In America, we have a tendency to attempt to address health, human rights, and poverty issues through the criminal justice system. A perfect example of this has been the so-called "War On Drugs", which has soaked up billions upon billions of dollars with no discernible positive effect, whereas other nations treat it as a health issue and have made significant progress in dealing with many of the worst issues associated with addiction. Fortunately, some of the rhetorical and enforcement excesses of this approach have been somewhat curbed or tempered in recent years, though they haven't been eliminated entirely, and people at the highest levels of government are re-thinking the policy. Unfortunately, our tendency to attempt to address issues through criminalization of those dealing with said issues has found a different outlet, with the most powerless people in the United States now bearing the brunt of our punitive approach.
Anti-homeless laws aren't new. with people during the Depression often being arrested for having "No visible means of support". However, the Supreme Court didn't look favorably upon such legislation due to it being overly broad, and struck down said laws on a regular basis through the 1960s, forcing communities to find other, possibly more humane ways of dealing with homeless people. I haven't found any great increase in measures specifically targeting homeless people through the rest of the 20th century. However, following close on the heels of the recent recession, we seem to have developed a new distaste for the increased numbers of homeless people, and rather than addressing the issue through attempting to find homes for people in need (which has worked out quite well in Utah), we're seeing an increase in "quality of life" laws that seem to seek to essentially make the very act of being homeless a crime.
While I haven't been able to find an exact number of municipalities that have chosen to deal with homelessness as a criminal issue, by one count, at least 58 cities in California alone have enacted laws that make it more difficult to homeless people to simply go about their days, or sleep without fear of police harassment at night, and more and more cities across the nation are following suit.
I already created a thread on this particular subject, but it still bears mentioning that the Los Angeles City Council is attempting to make it illegal to sleep in your car in Venice Beach CA. As my wife and I actually lived in her car when we first arrived in Venice (until it was towed), this one obviously hits close to home for me. They're attempting to do this in the face of their previous ban having been struck down by a federal appeals court.
In Manteca CA, they have severely limited the hours that a public park is open, shut off power to a gazebo in the park so that homeless people cannot charge their cell phones there, and have turned on the sprinklers at night to make it impossible to sleep on the property.
In Sarasota FL, they have removed the benches from public parks so that homeless people cannot use them to sleep on, and instituted a smoking ban at the parks that was openly targeted towards the homeless,
In Miami FL and Dallas TX, the city councils created "No panhandling" zones, and in St. Petersburg FL, that ban covered the entire city. Minneapolis prohibits panhandling in certain areas, which you could make an argument for. In Oakland Park, FL, however, the mere act of giving "anything of value" to a panhandler is punishable by a fine or jail time, even if the person being given the money is selling the giver flowers or a newspaper.
In Anchorage AK and numerous other municipalities, anti-camping laws have been enacted that prohibit people from setting up any sort of shelter in a public area. In Boulder CO, they've gone so far as to cite people for sleeping outside in a sleeping bag. Even that's a damned sight more compassionate than San Francisco (which prohibits people from sleeping on sidewalks at all, regardless of shelter), Austin (Where you can only sit or lie on the sidewalk for a maximum of 30 minutes, and then only if you have a disability of some sort), Seattle (No sitting or lying on the sidewalk at all), or Reno (Same). This list is nowhere close to exhaustive, and sit/lie bans are part of a growing trend to keep homeless people from even being able to rest over the course of a day.
Of course, food sharing ordinances have hit the news lately, with seemingly countless cities making it illegal for individuals to even help provide for one of the most necessary elements of survival to homeless people.
So, if you're homeless in a major urban area in America, here's what you have to look forward to:
1. Not being able to sleep anywhere.
2. Not being able to sit.
3. Not being allowed to ask for money.
4. Not being given food due to laws against it.
I'm not aware of any "Don't breathe the same air as housed people" legislation currently being proposed, but I assume that that's the next logical step.
This isn't addressing the problem. This is criminalizing behavior that people often have to resort to in order to simply survive. They criminalize sleeping in public, but don't provide more shelter beds or housing. They criminalize sitting on the sidewalk, but provide no alternatives, and even remove benches. They criminalize panhandling, but don't provide work. They criminalize feeding the homeless, then place soup kitchens that serve meager meals in the most dangerous neighborhoods, often miles from where homeless people tend to congregate.
This is, essentially, an undeclared war on homeless people rather than on homelessness. As I've stated several times on this forum, despite the fact that simply providing homeless people with housing is often significantly cheaper and more effective at addressing the issue than the punitive measures currently being taken, we're so obsessed with people not getting shit for free that we're actually willing to pay more in taxes and social costs than we would spend by simply providing every single homeless person with a small studio apartment, some food, and some basic services to help them get their lives in order. It's insane, it's bizarre, and it's frankly one of the most shameful aspects of our national makeup.
TL;DR: We're treating homelessness as a criminal issue rather than as the health and social issue that it is, and it's costing us too much both financially and morally.
I know that I recently posted a thread on one topic listed here, so I've asked the admins/mods to fold that thread into this one if they get the time, or to lock it altogether. I realized that the topic addressed only a small part of what I see as a dangerous trend, and felt that this broader topic would enable us to discuss the issues in a more comprehensive manner.
Thoughts?
