This is some information I want you to have. But I do not want to steal the magnificent thunder of the National Coalition for the Homeless. The following is a list of the top 5 "meanest cities in the US" for the homeless. The NCH article has the top twenty, so for more information, you can read the whole article here:
Narratives of the Meanest Cities
#1 Sarasota, FL
In February 2005, the City Commission unanimously approved an ordinance prohibiting “lodging out of doors.” The previous “no-camping” rule was ruled unconstitutional by a state court last year because it was too vague and punished innocent conduct. The new rule prohibited using any public or private property for “lodging” outdoors without permission from the property owner. While not completely mitigating the negative impact of the law, the city took a more positive approach to the issue in this law by including a requirement that police officers, once a year, offer people who violate the law a ride to the shelter, instead of jail. The commissioners said that the ordinance would protect public safety and property while helping homeless people find shelter. Although the city was confident that this ordinance would stand up in court, critics said that it was still too vague. It was not clear how many “lodging” activities, such as making a fire, laying down blankets or a sleeping bag, and putting up a tent, would have to be happening in order for a person to be arrested. Moreover, the police were not required to give a person a ride to the shelter if the person was intoxicated, using drugs, or did not have proper identification.
Like its predecessor, this ordinance was short-lived. In June 2005, a state court found the “no lodging law” unconstitutional. County Judge David L. Denkin said the ordinance gave police officers too much discretion in deciding who is a threat to public health and safety, and who is just taking a nap on the beach. The judge, however, recognized the “good intention” of the city commissioners. The city claims it is important to the city’s residents. City commissioners have long insisted that the ordinances are about protecting people, but the ordinance has been used to arrest homeless persons. Assistant Public Defender Chris Cosden believes the city should give up: “The city has tried twice, and failed twice [with its ordinances]. The city has to step back and realize there are some things you just can’t do.” On a positive note, Fredd Atkins, a Sarasota City Commissioner, agreed that the city has “spent enough money trying to do the wrong thing right,” suggesting the money be committed to solving the root causes of homelessness.
Nonetheless, in August 2005, the city commissioners passed yet another ordinance, strangely similar to the previous two that were ruled unconstitutional. The new ordinance makes it a crime to sleep without permission on city or private property, either in a tent or makeshift shelter, or while “atop or covered by materials.” The city commissioners invented a list of criteria to determine if a person violates the new law. One or more of the following five features must be observed in order to make an arrest: “numerous items of personal belongings are present; the person is engaged in cooking activities, the person has built or is maintaining a fire, the person has engaged in digging or earth-breaking activities, or the person is asleep and when awakened states that he or she has no other place to live.”
Advocates are shocked that the ordinance actually includes being homeless, or having “no other place to live” as itself a criterion for arrest. Advocates argue that this ordinance, like its predecessors, targets homeless people.
The new law has been challenged in state court by defendants who were charged under the law. The court upheld the law, finding it constitutional.
#2 Lawrence, KS
Downtown street merchants complained to city officials in December 2004 that homeless people were intimidating customers with “aggressive panhandling,” and that groups of people regularly spent the night camping on the rooftops of their businesses. Downtown Lawrence, Inc. members gave city officials copies of many ordinances used in other communities against homeless people to encourage similar measures in Lawrence. Some of the proposed ordinances make sitting on the sidewalk from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M., and closely following someone to solicit money illegal. In addition to these suggested ordinances, a few businesses proposed cutting social services, arguing “We didn’t have this problem until we had a handout on every corner.” Shelters were viewed as hurting downtown Lawrence’s image rather than providing invaluable and scarce services to homeless people. Loring Henderson, Open Shelter’s director, disagrees, stating that “it doesn’t seem logical to me that when you have a place where there are 21 people who have a place to stay for the night, rather than being on the streets, that you’re contributing to the problem.”
According to Phil Hemphill, a downtown business owner who addressed a meeting of the City Task Force on Homeless Services, efforts to help homeless people are useless without sanctions imposed on the ill-behaved individuals among them. He described how he regularly saw homeless men and women urinate, defecate, and fornicate in public. Hemphill said it was wrong to expect the public and private sectors to finance services for homeless people when such behavior is tolerated. Hemphill later complained that the Task Force balked at imposing sanctions on trespassing, panhandling, and public drunkenness. Several Task Force members replied that Hemphill was misinterpreting their deliberations.
At a January 2005 meeting of the Task Force on Homeless Services, downtown business owners proposed that homeless service providers require people who want to use shelters, soup kitchens, and other services to obtain an official identification badge. The badges would require people to go through an application process and a police background check. This would give police and service providers a way to punish people by denying certain services over a specific period of time. Moreover, business owners argued, the badges would help ensure that homeless services are not enabling people to remain homeless.
In July 2005, city commissioners approved three “civility” ordinances, responding to concerns from downtown patrons about aggressive panhandlers. However, in a more positive step, they rejected an anti-camping law in spite of neighbors’ concerns about homeless camps along the Kansas River. Commissioners approved ordinances that would prohibit panhandlers from asking for money in an aggressive way, make it illegal for people to trespass on rooftops, and limit how people could sleep or sit on city sidewalks. Yet, Kalila Dalton, a member of Kansas Mutual Aid, views panhandling as a logical response to a basic need: “If it is cold outside and if you have no warm place, it seems reasonable to build a fire. If you have no money, it seems reasonable to ask someone who appears well off for money.”
The anti-panhandling ordinance will ban aggressive panhandling by prohibiting repeated attempts to solicit money from the same individual, blocking someone’s path or touching them, or soliciting within 20 feet of an automatic teller machine or a bus stop or from anyone in a vehicle. Another of the newly-passed ordinances makes it illegal to lay or sit on a sidewalk in a way that blocks the path of a pedestrian or requires pedestrians to reroute their course, with the exception of protests or other activities protected under the First Amendment. This ordinance was approved on a 3-2 vote, with Commissioner Mike Rundle and Councilman Highberger opposing. Highberger said he thought the ordinance simply addressed “things that people didn’t want to look at,” rather than genuine public safety concerns. Lastly, the council approved an ordinance that prohibits going onto the rooftop of a building without the permission of the building owner. The passage of this ordinance was motivated by complaints from several downtown merchants that homeless persons camp on their rooftops.
Fortunately, the Commissioners unanimously rejected the bulk of the proposed anti-camping ordinances because they said the city’s current criminal trespass ordinance allowed them to address the issues when problems arose. The main difference between the trespass ordinance and the proposed anti-camping ordinance was that under the trespass ordinance, campers have to first be given a warning to leave before they could be ticketed. However, the Commissioners did agree to approve a portion of the ordinance that would make it illegal for people to camp on private property without the express permission of the property owner.
#3 Little Rock, AR
In March 2005, Saint Francis House, a daytime homeless center, was forced to reduce its hours for the second time in one month due to decreased funding. The cutback in hours came as police began cracking down on “professional” panhandling in the downtown area. An undercover task force arrested 41 people.
The city’s agenda with regard to homeless people has become more aggressive and blatant in the following incidents. The only day shelter, and only place where homeless people could wash their clothes, Saint Francis House, closed in 2005 after a long history of police harassment of homeless people using that facility, as well as a withdrawal of funds for its operation. When asked to comment upon the closing of Saint Francis House, Sharon Priest, a spokesperson for the Downtown Partnership, said that she was "glad" it was gone, but was still not satisfied, because of “that soup kitchen [Stewpot] which is right there.”
Other reports compiled by Hunger-Free Arkansas indicate the criminalization of homeless men and women throughout the city. In a case of illegal search and seizure, a state trooper illegally searched and detained a homeless man, by claiming he suspected the homeless man was dealing drugs. The state trooper arrested the individual, who spent the night in jail and missed work the next day. The homeless man had no record of any drug-related offenses. Upon release from prison, only his driver’s license was returned. He did not receive his wallet or other property before he was told to leave. Due to the arrest, the homeless man was suspended from work for 30 days and taunted by employees for having to spend the night in jail.
In another incident, two homeless men reported officers of the Little Rock Police Department, in separate incidents, had kicked them out of the Little Rock Bus Station. Both men were holding valid tickets and transfers. Despite showing the police their tickets, both men were told that although the buses they were awaiting would arrive within 30 minutes, they could not wait on the premises because they were loitering. The police subsequently evicted the men. In some instances, others have been told that they could not wait at the bus station "because you are homeless."
Over the summer in 2005, a free public event was held at Riverfront Park in Little Rock, at which various businesses and manufacturers of goods (including the Tyson Chicken Company) set up booths and tents to give away free samples of their merchandise to the public. Vendors encouraged homeless persons at the event to take free samples, which many homeless people gratefully did. However, officers of the Pulaski County Sheriff's Department told the homeless individuals, including a handicapped man at a picnic table, that they had to leave the event immediately or be subject to arrest for loitering in a park. Another homeless man was denied entrance by tour operators to the free and public tour of the Old Statehouse Museum.
#4 Atlanta, GA
Amid waves of public protest and testimony opposing the Atlanta City Council’s proposed comprehensive ban on panhandling, the city and mayor passed a bill in August 2005. The ban made panhandling illegal within the “tourist triangle” and anywhere after dark. The ordinance also prohibits panhandling within 15 feet of an ATM, bus stop, taxi stand, pay phone, public toilet, or train station anywhere in the city. Many opponents believe the ban outlaws panhandling virtually everywhere, rendering it unconstitutional. The new ordinance also states that anyone who asks for help, both monetary and non-monetary, can be detained until an outreach worker either evaluates the detainee or refers him/her to social services. State Senator Vincent Fort, said the 12-3 vote “was an unabashed rush for campaign support.”
Two days after the signing, the Atlanta Police Department announced in The Atlanta Journal Constitution that homeless people would be rounded up and identified for entry into the City's new facility called The Gateway, which provides 250 shelter beds and supportive housing. The Gateway, the recipient of $10 million in private and public funds, was developed to provide a constructive solution to coincide with the panhandling ban. Unfortunately, although The Gateway houses homeless people, there is an overall net loss of places to sleep in Atlanta; 125 emergency beds for women and children were closed by the Mayor at the end of May 2005. Up to eighty of those women and children now sit up all night, waiting for shelter at the Task Force for the Homeless.
The business community and the city administration claim that many homeless people are “service-resistant” and should be forced to receive the services they need. However, more than half the current requests for shelter and services in Atlanta go unmet because of insufficient resources. Most shelters and support service agencies report turning away dozens of desperate people daily. In addition, the Mayor's Commission is persuading service agencies to relocate into the Gateway, making formerly independent, voluntary services available only there.
“This ordinance affects a huge population of the poor and homeless who just ask for help to eat everyday. We do not need a blanket law for one person asking another person for help,” said Murphy Davis of the Open Door Community. According to Anita Beaty of the Task Force for the Homeless, “Atlanta planners seem to believe that if you remove people’s housing, eliminate emergency shelter that they will then need, and then make asking for help illegal, their necessary support services available only through an incarceration program, the poor people will go someplace else.”
Jason Gibbes, a resident of the Peachtree-Pine facility, testified before City Council, stating, “I work every day. In two weeks, I will have enough to rent my own apartment, and I have it all picked out. I'm sure not proud of it, but when I first got my job, I begged for MARTA fare to get to work -- a couple of times. If I hadn't been able to ask for help, I wouldn't be working today.” He also reported that the police stopped him and forced him to produce identification while merely walking down the street.
In the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Atlanta has stood firm in its resolve to criminalize panhandlers. James Scott was sleeping in his car with his brother, his sister, and her two young children after seeking refuge in Atlanta. After living in their car for several days, the family panhandled at a mall in the affluent Buckhead neighborhood.
Police arrested Scott for solicitation about a half hour later, even after he showed them his Louisiana driver’s license, car tag, and registration as proof that he was a Katrina evacuee. “It’s the most expensive mall in Atlanta, I thought I could get some help,” Scott said. According to Atlanta Police Department spokesman John Quigley, while soliciting on a public sidewalk is allowed, soliciting in traffic is prohibited. According to Kevin, a homeless man interviewed by the Task Force for the Homeless, “nobody has the right to expect people to help. It’s their money to decide what they want to do with it. I just think I have a right to tell somebody what I need, and let them decide.”
A homeless woman with children was arrested in Atlanta for “impersonating” a Katrina survivor in order to get help for her children. There was an outpouring of emergency assistance from churches that only offered help to hurricne evacuees, thereby creating a desperate competition for much needed shelter.
In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union plans to file a lawsuit against Atlanta once it finds a suitable plaintiff because of the ban’s potential violations of the First Amendment. Gerald Weber, the legal director of the ACLU’s Georgia branch, calls Atlanta’s ordinance “too broad,” likening it to a similar ban in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was ruled unconstitutional in 1999. City Councilman C.T. Martin believes the threat of a potential lawsuit has caused the city to withhold aggressive enforcement of the panhandling ban.
#5 Las Vegas, NV
Although homeless advocates in Las Vegas stated that shelters are overcrowded, city officials have done little to increase resources for individuals experiencing homelessness. Due to a lack of funding, the city’s Crisis Intervention Center was recently closed. Similarly, charitable organizations scrambled – albeit unsuccessfully – to replace the services the Crisis Intervention Center provided.
The police conduct habitual sweeps of encampments, which lead to extended jail time for repeat misdemeanor offenders. Homeless inhabitants of a campsite on Owens Avenue were forced to vacate the area just before Christmas 2004. Las Vegas’s Department of Neighborhood Services gave the order to clear the lot, because the property owner was “in violation of Las Vegas Municipal Code…dealing with nuisances.” Many social service providers were caught off guard by the notice, wishing the city had informed them before the sweep to ensure they could find places for homeless men and women to stay. Former residents of the campsite worried about finding a bed in one of the shelters because most of them are reserved for older men and women.
Despite reports that city, county, and state agencies were working together to provide homeless persons displaced by a January 2005 sweep of a downtown bridge, only 45 people out of 150 residents of the camp were placed in temporary housing. The site was declared a health hazard in August 2005 because people were urinating and defecating in the area around the camp. Bob McKenzie, spokesman for the Department of Transportation, commented, “we need to do whatever we can to help the homeless, but we need to take care of public safety first.” Transportation crews threw away inhabitants’ possessions, including tents, blankets, and family photos.
City officials’ attempt to break up another homeless camp in February 2005 was met with criticism by local homeless advocates, who argued that breaking up the camp would only create another camp elsewhere. They also noted that homeless people need treatment, supportive services, and permanent housing, all of which are not available. Several homeless people were unable to receive help from local agencies, because they were already receiving money from the federal government.
An analysis of Las Vegas police records revealed that arrests for charges such as trespassing, jaywalking, and pedestrians failing to obey traffic signals increased after a recent cleanup of a homeless camp. When homeless people are ejected from the camps, they move to other public places where they interact more with members of the community. The ACLU of Nevada suggested that Las Vegas police went out of their way to cite and arrest homeless people as a part of the sweep. According to Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, “It will take political will to dedicate the resources needed to move this situation in a positive direction. I haven’t seen anything from any jurisdiction to indicate that exists.”
In April 2005, plans to clean up a homeless encampment that had previously been swept at Owens Avenue were postponed due to lack of organization. Officials attempted to avoid criticism by posting signs at the site in both English and Spanish, warning people that the authorities were going to clean the area. The Southern Nevada Homeless Coalition was not informed of the sweep. Linda Lera-Randle El, director of Straight from the Streets, believes the sweep was “like penalizing the homeless for the shortcomings of the city, county, and state.”
Frank Wright Plaza, a small park across from City Hall, was a favorite daytime spot for homeless people seeking a place to nap. Regular visitors to the park said that it is a safe and comfortable place to recover from a tough night on the streets. However, city officials saw the park as a public nuisance, and have assigned marshals to patrol the area several times daily. In order to keep homeless individuals out of future parks, the city considered privatizing the parks, enabling owners to kick out unwanted people. Mayor Oscar Goodman fervently supported the idea, saying, “I don’t want them there. They’re not going to be there. I’m not going to let it happen. They think I’m mean now; wait until the homeless try to go over there.”
In a more positive step, Metro Police are expected to begin seeking a liaison for homeless people, raising its level of commitment after being criticized for its handling of the homeless situation. The Metro Police have been at the center of the homelessness controversy on many occasions in recent years. In addition to their role in homeless camp sweeps, the Metro Police have faced allegations that officers were targeting homeless people for misdemeanor crimes, such as urinating in public. The new liaison would work with both public and private agencies to help homeless people, and will hopefully prevent future arrests and sweeps.
As part of the 2012 "unCampaign, Hobo's List will be working to decriminalize homelessness. If you live in any of the communities listed here or in the full article, please contact us at handofjustice42@hotmail.com and ask how you can help.
But the problem is not limited to these communities; if you want to know how your community is doing, please contact us and we will give you suggestions on how to get involved.
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