Anti Homeless Laws Essay

Anti-Homeless Laws in America The homeless population has always been looked down on. They’ve suffered violence, taunting, starvation and a number of other ailments. In Cape Coral Florida a thirteen year old brutally stabbed fifty one year old Thomas Bergstrom in his tent at a ramshackle camp. In Albuquerque New Mexico Al Gorman was beaten beyond Recognition by a group of teenagers who attacked him because he was an easy victim for the teenagers pent up anger. On November twenty-third tai Lam, a disabled man, was beaten to death on the stairwell of the Montgomery BART station while he was sleeping in his sleeping bag. Now the homeless are faced with a less direct form of violence., anti-homeless laws. Jerome Murdough, a homeless veteran, died …show more content…
Therefore the negative effects that these laws have had on humanitarian aid has not been accidental. Instead it has been an intentional act to get rid of the homeless, not by using resources to get them off the streets for good but instead by driving them out of one city and into the next (Cummings). This renders the laws ineffective in addressing homelessness in itself because it does not get to the source of the problem (Barclay). The United States Interagency Council on homelessness has strongly advised the government to not enact anti-homeless laws because they have found that it fails to increase access to needed services and the laws tend to create additional barriers for homeless people while also undermining the impact that service providers can have (Jones). Some states have realized this. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Illinois have all passed a ‘Homeless Bill of Rights’ to prevent cities from creating anti-homeless laws. These bills protect the right for homeless individuals to sleep in parked cars, eat and exchange food in pubic, access restrooms at any time, obtain legal counsel, and vote