Law Commons^™

Roulette V. City Of Seattle: A City Lives With Its Homeless, William M. Berg

Seattle University Law Review

This Note analyzes the Roulette holding with respect to prior decisions on begging and vagrancy. In addition, this Note discusses the sidewalk ordinance with respect to the efforts of other communities to control the detrimental effects of a growing homeless population. This Note concludes that the Roulette holding strikes a constitutionally valid doctrinal and jurisprudential middle ground between abandoning the streets to the homeless and driving them from the community. It is argued that the sidewalk ordinance is normatively valid, in that it sets a reasonable standard of conduct that meets commonly accepted norms of civility, serving to benefit the …