The right to survive

Police raid Tent City in Lakewood in 2012. Photo by Sherry Rubel.

The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty issued a report called “No Safe Place” in December that criticized American cities for failing to address the causes of homelessness and instead criminalizing the problem. According to the report:

Over 12.8% of the nation’s supply of low income housing has been permanently lost since 2001, resulting in large part, from a decrease in funding for federally subsidized housing since the 1970s. The shortage of affordable housing is particularly difficult for extremely low-income renters who, in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, are competing for fewer and fewer affordable units. In many American cities there are fewer emergency shelter beds than homeless people. There are fewer available shelter beds than homeless people in major cities across the nation. In some places, the gap between available space and human need is significant, leaving hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of people with no choice but to struggle for survival in outdoor, public places.

Despite a lack of affordable housing and shelter space, many cities have chosen to criminally punish people living on the street for doing what any human being must do to survive. The Law Center surveyed 187 cities and assessed the number and type of municipal codes that criminalize the life-sustaining behaviors of homeless people. The results of our research show that the criminalization of necessary human activities is all too common in cities across the country.

The report found that most of these cities had laws on the books that are used to target homeless people, including bans on sleeping or camping in public or prohibitions against providing food to homeless people.

I came across the report as I was researching a story for NJ Spotlight on a settlement in New Brunswick over its use of anti-begging laws to control its homeless population. The city agreed to repeal the two ordinances — one banning begging and the other requiring permitting for solicitations in public spaces — and to make a contribution to Elijah’s Promise, the city soup kitchen that provides the bulk of services to low-income residents.

Supporters of such restrictions usually point to safety and sanitary concerns. Consider this report from CNN about a San Francisco church that used a sprinkler system to chase away the homeless. It has ended the practice, but listen to the argument made by church officials as to why they engaged in the practice in the first place.

These arguments are no different than those made by the government of Lakewood (the subject of my poem, Tent City: As an Alien in a Land of Promise, the photo work of Sherry Rubel, and of Jack Ballo’s film Destiny’s Bridge — here is a photo history of the projects we engaged in) or of the push by cities across America (as I said earlier this week, I’ve written about this issue before for In These Times and on this blog).

On Friday, Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, penned an op-ed in the San Francisco Examiner, that called these laws a violation of human rights. Se noted the 500 or so local anti-homeless codes in place in California — codes “restricting standing, sleeping, camping, resting, panhandling or sharing food” — and compared them to long-defunct vagrancy laws.

While the Supreme Court overturned anti-vagrancy laws in the early 1970s, finding they encouraged arbitrary and erratic arrests, we have only replaced those laws with new ones still targeting destitute people. Since 2000, statewide arrests for vagrancy offenses have increased by 77 percent, even as arrests for disorderly conduct have decreased by 48 percent, indicating that homeless people are punished for their housing status, not their behavior.

These laws are indicative of our unease with homelessness and our unwillingness to do much about it, especially if it affects us in any way. We occasionally talk a good game — a couple of dollars here and there for a new shelter, perhaps, some hand-wringing about the conditions under which the homeless live — but real solutions are off the table.

Rather than fixing the problem — with higher-paying jobs, low-income and supportive housing, broadly accessible mental health services, etc. — we use our police powers to keep the homeless from being visible. One result, as Friedenbach writes, is the creation of “additional barriers to getting off the streets.”

The energy to pass anti-homeless measures, deploy police, and legal proceedings all cost a great deal, but only accomplish exacerbating the misery experienced by impoverished people. Politicians must raise anti-homeless fervor to pass blatantly unfair laws, resulting in less support directed toward solutions by private citizens, and public monies are diverted to an endless cycle of ticketing, courts, jails and police interactions.

As I’ve written before, we treat the homeless the same way we treat trash — as lacking value. They are the American capitalist system’s waste product, the effluent dumped into the environment after the economic process runs its course.

The advocates I talked with about the New Brunswick ordinances and the others in place around the state say they represent the criminalization of poverty.

Jeffrey Wild, an attorney who represented the residents of Tent City and who is a founding board member of the New Jersey Coalition to End Homelessness, told me “it happens in every town, the criminalization of homelessness to one degree or other.”

Lakewood, he said,

passed an ordinance in the middle of winter that outlawed the use of wood-burning stoves, which he said was specifically aimed ed at the men and women using such stoves in the Lakewood woods. Other restrictions – on begging, on vagrancy, on sleeping in public – are also used to force the homeless from communities, Wild said. “There are so many ways that municipalities try to get people out of their backyard,” he said. “The criminal laws are a good way, because people don’t question the authority of the police.”

Jeanne LoCicero, deputy legal director for the New Jersey chapter of the ACLU, told me anti-begging and other ordinances “target people who are poor.”

“They target the speech of people who rely on other people to survive,” she said. “They violate the rights of poor people.”

Not all of these efforts are pushed by local governments, as this Canadian news piece points out. Some, like the church sprinklers and the installation of spikes to prevent “rough sleeping” come from private concerns. Either way, Tim Richter, president of the Calgary-based Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, told Global News, the don’t address homelessness. “They just move it out of sight.”

“This is among the indignities that homeless people will experience on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “If you want to address the issue of homeless people in public spaces then we need to deal with homelessness.” 

Wild agreed. He told me for my Spotlight story that these laws “ultimately allow the problem of homelessness to be swept under the rug.”

“Begging is a form of speech, and I am glad that the ACLU has taken this on,” he said. “It is very important that people have a right to communicate in this way – not just because begging is important for them, but because it also puts a spotlight on the problem. When people see homeless people begging they know there is a problem with homelessness.”

Wild said something may need to be done at the state level to restrict the ability of municipalities to target the homeless. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the works at the moment — at least not here.

As Friedenbach points out “Three states are now introducing legislation to abolish” the use of a variety of laws to target the homeless.

Colorado, California and Oregon have all introduced bills that would ensure all people have the right to rest, eat, pray and occupy a motor vehicle, as long as they are not obstructing passage or on private property without owner’s permission. This isn’t the first time a state has stepped in to halt an unjust practice, but it is an action long past due. Jailing people for being poor will be something surely future generations will look back upon with disdain.

In the meantime, a march for the homeless is planned on April 15 in Trenton:

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