Anti-homelessness legislation can take two forms; legislation that aims to help and re-house homeless people, and legislation that is intended to criminalize homelessness and/or send the homeless to homeless shelter

Homeless shelter

Homeless shelters are temporary residences for homeless people which seek to protect vulnerable populations from the often devastating effects of homelessness while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact on the community...

s compulsively.

International law

Since the publication of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...

 (Charter of the United Nations — UN) in 1948, the public perception has been increasingly changing to a focus on the human right to housing

Right to housing

The right to housing is the economic, social and cultural right to adequate housing and shelter. It is recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.- Definition :...

, travel and migration as a part of individual self-determination rather than the human condition

Condition

-Logic:* Logical conditional* Necessary and sufficient condition, condition of another means that the former statement is true if and only if the latter is true-Computer programming:* Conditions, a generalization of exceptions in exception-handling...

. The Declaration, an international law reinforcement of the Nuremberg Trial Judgements

Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....

, upholds the rights of one nation to intervene in the affairs of another if said nation is abusing its citizens, and rose out of a 1939–1945 World War II Atlantic environment of extreme split between "haves" and "have nots." The modern study of homeless phenomena is most frequently seen in this historical context.

Laws supporting the homeless

Laws supporting homeless people generally place obligations on the state

State (polity)

A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...

 to support or house homeless people.

Scotland

The Scottish parliament

Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...

 passed the Homelessness Etc (Scotland) Act 2003 which has an aim of ensuring that by 2012 everyone assessed as being unintentionally homeless will be entitled to permanent accommodation. In addition, the Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Order came into force in December 2004 and requires councils to ensure that pregnant women and households with children are not placed in unsuitable temporary accommodation, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

United States

The charter of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act

McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 is a United States federal law that provides federal money for homeless shelter programs. It was the first significant federal legislative response to homelessness, and was passed and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on July 22, 1987...

 of 1986 (Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act) is to "coordinate the Federal response to homelessness and to create partnerships between the Federal agencies addressing homelessness and every level of government and every element of the private sector".

Laws criminalizing the homeless

Use of the law that criminalizes the homeless generally takes on one of four forms:

• Restricting the public
  Public
  In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individuals, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science,...
  
   areas in which sitting or sleeping are allowed.
• Removing the homeless from particular areas.
• Prohibiting begging
  Begging
  Begging is to entreat earnestly, implore, or supplicate. It often occurs for the purpose of securing a material benefit, generally for a gift, donation or charitable donation...
  
  .
• Enforcing laws on the homeless and not on those who are not homeless. (The French novelist Anatole France
  Anatole France
  Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
  
   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".)

England and Wales

The Vagrancy Act 1824

Vagrancy Act 1824

The Vagrancy Act 1824 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was introduced in 1824 as a measure to deal with specific problems in England following the Napoleonic Wars...

 makes it an offence to sleep on the streets or to beg. In essence, therefore, it is a crime in England and Wales to be homeless or to cadge subsistence money. When the Act was passed, criticism of it centred on the fact that it created a catch-all offence. To sleep on the streets or to beg subsistence became a crime, whatever reason an individual might have had for being in such a predicament. That provision still pertains today in England and Wales. So far as it extended to Scotland, it was repealed by the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982.

United States

It is alleged there is a growing trend in the United States towards criminalizing the state of being homeless. Proponents of this approach believe that punitive measures will deter people from choosing to be homeless. To this end, cities across the country increasingly outlaw activities such as sleeping, eating, sitting, and begging in public spaces, and selectively enforce more neutral laws—such as those prohibiting open containers or loitering

Loitering

Loitering is the act of remaining in a particular public place for a protracted time. Under certain circumstances, it is illegal in various jurisdictions.-Prohibition and history:Loitering may be prohibited by local governments in several countries...

—against homeless populations. Violators of such laws typically incur criminal penalties, which result in fines and/or incarceration.

In April, 2006 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that "making it a crime to be homeless by charging them with a crime is in violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments." http://www.lexisone.com/lx1/caselaw/freecaselaw?action=OCLGetCaseDetail&format=FULL&sourceID=gdjd&searchTerm=eKSa.XQEa.aadi.Yebg&searchFlag=y&l1loc=FCLOW

The following are pertinent excerpts of that transcript vs corresponding illegal laws:

L.A., Cal., Mun. Code ss 41.18(d) (2005). A violation
of section 41.18(d) is punishable by a fine of up to $1000
and/or imprisonment of up to six months.
— Id. ss 11.00(m).

The City could not expressly criminalize the status of homelessness by making it a crime to be homeless without violating the Eighth Amendment, nor can it criminalize acts that are an integral aspect of that status. Because there is substantial and undisputed evidence that the number of homeless persons in Los Angeles far exceeds the number of available shelter beds at all times, including on the nights of their arrest or citation, Los Angeles has encroached upon Appellants' Eighth Amendment protections by criminalizing the unavoidable act of sitting, lying or sleeping at night while being involuntarily homeless.

The defense encompasses the very difficulties that Jones posits here: sleeping on the streets because alternatives were inadequate and economic forces were primarily to blame for his predicament. Id. at 390. Jones argues that he and other homeless people are not willing or able to pursue such a defense because the costs of pleading guilty are so low and the risks and challenges of pleading innocent are substantial.

— id. at 568 n.31
(Fortas, J., dissenting); the Eighth Amendment prohibits the City from punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks that is an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter in the City of Los Angeles.

By our decision, we in no way dictate to the City that it must provide sufficient shelter for the homeless, or allow anyone who wishes to sit, lie, or sleep on the streets of Los Angeles at any time and at any place within the City. All we hold is that, so long as there is a greater number of homeless individuals in Los Angeles than the number of available beds, the City may not enforce section 41.18(d) at all times and places throughout the City against homeless individuals for involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public.

However, on October 15, 2007, the Court vacated its Opinion when, on appeal, the parties settled the case out of court.http://www.lexisone.com/lx1/caselaw/freecaselaw?action=OCLGetCaseDetail&format=FULL&sourceID=gdjd&searchTerm=eQYD.jZja.UYGY.EcjT&searchFlag=y&l1loc=FCLOW

Critics of homeless criminalization claim that such measures do nothing to actually solve homelessness and in fact make matters worse. Homeless people find it harder to secure employment, housing, or federal benefits with a criminal record, and therefore penalizing the act of being homeless makes exiting such a situation much more difficult. In fact, a recent federal appeals court ruled an anti-homeless policy in Los Angeles as unconstitutional. Similarly, in response to growing reports of hate crimes, some state governments have proposed the addition of "people experiencing homelessness" to their hate-crimes statutes.

External links

• Constitutional Problems with Criminalization Measures National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.