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Volunteering Makes People Happier

Do happy people give, or does giving make people happy? Studies that link happiness to generosity sometimes measure only correlations. But this UK study from a few years ago shows that people who volunteer become happier over time as a result of their volunteering, happier enough to be equivalent to an $1,100 extra income each year, on average.

“But does volunteering make people happy, or are happy people simply more likely to volunteer? The researchers found the same results even when they accounted for participants’ initial levels of well-being before they started volunteering. In other words, people who started to volunteer became happier over time.”

How Volunteering Can Help Your Mental Health | Greater Good Science Center

New Application of Old Drug Makes Bone Marrow Donations Easier to Match

A drug that’s around 70-years-old has been repurposed to improve bone marrow compatibility for people needing a donation, improving conditions for many thousands of patients.

I have a friend who donated bone marrow a few years back and had a fantastic experience doing it. If your age is 18–40 and you live in the US, you can register as a donor here: bethematch.org

Cyclophosphamide has now enabled more patients than ever to get bone-marrow transplants —more than 7,000 last year, according to NMDP…The field has essentially surmounted the problem of matching donors, a major barrier to transplants, Ephraim Fuchs, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins University, told me. Fuchs couldn’t remember the last time a patient failed to get a blood stem-cell transplant because they couldn’t find a donor.

The Bone-Marrow-Transplant Revolution - The Atlantic

How the Homelessness SCOTUS Case Went Yesterday

It seems like the Justices were looking for a range of options yesterday to get rid of the Grants Pass law making it illegal to camp on public property. They may not end up ruling that the law violates the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but I won’t be surprised if the law gets killed on some grounds.

Justices Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan seemed clearly opposed to the law in question, but take a look at these comments by conservative Justices.

Justice Kavanaugh:

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh was at least initially dubious that reversing the 9th Circuit’s decision and allowing the city to enforce its ordinances would make a difference in addressing the homelessness problem. How would your rule help, he asked Evangelis, if there are not enough beds for people experiencing homelessness? Kavanaugh returned to this point a few minutes later, asking Evangelis how sending people to jail for violating the city’s ordinances would help to address the homelessness problem if there are still no beds available when they get out. Such individuals, he observed, are “not going to be any better off than you were before.”

Justice Alito:

And Justice Samuel Alito indicated that although “status is different from conduct, … there are some instances of conduct that are closely tied to status or if homelessness is defined as simply lacking a place to stay in a particular night, they amount to the same thing.”

Also, I just have a thing to say about this:

Corkran sought to assuage the justices’ concerns about some of those line-drawing problems, emphasizing that the focus should be on “physical and legal access to shelter.” If someone who is homeless turns down a place at a shelter because of the shelter’s “no pets” policy, she conceded, they do not have an Eighth Amendment claim under the challengers’ theory.

Often, a pet is the only friend that an unhoused person has. I can understand the difficulty for homeless shelters in making room for pets, but it’s rough forcing anyone choose between their pet and committing a crime.

Court divided over constitutionality of criminal penalties for homelessness | SCOTUSblog

Making Homelessness Illegal

Recent controversies at SCOTUS might overshadow the news about this upcoming case, Grants Pass vs. Johnson. Today, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about this question: Should camping on public property be illegal if there are no other housing options for people experiencing homelessness?

The Grants Pass city council basically decided that their solution to rising homelessness in their city was to make it harder for these people to stay. Of course, if every city did this then homelessness wouldn’t go away, it would just make life harder for people without housing. This Vox article does a nice job outlining the key issues.

Fining, ticketing, or arresting unhoused people — which local governments will be more easily able to do if Grants Pass is overturned — will make it harder for homeless people, who already cannot afford shelter, to obtain permanent housing later on.
Having a criminal record can make it more difficult to land a job, stable housing, and receive government benefits. Even among those who do find jobs, employees with records generally face significant earning penalties.

What’s at stake for homeless people this week at the Supreme Court - Vox

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