The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty released the 2019 edition of Housing Not Handcuffs, which provides an overview of laws in effect throughout the country that restrict or prohibit life-sustaining conduct performed by people experiencing homelessness. The authors find that the criminalization of homelessness (taken to include criminal and civil offenses) has increased in every measured category since the Law Center began tracking such laws in 2006.
The Housing Not Handcuffs project tracks the development of anti-homeless city laws over time. Started in 2006, the authors track 187 city codes that restrict activities in urban and rural areas throughout the country, cataloging criminal and civil offenses more often carried out by people experiencing homelessness. The relevant laws include bans on sleeping, sitting and lying, loitering, camping, begging, and living in vehicles. Since the last report in 2016, the number of cities with these prohibitions has grown in all of those categories. More than half of the cities prohibit begging in public, loitering in particular public places, or sitting or lying in public. Twenty-one percent of the cities have one or more laws prohibiting sleeping in public throughout the entire city. Since 2006, 64 new laws have been introduced that restrict living in vehicles, representing a 213% increase.
Beginning with the 2019 report, the project also began tracking ordinances that prohibit sharing food with people experiencing homelessness, storing property in public, urinating and defecating, and scavenging. Seventeen cities forbid sharing free food in public. More than three fourths of the cities prohibit rummaging, scavenging, or “dumpster diving.” The authors also describe how these policies can be enforced, from “sweeps” of encampments to arrests, fines, “move along” orders, privatized public space, and hostile architecture. The report does not track how these ordinances are enforced in practice.
In the second half of the report the authors highlight a “hall of shame” of jurisdictions that have exceptionally aggressive or punitive approaches. The authors argue that criminalization perpetuates harmful stereotypes, wastes public resources, and often violates basic constitutional rights. Finally, the author offer positive alternatives that would more directly lead to alleviating homelessness—permanent housing through a Housing First model, more Housing Choice Vouchers, a fully funded national Housing Trust Fund, tenant protections to reduce evictions, and zoning policies aimed at spurring more affordable housing development, among other things.
The report is at: https://bit.ly/2LLIdLD