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Monday, June 11th, 2012

Cities’ Homeless Crackdown: Could it be Compassion Fatigue?

Author:     YAMICHE ALCINDOR
Source:     USA TODAY
Publication Date:     8-Jun-12
 Link: Cities’ Homeless Crackdown: Could it be Compassion Fatigue?
Stephan:   This is how a country eats itself alive. By failing to compassionately manage poverty as, say, the Scandinavian nations do, we are condemning growing populations to live outside of society. It began under Nixon when public residential mental health facilities were closed, and patient populations were dumped on the streets. These people, now far greater in numbers because of the financial collapse and the loss of the social safety network, are not going to vaporize and disappear. When there are enough of them they will begin to congregate somewhere and create squatter settlements like the favelas of Brazil.

A growing number of cities across the United States are making it harder to be homeless.

Philadelphia recently banned outdoor feeding of people in city parks. Denver has begun enforcing a ban on eating and sleeping on property without permission. And this month, lawmakers in Ashland, Ore., will consider strengthening the town’s ban on camping and making noise in public.

And the list goes on: Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, Oklahoma City and more than 50 other cities have previously adopted some kind of anti-camping or anti-food-sharing laws, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

The ordinances are pitting city officials against homeless advocates. City leaders say they want to improve the lives of homeless people and ensure public safety, while supporters of the homeless argue that such regulations criminalize homelessness and make it harder to live on the nation’s streets.

‘We’re seeing these types of laws being proposed and passed all over the country,’ said Heather Johnson, a civil rights attorney at the homeless and poverty law center, which opposes many of the measures. ‘We think that criminalization measures such as these are counterproductive. Rather than address the root cause of homelessness, they perpetuate homelessness.’
Vagrancy laws

Cities that […]

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