Illegal to be Homeless

Today the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) releases

Illegal to be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United

States, the most comprehensive study of homeless civil rights violations. This

study is also the most up-to-date survey of current laws that criminalize

homeless people and ranks the top "meanest" cities and states in the country.

This report examines legislated ordinances and statutes, as well as law

enforcement and community practices since August of 2003.



The National Homeless Civil Rights Organizing Project (NHCROP) — an effort of

NCH, comprised of local advocates in communities across the country — has

compiled quantitative and qualitative data samplings from 179 communities in 48

states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. These cities and towns

represent rural, urban and suburban areas of all geographic and demographic

varieties across the United States.



This 2004 report finds Little Rock (AR), Atlanta (GA), Cincinnati (OH), Las

Vegas (NV), and Gainesville (FL) to be the top five "meanest" cities in the

United States for poor and homeless people. California is the "meanest" state,

followed by Florida, Hawaii and Texas. Many of these communities have

significant histories of violating the civil rights of homeless people and can

be considered "repeat offenders."



Michael Stoops, Director of Community Organizing for the National Coalition for

the Homeless, said, "There needs to be an end to the patterns of discrimination

we have seen repeated in many of these cities, year after year."



In May 2004, Little Rock police implemented a 3-day notice warning in advance to

clearing a camp. Police had targeted at least 27 homeless areas to force campers

to clear out, and yet, only two months later in July of 2004, police raided a

homeless camp during the day without notice, postings, or warrants and

arbitrarily threw homeless people’s property into the nearby river. Conducting

sweeps of areas where homeless people are living not only extensively opens the

City up to potential lawsuits, but also actually does nothing to solve the

underlying problems of homelessness. Soon, Little Rock public officials are

threatening a massive sweep to remove homeless people as the Clinton

Presidential Library opens on November 18.



The city of Fresno, California, authorized the construction of a barbed wire

topped public "drunk tank," where people can be put on public display. In

Minneapolis, Minnesota, a homeless person was arrested for "dancing in the

street." Tampa, Florida, arrested individuals for serving food to homeless

people. Atlanta’s Ambassador Force, assisted by police, operates a "Wake Up

Atlanta" team to roust homeless people from any public or private space and

arrest them if there is a delay. And in the past year, the state of Hawaii

passed a law that bans homeless individuals from living on all public property.



This report documents laws specifically enacted to target homeless people

including anti-camping, anti-panhandling, and loitering laws, but also looks at

police abuse of existing laws in an overly broad fashion in order to move

society's problems into jails or at least out of sight. In the summer of 2004,

CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace was arrested by the New York City

Transit Police for arguing and charged with "disorderly conduct," an abused

criminal charge that ensnares thousands of homeless people throughout the

country. Mike Wallace was caught in a "abuse of power" faced every day by

homeless people who are arrested for disorderly conduct for sleeping, speaking,

or using public facilities.



According to this report, fifty-one of the cities studied have legislated new

ordinances targeting homeless people since August of 2003. Fifty-seven of the

cities surveyed conducted large sweeps or destroyed the campsites of homeless

individuals. In addition, homeless people face the continual enforcement of

existing laws, as well as the selective scrutiny of violating other statutes.

This pattern and practice of legislating, targeting and enforcing laws against

homeless people constitutes an infrastructure of criminalization. There has

been no documentation of any voluntary repeal of an anti-homeless law in the

past fifteen months, although several cities have been forced to change their

laws as a result of lawsuits, and some have actually had to make large payments

to individuals who have been discriminated against.



With unemployment rates still at peak levels, more people have become homeless,

and as the economy has tightened, shelters and service-providing agencies face

budget cuts and even closures. Though nearly all cities still lack sufficient

shelter beds and social services, many continue to pass laws prohibiting

homeless people from sleeping outside. Cities are attempting to make it illegal

to perform life-sustaining activities in public, while at the same time refusing

to allocate sufficient funds for housing, to legislate living wages, or to

provide necessary health care, thus hindering these individuals’ basic civil

liberties.



This country is building jails instead of creating affordable housing. By

enacting the Bringing America Home Act (H.R. 2897—108th Congress) Congress can

begin the process of preventing and ending homelessness. Donald Whitehead,

Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, who is himself

formerly homeless, said, "The criminal justice system is not an answer to the

problems that homeless people face. We need solutions that go to the root

causes of the issue – affordable housing, livable income, treatment and health

care, and civil rights protection."