Without Rights

During the past 20 years the number of homeless people in the United States has risen to more than 3.5 million individuals. Federal funding for vital programs that prevent homelessness have been drastically cut. Without federal support to prevent homelessness, local governments have been using law enforcement to address the crisis. Enforcement policies include the closure of public spaces and business district sponsored private patrolling of downtowns to ensure that communities do not become a magnet for the homeless.

These local attempts to deal with homelessness by making homeless people disappear from sight – rather than solving the humanitarian crisis – involve gross violations of homeless people’s civil rights. Perhaps the most common way local governments have found to displace individuals is through criminalizing camping, sitting, lying or trespassing on either public or private land. Other methods of displacement include criminalizing panhandling, sleeping, blocking sidewalks and possessing "stolen property" such as shopping carts and milk crates.

Homeless and poor people are disproportionately cited for these “crimes.” They often do not attend hearings for infractions, because they cannot afford to pay the associated fines or to hire a lawyer. This non-appearance turns the infraction into a bench warrant for failure to appear, a “criminal offense” punishable by up to six months in jail. Because the original offense did not carry a jail penalty, individuals are not entitled to the free representation provided by the Public Defender office, and are forced to represent themselves in a very complex criminal justice system.

More often than not, local governments are represented by the District Attorney or a police officer trained in court presentation, while people experiencing homelessness are left to face the courts alone. However, when volunteer legal representation is available at the start of the legal process, an average of 89% of quality-of-life citations are dismissed.

This situation is a violation of civil rights that brings our society no closer to resolving homelessness.

Homeless individuals who have active warrants resulting from minor offenses such as sleeping in public are often prevented from getting the services needed to exit homelessness: housing, benefits, drug treatment, job programs. Legal crackdowns on homeless people have also become an entry point for the incarceration of mentally ill people. The US Department of Justice reports that about 60 percent of the prison and jail population suffer from mental health problems. Inmates with mental illness in state prison were 2.5 times more likely to have been homeless in the year preceding their arrest than those without a mental illness.

The Without Rights campaign will legally defend the civil rights of homeless people, while working to revitalize a broad based social movement promoting the civil and human rights of homeless people in the United States. No social change movement can be successful without proper representation. The Without Rights campaign will involve five strategies: Organizing, Legal Defense, Research, Public Education, and Leadership Development.