Supreme Court homelessness ruling could help defeat crisis

The U.S. Supreme Court just took the first step toward a rational approach to the problem of homelessness by overturning a Ninth Circuit ruling that prohibited cities from enforcing their laws against camping in public parks and on sidewalks.  

That decision, called Johnson v. Grants Pass, declared that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s "cruel and unusual punishment" clause to arrest people for sleeping on public property, unless the government had sufficient space in its own homeless shelters to house them.