The United States Mission Corporation, a Christian charity, runs a residential facility for homeless people in the Seattle suburb of Mercer Island. The shelter offers a transitional program that houses people without homes and offers them the opportunity to earn grants that they can use to rent an apartment, obtain a car or pay for education. Until recently, however, the facility’s ability to fund its operations was threatened by a local ordinance that sought to prevent Mercer Island residents who have homes from having to speak briefly with one of the homeless people who reside in the Mission.
The Mission funds itself by requiring its residents to go door-to-door seeking donations for its facility. Yet its ability to do so was endangered by an ordinance, enacted in 2014, which prohibits such solicitation after 7 p.m.. According the Mission’s leader, residents must fundraise every weeknight until 8 p.m. in order to “sustain the cost of the canvassing, which is the Mission’s main means of support”
Last week, a federal court halted the local ordinance, citing the First Amendment.
To overcome the free speech concerns raised by their restrictions on solicitation, Mercer Island claimed that the ordinance was necessary to protect against “burglars who pose as canvassers” and other, similar concerns — despite the fact that the city was able to offer “no evidence of criminality by canvassers or solicitors in Mercer Island.” They also argued that the ordinance “serves to protect the privacy interests of its residents who do not want strangers knocking on their doors during dinner time.”
In his opinion rejecting these defenses of the ordinance, Judge Ricardo Martinez explained that residents who did not want to be solicited could simply post a “No Soliciting” sign. A separate provision of the city ordinance requires solicitors to honor these signs.
The Mercer Island ordinance fits into a pattern of local legislation that imposes potentially life-altering burdens on homeless people in order to ward off minor inconveniences or uncomfortable moments for people who are more fortunate. Eighteen percent of cities, for example, have city-wide bans on sleeping in public, according to a 2014 survey. Forty-three percent forbid sleeping in vehicles, and 9 percent even prohibit sharing food with homeless people.