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Discrimination against homeless people is the act of treating homeless people or people perceived to be homeless unfavorably. As with most types of discrimination, it can manifest in numerous forms.
Use of the law to discriminate against homeless people takes on disparate forms: restricting the public areas in which sitting or sleeping are allowed, ordinances restricting aggressive panhandling, [2] actions intended to divert homeless people from particular areas, penalizing loitering, asocial or antisocial behavior, [3] or unequally enforcing laws on homeless people and not on those who are not homeless. [4] An American Civil Liberties Union report claimed that the government of LA discriminated against the homeless residents. The report lays out the ways such as "harassment, segregation, issuing citations", by which the government discriminates against homeless people and holds back essential services that could save their lives. [5]
There is also potential for individuals experiencing homelessness to face employment discrimination. Many employers require applicants to list home addresses on job applications, which creates potential for an employer to recognize an applicant's address as a homeless shelter. Sarah Golabek-Goldman writes about Ban the Address, a campaign that proposes that employers delay asking about an applicant's address until after the applicant is given a job offer. The campaign seeks to protect individuals experiencing homelessness from discrimination in the hiring process by attempting to eliminate one source of potential employment discrimination. [6]
There are at least five states which consider crimes against homeless people with the reason being due to their homelessness to be a hate crime: Florida, Maine, Washington and Rhode Island. It is also a hate crime statute in Washington, DC.
Within the US, homeless individuals have faced discriminatory action for decades. American Colonists in the 17th Century believed unhoused individuals to be homeless because of their moral inadequacies. Early views of homeless individuals revolved around a dehumanizing view, and that they were not in good religious standing.
The term "Homeless" was first recorded in the US in the 1870s. This was first used towards individual's that would travel around throughout the country in search of work. This term was created and used towards those that were perceived to be a threat towards the traditional home style life. Stigma and prejudicial view towards these individuals came from the idea that they had strayed from the domestic lifestyle.
In the 1820s less than 7% of Americans lived in cities. The rapid growth of industrialization increased the population sizes in these cities rapidly. The population of Boston, MA between the years of 1820 and 1860 grew 134,551.
In the 1870s, the issue of homelessness became a national issue. Words such as "vagrant" and "bums" began to be used at this time. Veterans of the civil war, displaced persons from the civil war, and immigrant families made up large portions of the homeless population in this era. In 1874 the homeless or "vagrant" population in Boston was reported to be 98,263 individuals.
Anti Vagrancy Laws existed in the US in various forms since the 17th century. These laws often targeted unhoused women and African-Americans. Up until the 1970s, Anti Vagrancy laws punished innumerable amounts of Americans. In 1972 the Supreme Court invalidated and undermined these Anti Vagrancy. The Deinstitutionalization Movement of the 1960s and 1970s released thousands of individuals from Mental Hospitals and Institutions. Many of these individuals became homeless because of this releasing. These individuals suffering from mental illness struggled to survive unhoused.
The modern issue of homelessness in the US has grown exponentially in recent years in part due to housing crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increased cost of living.
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The French novelist Anatole France noted this phenomenon as long ago as 1894, famously observing that "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges". [7]
In July 2022, The Los Angeles City Council voted 10-1 in favor of expanding Municipal Code 41.18, [8] the anti-camping law banning sitting, sleeping and storing property within 500 feet of several parks, recreation centers and other facilities. [9] Following the council's vote, Councilman Hugo-Martínez, who opposed 41.18, wrote in a Twitter post, "LA's Municipal Code 41.18 criminalizes unhoused people, preventing them from existing in large portions of the city, even as we don't have nearly enough housing or shelter beds to accommodate everyone forced to live on our streets." [10]
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For example, see Homelessness in California § Forced mental-health and addiction treatment
Precise factors associated with victimization and injury to homeless people are not clearly understood. Nearly one-half of homeless people are victims of violence. [11] There have been many violent crimes committed against homeless people due to their being homeless. [12] A study in 2007 found that this number is increasing. [13] This can be further understood as to why this happens, and supported by another study that found that people do not even perceive homeless people as fully human, neither competent or warm.
Per the National Alliance to End Homelessness, [15] in January 2017, there were a total of 553,742 homeless people accounted for across the United States, including territories. Of those accounted for, 192,875 of them were unsheltered and "lived in a place not meant for human habitation, such as the street or an abandoned building". Many unsheltered homeless camps are located in industrial districts and along highways, far away from public parks facilities where traditional public bathrooms are located. If local municipalities do not provide bathroom access, homeless people are left to urinate and defecate in the streets and waterways near their camps.
Robinson and Sickels with the University of Colorado Denver [16] released a report highlighting the criminalization of homelessness across the State of Colorado. During their research, they found that 83% of the people they interviewed said they were denied bathroom access because they were homeless. Without access to bathrooms, unsheltered homeless populations across the country are living in third-world conditions[ clarify ]. This, in turn, leads to public health concerns such as the hepatitis A outbreak seen in California. As reported by Kushel with The New England Journal of Medicine , [17] in 2017 alone 649 people in California were infected with hepatitis A; this outbreak began in the homeless population.
City and town plans may incorporate hostile architecture, also known as anti-homeless or defensive architecture, to deter homeless people from camping or sleeping in problematic areas. [18] Research conducted by Crisis (based in the UK) recorded that 35% said they were unable to find a free place to sleep as a result of the designs. The named hostile architectures include; anti-homeless spikes, segregated benches and gated doorways. [19]
Due to the politicization of the homelessness problem, the funds to help people with mental illness have been diverted to other areas leaving the mentally ill without any help. Mental health is considered one of the most significant contributing factors to homelessness. [20]
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People who are homeless struggle with social inclusion. Some are scared to reach out because they fear the discrimination that may come with it. Reconstructing past relationships into something positive can make all the difference.
Another substantial factor is employment. Employment can help these people to feel wanted as well as assist them to get back on their feet. There are some facilities that offer shelter and employment, one being in Los Angeles. “Skid Row,” conducted a study to see what kind of impact this help gives. Homeless people granted the shelter were likelier to want to work. [21]
There are many actions to take when it comes to helping homeless people. Some simple ones are donating clothing, household items, books, and other materials. Other measures that can be taken involve fundraising programs, supporting a homeless shelter, or even helping to raise awareness. [22]
In the United States, the number of homeless people on a given night in January 2023 was more than 650,000 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Homelessness has increased in recent years, in large part due to an increasingly severe housing shortage and rising home prices in the United States.
Homeless shelters are a type of homeless service agency which provide temporary residence for homeless individuals and families. Shelters exist to provide residents with safety and protection from exposure to the weather while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact on the community. They are similar to, but distinguishable from, various types of emergency shelters, which are typically operated for specific circumstances and populations—fleeing natural disasters or abusive social circumstances. Extreme weather conditions create problems similar to disaster management scenarios, and are handled with warming centers, which typically operate for short durations during adverse weather.
Out of 10,000 female individuals 13 are homeless. Although studies reflect that there are many differences among women suffering homelessness and there is no universal experience, the average homeless woman is 35 years old, has children, is a member of a minority community, and has experienced homelessness more than once in their lifetime.
Homelessness in the United Kingdom is measured and responded to in differing ways in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but affects people living in every part of the UK's constituent countries. Most homeless people have at least a modicum of shelter but without any security of tenure. Unsheltered people, "rough sleepers", are a small minority of homeless people.
Vagrancy is the condition of wandering homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants usually live in poverty and support themselves by travelling while engaging in begging, scavenging, or petty theft. Historically, vagrancy in Western societies was associated with petty crime, begging and lawlessness, and punishable by law with forced labor, military service, imprisonment, or confinement to dedicated labor houses.
The Vagrancy Act 1824 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that makes it an offence to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales. The legislation was passed in Georgian England to combat the increasing number of people forced to live on the streets due to the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and the social effects of the Industrial Revolution. Critics of the law included politician and abolitionist, William Wilberforce, who condemned the Act for making it a catch-all offence for vagrancy with no consideration of the circumstances as to why an individual might be homeless.
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. The general category includes disparate situations, such as living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation such as family or friends, living in boarding houses with no security of tenure, and people who leave their domiciles because of civil conflict and are refugees within their country.
Anti-homelessness legislation can take two forms: legislation that aims to help and re-house homeless people; and legislation that is intended to send homeless people to homeless shelters compulsorily, or to criminalize homelessness and begging.
In the Seattle King County area, there were estimated to be 11,751 homeless people living on the streets or in shelters. On January 24, 2020, the count of unsheltered homeless individuals was 5,578. The number of individuals without homes in emergency shelters was 4,085 and the number of homeless individuals in transitional housing was 2,088, for a total count of 11,751 unsheltered people.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the U.S. state of North Dakota may face some legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Same-sex sexual activity is legal in North Dakota, and same-sex couples and families headed by same-sex couples are eligible for all of the protections available to opposite-sex married couples; same-sex marriage has been legal since June 2015 as a result of Obergefell v. Hodges. State statutes do not address discrimination on account of sexual orientation or gender identity; however, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County established that employment discrimination against LGBT people is illegal under federal law.
The Homeless Bill of Rights refers to legislation protecting the civil and human rights of homeless people. These laws affirm that homeless people have equal rights to medical care, free speech, free movement, voting, opportunities for employment, and privacy. Legislation of this type is currently being debated at the state level in the United States. Over 120 organizations in five different states have shown public support for a Homeless Bill of Rights and are working towards its implementation. A Homeless Bill of Rights has become law in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Illinois and is under consideration by several other U.S. states, including California, Delaware, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont.
The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in an extreme housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.
Hostile architecture is an urban-design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to purposefully guide behavior. It often targets people who use or rely on public space more than others, such as youth, poor people, and homeless people, by restricting the physical behaviours they can engage in.
According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, as of January 2017, there are an estimated 32,190 homeless individuals in Florida. Of this high number, 2,846 are family households, 2,019 are unaccompanied young adults, 2,817 are veterans, and an estimated 5,615 are individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. According to a January 2020 count, this figure was 27,487 on any given day, a decrease from previous years. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as of December 2022, the estimate for homeless individuals has dropped to 25,959, about 5% of the total U.S. population. This is in spite of fears that moratorium's on evictions ending could lead to an increase in the homeless population.
Homelessness in the United States has occurred to varying degrees across the country. The total number of homeless people in the United States fluctuates and constantly changes hence a comprehensive figure encompassing the entire nation is not issued since counts from independent shelter providers and statistics managed by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development vary greatly. Federal HUD counts hover annually at around 500,000 people. Point-in-time counts are also vague measures of homeless populations and are not a precise and definitive indicator for the total number of cases, which may differ in both directions up or down. The most recent figure for the year 2019 that was given was at 567,715 individuals across the country that have experienced homelessness at a point in time during this period.
Homelessness is a growing problem in Colorado and is considered the most important social determinants of health. Homelessness is very difficult for many Coloradoans to escape due to the continuous increase in costs for housing in Colorado, along with mental health treatments and other factors. When people are forced to live without stable shelter, they are then exposed to a number of risk factors that affect physical and mental health. Although it is difficult to pin point any one cause of homelessness, there is a complicated combination of societal and individual causes.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that more than 181,399 people were experiencing homelessness in California in January 2023. This represents more than 27% of the homeless population of the United States even though California has slightly less than 12% of the country's total population, and is one of the highest per capita rates in the nation, with 0.46% of residents being homeless. More than two-thirds of homeless people in California are unsheltered, which is the highest percentage of any state in the United States. 49% of the unsheltered homeless people in the United States live in California: about 123,423 people, which is eight times as many as the state with the second highest total. Even those who are sheltered are so insecurely, with 90% of homeless adults in California reporting that they spent at least one night unsheltered in the past six months.
In October 2023, an average of 90,578 people slept in New York City's homeless shelters each night. This included 23,103 single adults, 32,689 children, and 34,786 adults in families. The total number is at its highest ever, with 63,636 people sleeping in homeless shelters. The city reported that in 2019, 3,600 individuals experienced unsheltered homelessness, sleeping in public spaces such as streets and public transit rather than shelters. The homeless population has surged in New York City 18% in 2023 from 2022, despite efforts from Mayor Adams.
The concept of street outreach to individuals that are experiencing homelessness is a classic example of a form of outreach. Those who experience homelessness have a variety of complex issues that incite the need for specific forms of care. As such, street outreach is challenging work. There are multiple governmental and non-governmental agencies that have sought to engage in this work because of the understanding that unhoused people tend to have increased barriers to access traditional services. Street outreach comes in different forms, from people walking around carrying supplies or offering resources, to mobile health clinics with teams of medical volunteers driving around and offering services. Regardless of its form, the essence of street outreach is the desire to meet people where they are at, build deep trust and connections, offer support, and reinforce the human dignity and respect that is deserving of all people. The core elements of effective street outreach include being systematic, coordinated, comprehensive, housing-focused, person-centered, trauma-informed, culturally responsive, as well as emphasizing safety and reducing harm.
41.18, also known as Los Angeles Municipal Code, Section 41.18(d), is an ordinance in Los Angeles prohibiting by law that there will be no "sitting, lying, or sleeping, or ... storing, using, maintaining, or placing personal property in the public right-of-way." Sec. 41.18(d) dictates the distance any person must be from places such as: utilizable driveways and loading docks; operational or utilizable buildings; any permitted event; bike lanes and bike paths; parks, schools, libraries, or otherwise designated as a "sensitive use" facility; freeway ramp, tunnel, bridge, pedestrian bridge, subway, wash, spreading ground, or active railway; or, anywhere near of a facility opened after January 1, 2018, that provides shelter, safe sleeping, safe parking to houseless persons or that serves as a navigation center.
Ils y doivent travailler devant la majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts
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