeah, I so I, I was happy to write the law and it's the appendix to the note. I really would pass it as written. And maybe that's my bias and that's my blinkers because, you know, I do think that I've been very pessimistic on the political process.
00:27:55:38 - 00:28:22:24
Unknown
But I do think that there is I mean, one of the great pieces I had was a lot of criticism from my advisor, Professor Richard Phrase, who is really wonderful in this process. He actually inspired this note with a class. He with a case he assigned us. He was my one l criminal law professor. He assigned us Ponta versus City of Miami, which was kind of a the lodestone for me of like cracking my head open like an egg of like, oh, we can really do this.
00:28:22:28 - 00:28:47:57
Unknown
And I got a lot of feedback on the law, and I think I've read teamed it pretty well. It's ambitious. It's it's not an easy pill to swallow. I think in a lot of ways, you know, I fully admit that some of these provisions could be so expensive that it really that once you got that budget estimate, it would be jaw dropping for even the most amenable people.
00:28:48:07 - 00:29:12:24
Unknown
But I, I really think that these laws help all people. And so if I was that, that, you know, omnipotent legislator, I would just I would, I would get this past as is. And ultimately government involvement with this law is really about there's a couple of positive policy proposals, such as the idea of building what they call hygiene stations, publicly available bathrooms.
00:29:12:26 - 00:29:33:43
Unknown
You know, a lot of people who don't really understand the struggle that unhoused people have going to the bathroom or cleaning themselves. And that leads to other health problems. If you can't clean yourself and or use the bathroom properly. And so there was this idea in California that every locality was going to have to provide a certain amount of public bathrooms per capita.
00:29:33:43 - 00:30:03:01
Unknown
And, you know, everyone can use these bathrooms not earmarked for unhoused people, but their big cost to maintain into, to fix and keep secure and keep clean and usable. So that's probably the biggest, most expensive thing. But there's other things that are all it really pushes the the implementation under the private sector. I mean, I'm no neoliberal, but I think that once if if you're going to get the market involved, it's on things like preventing employment discrimination on how people want to work.
00:30:03:02 - 00:30:35:02
Unknown
Most of them have jobs. I believe I shouldn't say most. I believe a large plurality of them actually maintain employment during. I believe one of the closest numbers, I think is like 43. I didn't I don't have that number totally on the top of my head. But, you know, there's a great blog post from a woman that I found from up in the Emerald Triangle in the Pacific Northwest, and she talks about like, it's really hard to go on job interviews when you smell, you know, or to go to work when you when you haven't been able to get your own shower for days.
00:30:35:04 - 00:30:53:04
Unknown
And so that's the sort of thing that's big and expensive, but preventing employment discrimination in the way of saying, look, you can't ask for an address, you know, that that doesn't just help on house people. That's that's a whole separate area of like racial discrimination law. But it really does help on house people because people generally don't have fixed address.
00:30:53:04 - 00:31:20:57
Unknown
Or an employer may look up the address and realize it's a homeless shelter. So I think that in especially the whole the whole thing with the negative rights is private enforcement. You know, I believe in the adverse system. I really I really do believe in litigation, as is the way to not necessarily, you know, you can push forward policy with litigation, but you enforce everyone's rights when you enforce your own.
00:31:21:02 - 00:31:44:24
Unknown
There's that's all you can do is you can disincentivize people from mistreating you, and hopefully they don't mistreat other people like you. I like to say I have a termites view of the law, where you just take one little insect sized bite of the house one at a time, until eventually the house falls down. You know, you help one person and you help one person, and then hopefully eventually it helps everyone.
00:31:44:38 - 00:32:11:02
Unknown
So that's my that's maybe part of my pessimism is really taking it granular, like you said earlier. So I know that again, another another discursive answer to a very straightforward question. But I really believe that if government can get behind a few of the big, expensive, meaningful policy issues and just force the market to adapt to the rest of these conditions, it's private enforcement, it's attorneys.
00:32:11:02 - 00:32:37:26
Unknown
And, you know, especially with the statutory damages, the mandatory kind of regardless of actual damages, the statutory damages penalty and allowing punitive damages, attorney's fees, shifting, that sort of thing, you can really incentivize private enforcement of these rights. And, you know, yeah, I'm sorry that target has to come up with a new employment form, you know, a new a new application form.
00:32:37:31 - 00:32:41:48
Unknown
That's a cost the private market can bear.
00:32:41:52 - 00:32:56:50
Unknown
On, on that. Not that last point, but on one of the points that was made in the middle. I want to kind of follow up on it a little bit. One of the things that you mentioned was that many of the pieces of the statute, the provisions that you would ask to be enacted, would help many other people.
00:32:56:52 - 00:33:25:24
Unknown
And I'm kind of curious to kind of cap this conversation off. Why do you think that many of the provisions that help many people also translate to those experiencing homelessness in, I guess, inasmuch to say that it appears that a way to help many people suffering from kinds of oppression, or the kinds of suffering that society imposes on them, is also the way to help individuals who experience some of the most suffering in our society.
00:33:25:28 - 00:33:55:31
Unknown
Absolutely. There's a lot of different angles to that. But the big one, and it's something we haven't quite touched on yet, is the vast network of laws, of ultimately local laws that criminalize and penalize homelessness. And I mean, criminalize like this is a misdemeanor. The almost every city has countless laws that are specifically intended. They are technically, broadly applicable to apply with the void for vagueness requirements set out in pop.
00:33:55:31 - 00:34:13:16
Unknown
A Christie versus City of Jacksonville. But they really are meant to get homeless people. I think one of the examples I put is that in the note, I provide a lot of examples of these kinds of laws, and I believe there's like over there's like close to 25 in the Twin Cities alone in Boston, there's a log in sitting or lying down on parks benches.
00:34:13:16 - 00:34:45:55
Unknown
Well, if you've ever been to Boston Common on a beautiful fall day, there are people sitting, lying down on all these sorts of benches, and I don't see a single ticket being handed out. What is that really intended to criminalize? You know, Phoenix, Arizona, gathering on sidewalks, you know, who's enforcing that, who's it being enforced against. And so I think one of the things is the over criminalization of unhoused people over criminalization is a problem faced by a subpopulations like people of color, black people, specifically in this country.
00:34:45:55 - 00:35:16:45
Unknown
And there's been a lot of conversation over the last couple of years about the way that affects people over criminalization will keep you out of housing. It'll keep you out of employment. It is this feedback loop where every little piece of it pushes you down and depletes your resources and pushes you to homelessness. I think that I think that's one of the ways to get people on board, is saying, these things are good for everyone, you know, and I do think that they do particularly affect on house people, because you're talking about people who are vulnerable.
00:35:16:48 - 00:35:48:07
Unknown
A lot of times these people don't have financial resources. You know, there are huge problems with homelessness in LGBTQ plus communities where they may have lost a lot of their social network via social ostracization. Again, just the effects of systemic racism depriving black people of wealth over the last couple centuries. When you think about the average black family having a bare fraction of the familial wealth that that white families have, we talked about pretty much off the top.
00:35:48:07 - 00:36:16:55
Unknown
Like we could try to call our families for that 1200 and rent, but for black for black families where they're all less likely to own their own homes, especially in Minnesota. There's a great Federal Reserve report on that. But for people that don't have their own home. People that don't have capital, that don't have any assets to borrow against, you're really talking about they are living on the narrowest razor, the thinnest razor, razor's edge of economic and housing precarity.
00:36:16:55 - 00:36:37:55
Unknown
And it really doesn't take much a tip one way or the other. And so I think that what you're doing here is you're really it's the rising tides raising all boats. You're you're picking up the people who are at the very lowest when in terms of precarity, I'm not making a statement about their dignity, but but about their economic and social precarity.
00:36:37:57 - 00:37:04:50
Unknown
And, you know, there are higher rates of mental illness when it comes to unhoused people. We're not really sure correlation or causation, whether that leads people to homelessness more or whether that's a caused by homelessness more. I am not an expert in that, but I think it's also one of those things that if you're not patching up the cracks at the base of everything, people are going to fall out the bottom.
00:37:04:50 - 00:37:25:28
Unknown
And that's what we're really talking about, is people being pushed out the bottom of the of, of our society, and they're put out onto the streets, and then they're quickly pushed off those streets and out of sight. And I think that's one of the big things, is just cities don't want to solve homelessness. Nobody wants us. It's nobody's problem.
00:37:25:28 - 00:37:46:04
Unknown
It's not a state's problem. Cities don't want to. It's a cities problem, but cities don't want to solve it. And ultimately they have very small borders, so they push them elsewhere. There's this cycle of making homelessness so miserable in a jurisdiction that people go to other jurisdictions, or outright shipping people out of jurisdictions. That's a that's a whole nother thing I could get into.
00:37:46:07 - 00:38:16:14
Unknown
But you said we were wrapping up. So I to put a button on that. I think you have people who are already at risk of these things and just a little push in each direction upward. If it's one thing that interrupts what we talked about, those network depletion, those income crises, those social crises when it comes to, you know, domestic situation, domestic violence situations, if you can just there's no silver bullet for these things.
00:38:16:14 - 00:38:47:19
Unknown
I'm not one of those people who thinks homelessness will ever be permanently eradicated. But what you can do is you can make it short, you can make it rare, and you can provide resources to interrupt these things and policies that, you know, it's like a rubber band. If they go down, they come right back up. And I it maybe that makes me a little naive to think that we can do something like that, but that's where I'd rather live than just throwing up my hands at the issue that I hope we can all be naive someday.
00:38:47:24 - 00:51:15:57
Unknown
Thank you so much for coming on and we look forward to everyone hopefully reading this note in volume 106, issue one of the Minnesota Law Review.
00:51:16:02 - 01:24:07:39