Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee the right to housing
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- Many cities have dehumanized the homeless by passing ordinances.
Criminalization of HomelessnessThe criminalization of homelessness leads to dehumanization.National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2015 https://www.nlchp.org/documents/Right_to_Housing_Report_Card_2015 Despite a dire lack of adequate shelter and affordable housing, homeless persons are increasingly criminalized for engaging in necessary, life-sustaining activities—like sleeping and sitting— that they often have no choice but to perform in public spaces. Between 2011 and 2014, city-wide bans on camping in public increased by 60%; begging by 25%; loitering, loafing, and vagrancy by 35% sitting or lying by 43%; and sleeping in vehicles by 119%. Moreover, communities routinely engage in forced evictions or “sweeps” of homeless encampments with little notice and no provision of alternative housing, often destroying important documents, medicines, and what little shelter the victims have. In 2015, the U.S. supported a recommendation from the Human Rights Council’s second Universal Periodic Review to “Amend laws that criminalize homelessness and which are not in conformity with international human rights instruments.” This built on 2014 recommendations from the U.N. Human Rights Committee and Committee on Racial Discrimination that federal agencies “offer incentives to decriminalize homelessness. Such incentives included providing financial support to local authorities that implement alternatives to 2015 Human Right to Housing Report Card criminalization and withdrawing funding from local authorities that criminalize homelessness.” Impact: Dehumanization, proves aff is squo Many cities have dehumanized the homeless by passing ordinances.Nation of Change, 2014 http://www.nationofchange.org/utah-ending-homelessness-giving-people-homes-1390056183 1) City council members in Columbia, South Carolina, concerned that the city was becoming a “magnet for homeless people,” passed an ordinance giving the homeless the option to either relocate or get arrested. The council later rescinded the ordinance, after backlash from police officers, city workers, and advocates. 2) Last year, Tampa, Florida — which had the most homeless people for a mid-sized city — passed an ordinance allowing police officers to arrest anyone they saw sleeping in public, or “storing personal property in public.” The city followed up with a ban on panhandling downtown, and other locations around the city. 3) Philadelphia took a somewhat different approach, with [passed] a law banning the feeding of homeless people on city parkland. Religious groups objected to the ban, and announced that they would not obey it. 4) Raleigh, North Carolina took the step of asking religious groups to stop their longstanding practice of feeding the homeless in a downtown park on weekends. Religious leaders announced that they would risk arrest rather than stop. Download 95.74 Kb. Share with your friends:
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