by Travis Mateer

This week the Supreme Court is finally weighing in on the 9th Circuit’s policy-making ruling that it’s inhumane to restrict open-air drug colonies known as “urban camps” if municipalities haven’t rolled out the red carpet by creating enough free beds for this shelter-resistant population to utilize.

Here’s one of the imbeciles from this Missoulian article voicing support for enabling drug addicts to live in squalor in public parks:

While the Supreme Court case is confined to the Grants Pass decision, it “will have obvious impacts on Martin” depending on how the court rules, explained Alex Rate, interim deputy director for ACLU Montana.

“If SCOTUS overrules Grants Pass it will embolden communities like Boise to pass inhumane ordinances that criminalize being unhoused,” Rate said in a text message.

Well, Alex, if SCOTUS doesn’t overrule Grants Pass, then it will embolden cities like Missoula to criminalize TRASH CLEANUPS, like what happened to Ryan Tollefson. Maybe Alex can explain how HUMANE it is to ticket and arrest someone for picking up trash, then BANNING them from literally going to the river.

Do you see the condition imposed on Ryan Tollefson for picking up trash? It’s the sixth one on the paperwork pictured above, and it reads like this (emphasis mine):

The Defendant will not be within 50 feet of any riverbank within Missoula city limits.

Can you believe a court would actually impose this condition? If you can’t, it’s probably because you haven’t accepted the reality that we all live in a cartoon clown world now.

My legal situation is more complicated, but the results are very similar, considering I was told by a judge last week to NOT attend public City Council meetings on Mondays OR Wednesdays, and I’m also not allowed to go anywhere my “petitioner” goes, like the tour of the Reserve Street bridge area where TONS of trash got removed from our riverbank.

If you want to hear my voice dispense some expertise on this particular facet of Missoula’s homeless issue, then check out this post from April 20th, 2021 where I discuss the Reserve Street cleanup with my first podcast co-host, Tim.

Going back to the Missoulian article, Montana is described as having one of the fastest growing homeless populations in the country. Really?

Across the state in Missoula, urban camping and encampment sweeps have been dominating the conversation over the last couple years. The city is continually removing urban campers from city-owned land and a working group, formed in response to the issue of homelessness, has five possible ordinances on the table.

Not only have Montana municipalities been passing laws expressly with Grants Pass and Martin in mind, the state also has one of the fastest growing populations of homeless people in the country.

Between 2007 — when the nationwide annual tracking began — and 2023, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased in 25 states, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report.

Montana had the second-largest percentage increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness at 89% and the third-largest percentage increase from 2022 to 2023 at 45%.

Those trends are in part due to the skyrocketing housing prices across the state.

Yes, the cost of housing is definitely a contributing factor to the increasing numbers of people NOT living in conventional homes. I’ll be one of ’em in a month when I stop paying $800 dollars for a little room in this stupid fucking town. But it’s NOT just housing that’s being impacted, businesses are ALSO going elsewhere, like the guy who told me he’s moving his business to Idaho after his property taxes went from $3,000 to around $9,000 dollars in just a couple of years.

If SCOTUS rules against the activism of the 9th Circuit Court, what will happen? Will local criminal justice systems, including law enforcement, lose their favorite scapegoat for official inaction when it comes to addressing criminal behavior enabled by “urban camping”? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

As for the Reserve Street area, it’s unfortunate I won’t be able to attend the celebratory tour today showing what can happen when citizens IGNORE the influencers who operate within the HOMELESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX and take matters into their own hands in order to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING to fix the problem, instead of just perpetuating it.

If anyone wants to talk to an expert about this issue, I’m available, and if you want to assist me financially, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is the online place to do it. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!