Local Commissions Speak Out on Criminalization of Homelessness — In Defense of Human Rights
Criminalization of homelessness in the U.S. is increasingly on the radar of the United Nations. On a positive note, this is the result of inspiring advocacy by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP) and their partners, including this report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee. Unfortunately, though, the U.N. is paying attention because in many localities, policymakers see criminalization as a viable way to address homelessness, despite the negative consequences of criminalization.
This week, the ACLU of Boise, Idaho invoked the CERD and ICCPR concluding observations condemning criminalization in an open letter to the Mayor and City Council of Boise, Idaho, one city contemplating a criminalization ordinance.
This letter echoed what many of us – scholars, advocates and government actors – believe: criminalization is not only ineffective; it is inhumane and flouts the basic human rights principles that should drive policy. Unfortunately, that is not the dominant perspective in national news outlets or city halls.
In June, when the Ninth Circuit overturned a criminalization law in Los Angeles, NESRI, WRAP, NLCHP and the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School worked with four local human rights commissions to shift the narrative. The Commissions ultimately authored the op-ed below, appearing here for the first time, outlining the harmful impacts of criminalization, highlighting advocacy to eradicate them, and focusing on the dignity and rights of persons experiencing homelessness.
Human Rights Commissions Call for an End to the Criminalization of Homelessness
By The Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission Executive Director Robin Toma and President Kathay Feng; The Seattle Human Rights Commission; The Eugene Human Rights Commission; and The Portland Human Rights Commission
The 9th Circuit recently confirmed that people who have lost their homes and are forced to live in their cars should not be criminally punished for doing so. The decision represents another affirmation of humanity over hostility in the trend against criminalization of homelessness. This trend has been covered nationally, including in the Los Angeles Times editorial ‘Can begging be banned?’ from last October. It began, ‘A war is being waged over panhandling, as cities and states pass tighter and tighter anti-solicitation laws to control transients and deal with chronic homelessness.’ Referencing a 77 year old woman arrested for ‘loitering to beg’ for $1.25 in bus fare, and citing the 100 or so cities that have placed restrictions on panhandling, the editorial emphasized that while perhaps “understandable… it is not acceptable to pass sweeping legislation criminalizing the behavior of individuals who are engaged in peaceful pleas for money or help.”
Sweeping legislation, and an intensely hostile climate, is exactly what many homeless people face in their daily efforts to get by. The Western Regional Advocacy Project’s (April 2013) street outreach fact sheet reveals that between 66-81% of homeless folks surveyed were arrested or confronted by law enforcement for acts such as sleeping, loitering, sitting or lying down. The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty’s (2011) report on criminalizing homelessness noted a 7-10% increase in laws banning panhandling, camping, and loitering. As the U.S.-based International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies recognized in a recent resolution supporting homeless bills of rights, ‘criminalization measures penalize necessary, life sustaining activities … when individuals engage in such behaviors due to their homelessness’.
Stunningly, ordinances preventing the sharing of food – including by church-based organizations serving food to those in need– are being enacted across the country (including in New York City, Philadelphia and Houston) and considered elsewhere (for example, Los Angeles). In the worst recession since the Great Depression, with pervasive poverty – approximately 47 million people are on food stamps and a living wage is increasingly harder to come by – it is unfathomable and immoral to seek to remove access to food from anyone who might be hungry.
Efforts are similarly underway to curtail the availability of safe public spaces. Palo Alto, for example, recently passed an ordinance imposing criminal penalties on those who slept in their cars. Cities are transforming public spaces to make them less and less friendly to transient populations: closing parks earlier; locking public restrooms; and even selectively and aggressively enforcing littering and jay-walking laws. All of these laws discriminate against and target homeless folks.
But criminalizing homelessness does not solve homelessness; only homes solve homelessness. Criminalization measures actually perpetuate homelessness through increasing marginalization, creating arrest records which make it more difficult to obtain employment or housing, and misusing scarce funds to pay more for police, jail, medical and court time than it would cost to simply provide permanent and adequate homes for homeless individuals and families.
We are undeniably facing a domestic human rights crisis as millions of people are unable to live, or are denied, a life of dignity. The local laws and ordinances – often misnamed as “Quality of Life” or “Nuisance Crime Abatement” policies – not only prevent homeless men, women and children from meeting their basic needs; they represent an attack on our collective humanity. As the L.A. Times says, this is not acceptable, and in order for the current trajectory to be reversed, we need to speak out.
As human rights advocates, we believe in fundamental rights for all people, without discrimination. Whenever rights are denied to anyone in our community, it is our duty and our responsibility to educate our communities about human rights, speak out to defend those rights, and make sure that all of us can live in dignity, with our basic needs met. We can ensure this by promoting policies that respect, protect and fulfill all our human rights. Today, as laws target some of the most vulnerable members of our communities – those who are homeless – we are again called upon to do just that.
[Editors’ Note: With today’s post, we welcome JoAnn Kamuf Ward as a contributing editor to the Human Rights at Home Law Profs Blog!]