Title: Homeless Bill of Rights - Wikipedia
Headings: Homeless Bill of Rights
Homeless Bill of Rights
Contents
Overview
Criminalization of Homelessness
Controversy over Legislation Affecting the Homeless
Legislation in the United States
Rhode Island
Illinois
Connecticut
California
Colorado
See also
References
External links

Content: States that implement a Homeless Bill of Rights protect individuals' rights to exist in public spaces, thus requiring that cities attempt to directly address the issue of housing insecurity. Moreover, while a Homeless Bill of Rights may not directly create significant change in the lives of unhoused individuals, it can facilitate a shift in the American perspective of homelessness and open up avenues for further discourse, programs, and legislation. Criminalization of Homelessness
The criminalization of homelessness can be defined as the passage of laws or ordinances that prohibit sitting, sleeping, panhandling, sharing food, or religious practice in public spaces. Over half a million people are homeless on any given night in the United States, and a third of them are unsheltered. The growing issue of homelessness has been met with increasingly strict homeless legislation that seeks to reduce the visibility of unhoused individuals. These measures penalize individuals from performing necessary, life-sustaining practices (such as sleeping) outside of the private domain, and disproportionately impact unhoused populations who have no choice but to occupy public space for these activities. Surveys by the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) have documented the impacts of such anti-homeless legislation by interviewing over 1,300 unhoused individuals. Of those interviewed, 81% of individuals reported being "harassed, cited or arrested for sleeping", 77% said they had been "harassed, cited or arrested for sitting or lying on the sidewalk", and 26% "knew of a safe place to sleep at night". As The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty concludes its report on the " criminalization of homelessness ": Laws that criminalize visible homelessness are immoral and offend our basic human instincts.