HOW 1.36 MILLION HOMELESS CHILDREN ATTEND PUBLIC SCHOOLS! (1625 hits)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (FREE WEBINAR)
Housing Not Handcuffs: New Campaign Initiative Looks to End the Criminalization of Homelessness
Homelessness remains a national crisis, with millions of people homeless or at-risk - including at least 1.36 million homeless children enrolled in U.S. public schools. (https://www.nlchp.org/documents/Homeless-Students-Count). Although many people experiencing homelessness have literally no choice but to live outside and in public places, laws and enforcement practices punishing the presence of visibly homeless people in public space continue to grow. To combat this trend, this month we launched the Housing Not Handcuffs Campaign, together with over 100 allied organizations, to move communities away from ineffective, expensive, and often unconstitutional criminalization strategies, toward housing solutions that work.
A key feature of the campaign launch is the Law Center’s latest national report on the criminalization of homelessness, entitled, “Housing Not Handcuffs: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness.”
The report draws upon research that the Law Center has conducted since 2006 to present of laws criminalizing homelessness in 187 cities across the country. This is the only national report of its kind and this data represents the most comprehensive analysis yet conducted by the Law Center of criminalization laws and local trends of enforcement.
Our data reveal that local governments continue to pursue criminalization strategies, and that such policies have dramatically increased over the past ten years. Laws prohibiting sleeping in public throughout an entire city have increased by 31% since 2006, and broadly written camping bans that prohibit sleeping or even merely preparing to sleep have risen by 69% since that time. Most strikingly, laws prohibiting living in vehicles, which may be an impoverished person’s last option for some shelter from the elements, have increased by a whopping 143% since 2006.
At the same time that local governments trend toward criminalization strategies, the federal government has mounted increased pressure to discourage local criminalization policies in favor of data-informed constructive alternatives. The U.S. Department of Justice, for example, condemned the criminalization of sleeping, when there are no places where that unavoidable activity may lawfully occur, as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment in its statement of interest brief filed in the Law Center’s challenge to a camping ban in Boise, Idaho.
In addition to discussing why criminalization policies do not address the underlying causes of homelessness and waste precious tax dollars on policies that do not work, we also recommend constructive alternative policies that will sustainably end homelessness. These recommendations include strategies for eliminating the criminalization of homelessness and promoting the growth and accessibility of our nation’s affordable housing stock.
The Law Center will conduct a webinar highlighting our report findings on December 7 at 2 p.m. ET. Registration is free.
