WATERTOWN — The Northern Regional Center for Independent Living began a weeklong demonstration Monday morning against the criminalization of homelessness, which divided the Supreme Court Monday as it reviewed a set of Oregon anti-camping laws.

The case could lead to the most significant ruling in decades, expected by the end of June, on the rights of the unhoused.

Demonstrators set up on Court Street in Watertown and Jackson Street in Lowville. On Court Street, there were several tents near the sidewalk and people holding signs out to passersby.

The NRCIL, joined by the Mental Health Association and community members, are hoping to spread awareness about the Supreme Court case that originated in Oregon, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.

The class-action lawsuit began when a group of homeless people in Grants Pass sued the city for enacting legislation that banned sleeping or camping on public property, such as sidewalks and parks.

The case made its way to the Supreme Court, where the initial hearing became the concern of the Watertown demonstrators. Ultimately, they would like to see the court rule against criminalization in Grants Pass, believing that it is unfair to those who are involuntarily without shelter.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided it would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, to allow Grants Pass to enforce sleeping or camping bans when the homeless have nowhere to go.

Gina Reed and Amanda Graveline, family peer advocates with the Northern Regional Center, held colorful signs on Court Street that were made by Reed’s 10-year-old daughter.

“Homelessness is Not a Crime,” “Protect our 8th Amendment Right!” and “Housing, not jail,” some of the signs said.

“Basically, if the Supreme Court finds in favor of the local governments, it is going to start trickling down into small towns everywhere,” Reed said.

Graveline said that many of the people the center works with are homeless, and they are concerned about their well-being.

“A lot of our consumers are homeless people and it’s not fair for them, especially if they get fined for not being able to have a place to stay,” she said.

Reed said that finding homeless people places to stay should be the focus.

“Instead of fining them, they should be putting up some warming centers or housing for the homeless around here,” she said.

Tonya Lockhart and Ashley Wilson represented the Mental Health Association at the Watertown demonstration.

“Here in Watertown especially, we have how many empty buildings just sitting here? Why can’t we rehab them and make them into actual low-income apartments?” Lockhart said.

Despite plenty of possible housing locations, Wilson said there are many “hurdles” in the way.

“I think that a lot of the barriers are a lot with the landlords as well,” Lockhart said. “These ones that are (listed as) ‘low income’ and still charging a thousand dollars a month or wanting three pay stubs and credit history and stuff — they aren’t going to have that.”

A lack of funding has also been an issue, according to Wilson.

“Even though we have all these buildings, there is not a lot of grants out for housing that will pay to rehab the buildings,” she said.

Local homelessness came to the forefront of city and county discussions in the summer of 2022 with people living under the pavilion in the city-owned J.B. Wise parking lot. By December that year, Watertown City Council set a 9 p.m. daily closure for the pavilion as a way to dissuade the homeless from using the facility.

For months, unhoused people stayed under the Joseph M. Butler Sr. Pavilion in tents and in sleeping bags because they had nowhere else to go.

Homeless residents got some help after a temporary center opened in a Main Avenue building that winter and a warming center opened in the Salvation Army building on State Street.

A short-term housing facility for men opened in February last year. Transitional Living Services of Northern New York opened the doors to the 18-bed building in the former Angel’s Inn at 518 Pine St.

Around the same time last year, Jefferson County’s Homeless Project Steering Committee made its final recommendations on how to address homelessness and housing insecurity.

Recommendations included steps that had already been taken, such as establishing a warming center like the Salvation Army’s and a single-resident occupancy program like Transitional Living Service’s Pine Street facility.

Others, like a community of small single-person rooms, made of portable units assembled as a “pallet community,” or a rapidly deployable shelter to house 50 people in an emergency, have yet to be developed.