Another way to look at the issue is to step even farther back from the policy perspective.
In life, regardless of laws or the existence an ordered society, there is the physical necessity for an individual to have shelter and food. In the distant past, these requirements for individual survival were left entirely to the individual, and ev…
Another way to look at the issue is to step even farther back from the policy perspective.
In life, regardless of laws or the existence an ordered society, there is the physical necessity for an individual to have shelter and food. In the distant past, these requirements for individual survival were left entirely to the individual, and eventually, thru social cooperation, kinship/friendship mutual support groups evolved that offered *mutual* benefit by sharing resources, which included food and housing.
The evolved tendency was that kinship individuals *might* receive benefits even if they provided no reciprocal benefit to the rest of the group. But beyond this exception for kinship, reciprocity was a key part of the evolved social arrangement for sharing food and shelter.
So there exists a continuum--and this is a *physical* reality--and not a social construct--for individuals to obtain both food and shelter. This can be solved on one extreme end by the individual proactively filling all needs for food and shelter, and on the other extreme, for society to fill the need for food/shelter for the individual, who is for some reason passive in this process. In common practice each individual occupies a spot on this continuum, with most requiring some level of social benefit.
Over time, the point on the continuum below which an individual's efforts to solve his/her own subsistence needs are socially, lawfully deemed insufficient and subject to public public sanction of some sort, has evolved as a sort of "point of social acceptability".
Over time, as social resources produced greater surpluses of materials, incluing food and possibly shelter, social empathy granted more unreciprocated access to these surpluses; many more non-kinship individuals were given access to food/shelter with few--or no--strings attached. Exceptions for the general requirement for some level of reciprocity by the individual toward the society are made for those deemed formally incompetent.
The Boise and Grants Pass 9th circuit decisions pushed the norm toward society providing greater access to shelter for unreciprocating individuals, and the Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson pushed it back in the other direction.
Another way to look at the issue is to step even farther back from the policy perspective.
In life, regardless of laws or the existence an ordered society, there is the physical necessity for an individual to have shelter and food. In the distant past, these requirements for individual survival were left entirely to the individual, and eventually, thru social cooperation, kinship/friendship mutual support groups evolved that offered *mutual* benefit by sharing resources, which included food and housing.
The evolved tendency was that kinship individuals *might* receive benefits even if they provided no reciprocal benefit to the rest of the group. But beyond this exception for kinship, reciprocity was a key part of the evolved social arrangement for sharing food and shelter.
So there exists a continuum--and this is a *physical* reality--and not a social construct--for individuals to obtain both food and shelter. This can be solved on one extreme end by the individual proactively filling all needs for food and shelter, and on the other extreme, for society to fill the need for food/shelter for the individual, who is for some reason passive in this process. In common practice each individual occupies a spot on this continuum, with most requiring some level of social benefit.
Over time, the point on the continuum below which an individual's efforts to solve his/her own subsistence needs are socially, lawfully deemed insufficient and subject to public public sanction of some sort, has evolved as a sort of "point of social acceptability".
Over time, as social resources produced greater surpluses of materials, incluing food and possibly shelter, social empathy granted more unreciprocated access to these surpluses; many more non-kinship individuals were given access to food/shelter with few--or no--strings attached. Exceptions for the general requirement for some level of reciprocity by the individual toward the society are made for those deemed formally incompetent.
The Boise and Grants Pass 9th circuit decisions pushed the norm toward society providing greater access to shelter for unreciprocating individuals, and the Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson pushed it back in the other direction.