Laws that criminalize homelessness are spreading through cities in the United States.
The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty surveyed 187 cities and found that laws placing restrictions on loitering, begging, sitting and lying down in public have increased nationwide since 2009. Eighteen percent of cities now ban sleeping in public and 42% of cities ban sleeping in vehicles. Laws against begging have increased 25 percent.
Denver City Council banned “urban camping” in 2012 to clear space for the development of its downtown into a “millennial playground,” complete with nightclubs, restaurants and a miniature-golf course. Honolulu’s mayor told The New York Times he had renewed a crackdown on the homeless because tourists “want to see their paradise…not homeless people sleeping.”
The City Council of Columbia, South Carolina — where homeless persons outnumber shelter beds 6 to 1 — unanimously voted in 2013 to shunt its homeless population into a single shelter outside the city, and authorize police to arrest resisters. A hotline was even planned for citizens to call if they spotted a rogue vagrant in the streets. The “emergency homeless response” was devised after the Chamber of Commerce convinced the city that homelessness would “lead to potentially disastrous impacts to the commerce community.”
Tampa, Fla., has the highest rate of homelessness in the nation, and passed some of the country’s harshest laws against begging and sleeping in public as part of its current revitalization plan. Efforts to construct affordable housing have been not only paltry but corrupt: One of the city’s homeless agencies was recently exposed for giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to slumlord political allies who maintained shelters with “unlivable conditions.”
The U.N. Human Rights Committee even condemned the trend as “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” in a recent report on the United States.
As recession- and austerity-stricken cities look for ways to revive their economies, they’re offering huge tax incentives for companies to build entertainment complexes, hotels and retail chains in their downtown districts in the hopes that the relocation will spur a renaissance. Statutes criminalizing homelessness have been outfitted specifically to clear out these areas. The New Yorker called this process “Manhattanization,” defined as “turning a city into a playground for the wealthiest inhabitants, even as the city forgets about the poorest. A New York Times investigation published in December 2012 found that over the past three decades, states, counties and cities have upped the amount of subsidies and tax breaks for companies every year, topping a collective $80 billion now, even as states cut public services and raised non-business taxes by $156 billion last year. This approach increasingly relies on rich people renting, buying and spending money. It does little for those already living in the spaces ostensibly targeted for development. While lower-income people are forced to outer neighborhoods, the desperately poor are physically pushed and hauled away because their existence impedes the plans drafted by elite public-private collaborations. To expedite this “relocation” process, police and private security forces are employed by municipalities to enforce a brutal form of gentrification, relentlessly pouncing on low-level “quality-of-life crimes.” One homeless grandmother was arrested 59 times by the LAPD in the past six years for “illegal lodging.” One report explained “Downtown Los Angeles is on the cusp of an urban renaissance … that is threatened every day” by its large homeless population. Developers claim that increased tax revenue can be used to house a city’s homeless population, but there’s absolutely no precedent for that actually happening. To the contrary: While Los Angeles plans not to fill most of the $9.5 million hole for local homeless programs created by congressional budget cuts and sequestration, the city will likely redirect $275 million in public bonds from essential services to the construction of a brand-new NFL stadium downtown.
As novelist, Anatole France, once wrote “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”
The U.S. government estimates that more than 610,000 people are homeless on any given night. Nearly 13 percent of the nation’s low-income housing has been lost since 2001. Even as unemployment returns to pre-recession levels, rent and other basic costs are rapidly rising across the nation while wages stay unchanged. And because of last year’s federal sequester, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates the ranks of American’s homeless could swell 17 percent this year. Meanwhile, urban “revitalization” strategies go unchallenged.
Already blighted by their homeless status, destitute people are disenfranchised even more by a criminal record. Employment, housing and loans, while barely attainable before, become impossible after multiple stints in jail. Cycling people in and out of jails exacerbates the problem it purports to solve. And because mental illness is so prevalent among single, chronically homeless people — around 35 percent are estimated to suffer from some psychological ailment — the rough process can compound paranoia, delusions and other disorders that already ostracize some from society.
It can be different. The state of Utah began giving away apartments to homeless individuals after realizing how much money could be saved. Policymakers realized that, on average, it costs about $16,670 a year to jail a person and $11,000 a year to set him or her up with an apartment and social work. Since a program called Housing First was launched in 2006, homelessness in Utah has decreased 78 percent, despite a recession-fueled plunge in median income. The state estimates that all Utahans will be housed by next year.
The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty surveyed 187 cities and found that laws placing restrictions on loitering, begging, sitting and lying down in public have increased nationwide since 2009. Eighteen percent of cities now ban sleeping in public and 42% of cities ban sleeping in vehicles. Laws against begging have increased 25 percent.
Denver City Council banned “urban camping” in 2012 to clear space for the development of its downtown into a “millennial playground,” complete with nightclubs, restaurants and a miniature-golf course. Honolulu’s mayor told The New York Times he had renewed a crackdown on the homeless because tourists “want to see their paradise…not homeless people sleeping.”
The City Council of Columbia, South Carolina — where homeless persons outnumber shelter beds 6 to 1 — unanimously voted in 2013 to shunt its homeless population into a single shelter outside the city, and authorize police to arrest resisters. A hotline was even planned for citizens to call if they spotted a rogue vagrant in the streets. The “emergency homeless response” was devised after the Chamber of Commerce convinced the city that homelessness would “lead to potentially disastrous impacts to the commerce community.”
Tampa, Fla., has the highest rate of homelessness in the nation, and passed some of the country’s harshest laws against begging and sleeping in public as part of its current revitalization plan. Efforts to construct affordable housing have been not only paltry but corrupt: One of the city’s homeless agencies was recently exposed for giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to slumlord political allies who maintained shelters with “unlivable conditions.”
The U.N. Human Rights Committee even condemned the trend as “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” in a recent report on the United States.
As recession- and austerity-stricken cities look for ways to revive their economies, they’re offering huge tax incentives for companies to build entertainment complexes, hotels and retail chains in their downtown districts in the hopes that the relocation will spur a renaissance. Statutes criminalizing homelessness have been outfitted specifically to clear out these areas. The New Yorker called this process “Manhattanization,” defined as “turning a city into a playground for the wealthiest inhabitants, even as the city forgets about the poorest. A New York Times investigation published in December 2012 found that over the past three decades, states, counties and cities have upped the amount of subsidies and tax breaks for companies every year, topping a collective $80 billion now, even as states cut public services and raised non-business taxes by $156 billion last year. This approach increasingly relies on rich people renting, buying and spending money. It does little for those already living in the spaces ostensibly targeted for development. While lower-income people are forced to outer neighborhoods, the desperately poor are physically pushed and hauled away because their existence impedes the plans drafted by elite public-private collaborations. To expedite this “relocation” process, police and private security forces are employed by municipalities to enforce a brutal form of gentrification, relentlessly pouncing on low-level “quality-of-life crimes.” One homeless grandmother was arrested 59 times by the LAPD in the past six years for “illegal lodging.” One report explained “Downtown Los Angeles is on the cusp of an urban renaissance … that is threatened every day” by its large homeless population. Developers claim that increased tax revenue can be used to house a city’s homeless population, but there’s absolutely no precedent for that actually happening. To the contrary: While Los Angeles plans not to fill most of the $9.5 million hole for local homeless programs created by congressional budget cuts and sequestration, the city will likely redirect $275 million in public bonds from essential services to the construction of a brand-new NFL stadium downtown.
As novelist, Anatole France, once wrote “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”
The U.S. government estimates that more than 610,000 people are homeless on any given night. Nearly 13 percent of the nation’s low-income housing has been lost since 2001. Even as unemployment returns to pre-recession levels, rent and other basic costs are rapidly rising across the nation while wages stay unchanged. And because of last year’s federal sequester, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates the ranks of American’s homeless could swell 17 percent this year. Meanwhile, urban “revitalization” strategies go unchallenged.
Already blighted by their homeless status, destitute people are disenfranchised even more by a criminal record. Employment, housing and loans, while barely attainable before, become impossible after multiple stints in jail. Cycling people in and out of jails exacerbates the problem it purports to solve. And because mental illness is so prevalent among single, chronically homeless people — around 35 percent are estimated to suffer from some psychological ailment — the rough process can compound paranoia, delusions and other disorders that already ostracize some from society.
It can be different. The state of Utah began giving away apartments to homeless individuals after realizing how much money could be saved. Policymakers realized that, on average, it costs about $16,670 a year to jail a person and $11,000 a year to set him or her up with an apartment and social work. Since a program called Housing First was launched in 2006, homelessness in Utah has decreased 78 percent, despite a recession-fueled plunge in median income. The state estimates that all Utahans will be housed by next year.
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