There are countless reasons why the Amherst Police should not confiscate and discard the belongings of homeless people. Here are two.
The first reason is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The second reason is the Fourteenth Amendment. Both amendments, in beautiful and stirring language, protect the right of the people to be free from the search and seizure of their property unless a warrant, backed by a specific oath or affirmation, has been issued.
In the past, there may have been some uncertainty about whether property left unattended in a public place was covered by the amendments. This ambiguity was settled in the September 2012 decision, Lavan v City of Los Angeles, issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the property was indeed covered.
While Massachusetts is not in the 9th Circuit, I hardly think our courts, if tested, would reach a contradictory decision. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in January 2015, 564,708 people were homeless on a given night; 21,135 of them were in Massachusetts.
Other studies have put the number of homeless much higher. In any case, it only seems to some town leaders that all the homeless have been drawn to Amherst.
Since homelessness is a state and national, as well as a local problem, the long-term solutions should be either state or national.
Municipalities, however, do not have the luxury of waiting for the long term. I would like to see a large gathering of concerned individuals such as business owners, shoppers, hikers and other users of conservation land, come together with the homeless and their friends and advocates to discuss and consider each other’s problems and viewpoints.
We may not reach agreement on all issues, but it has to work better than communicating with each other solely through the pages of the Gazette and the Republican.
Catherine Etheridge
Sunderland