A safe place to sleep is a basic human need, yet thousands of people are forced to find refuge outdoors every night. The primary reason so many people are experiencing homelessness is our region’s lack of housing that is affordable. This is a crisis of our society’s own making, with the greatest impacts falling on our unhoused neighbors.
We should not make it harder for those who are suffering on our streets to simply survive.
Despite these facts, our society’s response to homelessness is yet again becoming punitive and designed to push the problem out of sight rather than solve the underlying causes. We’re hearing more rhetoric and calls for aggressive enforcement actions against unhoused individuals, in the wake of the recent Johnson v Grants Pass ruling.
While these punitive approaches come in different forms – from ticketing or arresting people who’ve been forced to live outside, to banning and sweeping people from broad swaths of our community – they all effectively criminalize the experience of being homeless and disproportionately impact people of color.
History has proven these enforcement approaches ineffective and inhumane. Even worse, they perpetuate a cycle of homelessness, making it harder for those who are suffering on our streets to find safe and stable housing, and leaving us even further away from solving our homelessness crisis.
Fortunately, there is a better path forward.
One that allows us to address the many challenges facing our community while concurrently protecting and supporting our unhoused neighbors. At Destination: Home, we’re committed to working with stakeholders to help address the myriad of issues related to the criminalization of homelessness in our community.
How We Can Address Community Impacts While Protecting and Supporting Our Unhoused Neighbors
Homelessness impacts our community in many different ways, and there is no doubt that we are facing serious issues that must be addressed. We acknowledge the type of punitive actions we’re talking about today are often tied to attempts to address some of these community impacts.
As we act on our shared interest in addressing these community concerns we must focus on effective strategies that will lead us forward, not backward, and ensure our unhoused neighbors aren’t negatively impacted. It’s possible to concurrently advance ALL of these important objectives as we mitigate the impacts of our homelessness crisis.
We must ensure that any action we take:
- Is grounded in equity, dignity and compassion for people experiencing homelessness;
- Is narrowly-crafted to avoid exacerbating the challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness;
- Avoids conflating the experience of homelessness with criminal activity;
- Provides the same level of protection and concern for the health and safety of our unhoused neighbors as that of our housed community.
- Prioritizes outreach and assistance before enforcement
- Does not create additional barriers to accessing services and housing assistance; and
- Incorporates the perspectives of people with lived experience.
These are the principles that will be guiding our efforts as we forge ahead. By embracing this holistic approach, we can create stronger and more effective solutions for all members of our community.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
Our goal is to help our community forge the most effective and humane path forward. Informed by months of engagement with stakeholders, we’re digging into three key areas of focus:
- Developing Best Practices for Local Jurisdictions: Through training and technical assistance, we’re offering government partners alternative strategies to address homelessness without criminalization.
- Providing Legal Support & Resources to Unhoused Individuals: Our unhoused neighbors affected by criminalization measures today have few options to get help and guidance. So we’re partnering with experts to provide legal defense clinics, representation, and other direct assistance to unhoused individuals facing criminal cases and other punitive measures (i.e. fines/infraction).
- Advocating for Thoughtful Public Policy Decisions: We’ll also build on the work above to inform our own policy stances, speaking out in support of sound proposals that protect against criminalization, while also rallying against short-sighted measures that will only move us backwards.
As part of these efforts, Destination: Home co-hosted a webinar with Homebase and their Criminal Legal System Initiative (CLSI) to unpack recent shifts toward criminalization and share effective and humane strategies that will benefit our whole community. Watch the recording below.
This is just the beginning of what we hope will be a broad, collective effort that includes many additional components and an array of public, private and community stakeholders – including groups led by people with lived experience – collaborating to prevent the criminalization of homelessness in our community.
