Time Magazine: Professor Howard on Supreme Court Homelessness Ruling

The United States Supreme Court's recent ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson allows cities to enforce camping and vagrancy laws, stirring debate between enforcement-first and housing-first strategies.  

In a piece published this week in Time magazine, Wentworth Institute of Technology Professor Ella Howard argues that enforcement-first strategies are less effective than housing-first approaches in addressing homelessness. Howard cites evidence from cities like Houston and Atlanta, where providing housing and supportive services has shown more lasting positive effects, and she provides the historical failures of enforcement strategies, such as those seen in New York City.

"Generous policies toward the homeless risk triggering public backlash, but clearing encampments without offering a variety of housing options will only repeat the mistakes that have been made for decades," writes Howard.

Howard is a professor of history at Wentworth and the author of Poverty and Place in Urban America, which focuses on New York's Bowery neighborhood and analyzes the efforts of politicians, charity administrators, social workers, urban planners, and social scientists as they grappled with the issue of homelessness. Her current research focuses on the history of historic preservation as a form of exclusionary zoning, exploring the ways it has furthered gentrification and segregation by race and class, and evaluating strategies for inclusive preservation.

The full piece can be found on Time’s website.