Putting the Homeless in Jail?

Making the Homelessness a Crime

The City Council in Columbia, South Carolina decided to do something about the homeless congregating downtown. In the Summer of 2013 they voted to arrest the homeless if they refused to be put in a remote camp. 

Not all of these stories end badly. Within days of passing an ordinance in Columbia, SC that would have made homelessness a crime, people within their own community rose up to protest. Among the protesters...the police. The Homeless will no longer be swept up and taken to a camp against their will. The option of going to the camp is still there, but only as a temporary solution while other options are explored.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/columbia-criminalizing-homelessness_n_3866273.html

If the coalition of the police, city workers and advocates had not made their voices heard, Columbia would have gone back to the days of debtor prisons and prison camps. Speaking up can make a difference.

But the idea of throwing people in poverty in jail is gaining momentum. According to an article in Community Digital News...

According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, 100 of America’s largest 187 cities has passed anti-homeless laws. These laws criminalize everything from sleeping in cars to lying down in public; 30 percent of American cities ban sitting or lying in public. In 2011, 37 cities banned sleeping in cars; that’s now illegal in 81 cities.These laws carry penalties that the homeless can rarely pay; sleeping in your car in Palo Alto, California can result a fine of $1,000. The alternative is jail – up to six months.

Homelessness and Hunger

All this while homelessness is on the rise. The National Center for Family Homelessness reports that the number of homeless children is now 1.3 million.

Not only is it illegal to be homeless...in some cities it is illegal to help. NPR reports that "21 cities have passed measures aimed at restricting the people who feed the homeless since January 2013. In that same time, similar legislation was introduced in more than 10 cities. Combined, these measures represent a 47 percent increase in the number of cities that have passed or introduced legislation to restrict food sharing since the coalition last counted in 2010."