Homeless People Treated As Criminals In America

This article is by Ariun Sethi and appeared in Coshocton Tribune.  The link is below.

Braving America without a home always has been hard. Now it's becoming a crime. A recent survey of 234 cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty found that on almost every front, municipalities are cracking down on homeless people: 24 percent prohibit begging, 22 percent prohibit loitering and 16 percent say it's illegal to sleep in public places.

On any given night, about 636,000 Americans are homeless. While this number has negligibly declined throughout the past few years, it might soon rise. Data on homelessness lag, and recent evidence suggests that the effects of the economic downturn on homeless people are intensifying.

Among people who are homeless are youth, veterans, victims of domestic violence and families with young children. An estimated 40 percent are unsheltered. For these individuals, begging, loitering and sleeping outside is not a choice; it is a necessity.

Just ask Lawrence Lee Smith. Afflicted with degenerative joint disease in his hip and knee, and unable to afford housing, Smith slept in a tent near the Boise River in Idaho. His crime? Violating the city's anti-camping law. His sentence? Ninety days in jail. Criminalizing these life-sustaining activities forces homeless people to make an unconscionable choice: break the law or relocate.

Blame economy, not victims

It's also bad public policy. Homelessness has risen in 24 states and Washington, D.C., since the recession because real wages and public assistance have not kept pace with rising health care and housing costs. Penalizing the losers in this economy won't solve the problem.

Nor will it make us safer. Homeless people are among America's most vulnerable. From 1999 through 2010, homeless people faced 1,184 acts of reported violence resulting in 312 deaths, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. These acts included beatings and rapes. In some states, homeless people now are a protected class under state hate crime statutes.

Making it a crime to be homeless has pernicious long-term effects. It could render homeless people ineligible for public housing because of draconian regulations, impede access to social services and reduce job prospects because of background checks. Thirty-eight states, for example, let employers ask about arrests when hiring.

Jail not fiscally wise

Jailing homeless people isn't even fiscally sound. One study shows cities spend $87 per day to jail a person, compared with $28 for shelter.

The home is a sacred place in America. It is protected in the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has cited the privacy of the home in striking down state laws that criminalize intimate sexual preferences and the use of contraceptives.

Shepherding homeless people to the outskirts of cities and overcrowded prisons reveals something troubling about America's pathos. Just as our institutions have fallen into decadence, so too have our social mores and our capacity to empathize with the less fortunate. Too often we would rather render homeless people invisible, repudiate them as mentally ill or criminal, than confront them for what they represent: the lingering inequities that gnaw at American democracy.

Homelessness isn't intractable. Take Fairfax County, Va. Through a hodgepodge of initiatives, including rental assistance, maintaining affordable housing and creating a homelessness office to coordinate efforts among government agencies, nonprofits and faith communities, my hometown has reduced homelessness by 16 percent and family homelessness by 19 percent since 2008. Other locales, too, have rejected expediency and the temptation to disavow America's most vulnerable. They should be lauded. In protecting the downtrodden, they are safeguarding democracy, too.

Arjun Sethi is an attorney in Washington, D.C.

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