On January 23, 2015, Santa Cruz Indymedia reported that a lawsuit had been filed by the HPLAP (Homeless Persons' Legal Assistance Project) in Santa Cruz, CA, against the local municipality because of an ordinance allowing the police to issue "stay away" orders to the homeless on the beaches or in the parks. The HPLAP states that the ordinance is unconstitutional, with violations of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, the right to due process, and the right to equal protection under the law.
Seabright Beach, Santa Cruz, CA
Of course criminalization of homelessness will increase police interactions with this population and thus their associated dangers. Admittedly,
not every cop is a jerk when
dealing with the unhoused. Yet when the cops are called to remove the homeless, they sometimes
beat them or
taze them or
shoot and kill them.
On the other hand, programs to treat homelessness through Housing First initiatives, such as the program begun in Salt Lake City in 2006, have been gathering increasing attention due to their astonishing success. The best part about these programs if you're a progressive: They succeed at drastically reducing the number of people in need of shelter and are on track to eliminate chronic homelessness in those cities that have adopted such programs. The best part, perhaps, if you're a conservative: These programs save cities giant piles of money. Salt Lake City estimates they spend about $7800 per person per year for housing, and that amount includes supportive services. Prior to this program, they spent over $20,000 per unhoused person per year. They found that programs that required behavior such as staying off of drugs in order to "earn" permanent housing meant that homelessness was not being reduced; the continued stress of not knowing if there would be a place to live did not improve mental health. Thus the Housing First model. Once that stress is relieved, people voluntarily start to improve other aspects of their lives.
Why would increased spending on apartments and utilities and food for the homeless save money? Because without such services, those we have abandoned on the streets do not magically disappear. They have to find a way to live. Thus they use prison and emergency services at huge levels. It costs a great deal more to keep someone in jail or treat someone in an emergency room than to simply give them the means to live. And criminalizing homelessness simply results in more funds spent on jails and prisons, a temporary "solution" since the homeless are still homeless upon release. Then in addition, when civil rights are violated, there are all the costs associated with lawsuits such as the above.
So please join me below today's orange squiggle of good news for the story of Santa Cruz.
After reading a Kos diary regarding the above on January 24, 2015, I immediately emailed the city council of Santa Cruz, suggesting that instead of criminalizing homelessness to "clean up" the parks and the beaches, they employ a Housing First model to eliminate it.
A few days ago, I received an email response from the mayor of Santa Cruz:
Greetings
Thank you for writing.
We have learned from Salt Lake City and other communities, and more and more resources are going in exactly the direction you suggest. Both local government and many local nonprofit agencies are making exactly the shift you recommend. There are a few different places this shift is showing up in Santa Cruz but the best example is here.
Thanks
Don Lane
Mayor
City of Santa Cruz
Indeed, as the Web site at this link makes clear, Santa Cruz plans to eliminate chronic homelessness by 2020. The total commitment to this initiative began just this January of 2015, after a smaller
program begun in 2012 successfully housed the first 250 homeless by December of 2014. Hopefully, then, with this initiative the "stay away" ordinance will become unnecessary. As shown in the video at the Mayor's link, similar programs have already seen success in Washington DC, Los Angeles CA, Phoenix AZ, New Orleans LA, Houston TX, and Fresno CA, among others.
Please note that as progressives, we do not shame homeless people. We recognize that many people become homeless through no decision or fault of their own. People who are homeless are not failures, stupid, or idle. According to CNN Money, 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That means most of us are one job loss, one disaster, one health crisis away from homelessness. We all win when those without homes are helped into housing. The words "homeless" and "homelessness" may have a pejorative connotation, but we reject this familiar aspect of the words and use them as noun or adjective without derogatory association. We believe that our American government should organize to reduce homelessness efficiently and cost effectively. If there is inadequate political will to do so at the federal or state level, then as the Housing First programs demonstrate, we can accomplish this at the community level and save money doing so.
Lexington KY, where I live, has a plan to end homelessness, although we have dragged our feet on it a bit, allowing our rival city, Louisville KY, to leapfrog over us, with Louisville saving millions of dollars in the process. But we are slowly putting these initiatives in place.
Where is your community in ending homelessness? If you don't know, please find out. Contact your mayor or city council or whoever heads your local government. If they have a Web site, look for housing information such as Lexington has available here. If that information is not available, then please contact them to ensure that your local government is aware of the Housing First programs and their successes. There is no longer any excuse for forcing people to live without homes in your community. Housing the homeless with a Housing First approach that includes supportive services provides a strong safety net and saves communities money. There are too few win-win solutions in this country that conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between can rally behind. This is one of them. If your community is not already involved in an effective Housing First program, then please take action today. If you meet with success, please let us know.
About Support the Dream Defenders
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders invigorate three ongoing projects:
1. We were formed to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defenders defend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop(ing) the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014. This bill quickly gained the support of the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP distributed our bill to all members of the Congressional Black Caucus and progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 17,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. We will publicize our results through progressive media. We need volunteers in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
This is a community diary.
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