Down the Wrong Path: How Society Has Failed the Homeless
Editors’ note: Prof. Sara Rankin submits this post written by students Justin Olson, Kaya Lurie, and Javier Ortiz. This piece is cross posted with the Legislative Law Profs Blog.
Imagine a life where almost everything you did was prohibited. You could not sit, lie down, obtain food, use the restroom, or sleep with any protection from the elements. In effect, your very existence would be a crime. The idea seems reprehensible; yet for a subsection of our community, this is their reality to varying degrees. Throughout Washington State and our nation as a whole, people experiencing homelessness are criminalized for performing the sort of basic, necessary, live-sustaining functions described above. While a vocal segment has actively supported the policy of criminalization, the majority of society has simply been content to look the other way.
In the Fall of 2014, Professor Sara Rankin established the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project (HRAP) at the Seattle University School of Law. Under Professor Rankin’s guidance, the founding cohort of HRAP students undertook the most comprehensive assessment of criminalization in any state in the country. (The four resulting policy briefs may be downloaded from the HRAP webpage.) What the students ultimately found was disturbing and should encourage society to reexamine the impact of these criminalization laws.
The impetus to remove people experiencing homelessness from public view mirrors the same reasoning that led to the enactment of historical discriminatory laws, including vagrancy laws, Jim Crow segregation, and Anti-Okie laws. Many of these historical laws were enacted to prevent members of society from utilizing public space because they exhibited traits that society deemed to be undesirable. This undesirable label criminalized people who were deemed vagrants, ugly, or nuisance. This similar type of criminalization appears in ordinances targeting people experiencing homelessness and how they are enforced.
Not surprisingly, present-day homeless criminalization laws have a discriminatory impact on groups who already suffer systemic marginalization. Certain marginalized groups, including racial minorities, women, LGBTQ youth, individuals with a mental disability, formerly incarcerated individuals, and veterans, are disproportionately represented in homeless populations compared to general populations. This disproportionate impact of homelessness on marginalized groups is caused in large part by systemic discrimination. Society has repeatedly rejected laws that directly discriminated against many of these same marginalized groups, and therefore should be compelled to reexamine the impact of these homeless criminalization laws.
If the moral arguments do not persuade you to think that homeless criminalization laws are bad policy, there is also a compelling financial argument. Criminalizing individuals experiencing homelessness is expensive and ineffective. Many studies around the country, including that of HRAP, have demonstrated significant savings on enforcement, adjudication, and incarceration when funds are directed toward the creation of affordable housing instead of criminalization. For example, Seattle and Spokane could save taxpayers over $2 million annually if funding was directed from criminalizing homelessness to providing housing. While this number is substantial—and quite compelling—it is just the tip of the iceberg of the total cost that cities could save if the funding spent on homeless criminalization laws was directed toward housing.
Notwithstanding the ineffective and unjust nature of these laws, homeless criminalization has been increasingly embraced by local jurisdictions in Washington State. Criminalization efforts have been on a steep rise since the turn of the 21st century and do not appear to be slowing down. This creates big problems for cities because of the wastefulness of enforcement. Individual cities like Seattle and Spokane spent millions of dollars over a five-year span just to enforce these ordinances, and yet homeless numbers continue to rise and the cities are no better off than they were.
Unfortunately, changing course is an uphill battle. Visible poverty makes everyone uncomfortable; it is a reminder of what doesn’t work in our society. Housing is too expensive, there are not enough jobs that pay a living wage, and social and health services are grossly underfunded. People are afraid of what would happen if these laws were repealed, afraid of the discomfort they are sure to feel as the scope of homelessness can no longer be ignored.
However, avoidance of a problem is never a sustainable solution, and fear is never a valid reason to deny people of their civil liberties. The persistent prevalence of people experiencing homelessness in public spaces, sitting on sidewalks and camping in parks, should alert cities that they have a problem and criminalization is not the solution. Addressing the root of homelessness is a necessary discomfort, one we should all endure in order to reach the same epiphany: homeless people are people, they are mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. And we as a society are failing them.