Action Alert: Missouri Passes Legislation to make it Illegal to be without Housing

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Since our founding, NCH has opposed any measure that makes it a crime to be homeless in America. We oppose enforcing “no camping” initiatives when there is no other choice available to those who lose their housing. Shelters are full, we still have a Covid problem and there are no more motels available to keep people safe. What do you expect citizens of Missouri to do?

NCH urges the Governor to reject this callous effort to solve a social service issue by using law enforcement.

We oppose solving the affordable housing crisis for a select few in our community. We support a comprehensive solution that involves “housing for all” utilizing a “Housing First” strategy for every single person who loses their safe secure dwellings. The Missouri legislature passed HB 1606 that makes it illegal to be without housing.

  • Missouri legislators are focused on providing “tiny homes” as a solution to homelessness. While some may appreciate tiny homes as a transitional or even permanent living space, NCH advocates for a wide array of other permanent housing solutions.
  • The initiative does nothing to address or alleviate homelessness and goes back to old and tired enforcement laws that led to an increase in homelessness in the early 2000’s.
  • The initiative will simply move people from one side of the street to the other, or from one neighborhood to another, rather than providing real solutions. It’s the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it sits now at the bottom of the Atlantic.
  • HB 1606 says that people who “camp” will be given a warning and then charged with a misdemeanor if they do not relocate. This will only increase the costs on the criminal justice system with more incarcerations and judicial costs associated with enforcing this law.
  • Our unhoused community will be ticketed and prosecuted, leaving them with arrest records and high fines that will only make it even more difficult to secure housing.
  • HB 1606 instructs local communities to set up wartime-style internment camps or tent cities to place all those without housing in one part of town designated by the local community.
  • The initiative will send us back to the old way of doing things, with massive congregate shelter that has shown to be dangerous during a pandemic or other public health emergency. 
  • Any program provided public funds must have access to mental health/substance abuse assistance. While this sounds wonderful, it is pretty depressing sitting in a tent and watching a society of wealth and expensive vehicles pass you by while going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The punitive measures harbored by most “treatment” programs will only alienate and exclude more people than they help.
  • HB 1606 uses false data from the Point in Time Count as some sort of Census of homeless people and demands reductions or communities will lose state funding.
  • HB 1606 uses Point in Time Count as some sort of scientific count of the homeless population. It does not take into account that communities get a bonus for having smaller numbers compared to the year before. What community is going to engage in a truthful count when they are rewarded for stopping the second they get to the number they counted the year before?
  • The numbers cited by the authors of HB 1606 are a ONE day count of the number of homeless people. Every day in Missouri people become homeless. This number vastly understates the actual number of people in Missouri needing housing assistance. In addition, the scope of mental illness among the homeless population is vastly over- estimated. It is no where near 75% of the population when you consider that the majority of the homeless population are families with children.
  • The authors of HB 1606 are mischaracterizing it as an incentive to do better, while it will in actuality punish the social service community, those without housing, and those who want to help. It will do nothing to create more opportunities for housing Missourians
  • The state will mandate extensive background checks for anyone participating in these programs including criminal checks and forcing those asking for help to disclose their history of hospitalizations.
  • HB 1606 says that if a city allows camping the Missouri Attorney General has the power to intercede and charge the local municipality to prosecute those who illegal camp within the state.
  • Also, no community can bar a law enforcement officer from enforcing this law. It is martial law light. In the past every citizen would have objected to any state usurping their power and meddling in local government operations.
  • It is highly likely that one year after this law is initiated communities such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Jefferson City, Columbia and even Branson will be under threat to lose their state funding for housing/homelessness because they will not be able to show any progress on reducing the numbers of homeless people.
  • The initiative is a smoke and mirrors policy where the outcome will be to pour more money into enforcement instead of housing.  Neighborhoods will see an increase in homelessness with no permanent solutions, as the Show Me State shows the nation how to make homelessness worse.
  • The plan is purported to offer a “comprehensive plan” to end long term homelessness but offers no details or additional funding to address the affordable housing crisis.

For this and many other reasons, NCH opposes HB 1606 and we urge the Governor to veto this bill that will only criminalize the status of being without housing in Missouri.

Here is a letter that NCH sent to US Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Fudge: 

Dear Secretary Fudge:
We contacted your office early in the administration to complain about the growing number of sweeps of encampments in the United States urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to act to stop this horrible practice of making it illegal to be without housing.  We asked that HUD condemn these policies and act to restrict federal dollars going to criminalizing of those without housing. It is ridiculous that local jurisdictions would take in millions of dollars for homelessness in rescue dollars to house the population while turning around and issuing tickets and throwing away the valuables of those who fled the shelters to live outside.  We understand that you and others spoke out against sweeps especially when they fly in the face of Center for Disease Control recommendations. We saw governors in Texas and now Tennessee (TN SB 1610) pass legislation forcing local communities to enforce “anti-camping” ordinances and allows the state to intervene if the local jurisdiction is not criminalizing homelessness fast enough.   Unfortunately, Congress has not given HUD the ability to halt the proliferation of sweeps in the US since we now have 66 cities are regularly sweeping those who live outside.  
We contacted your office about Iowa legislation 252 passed into law in 2021 that is a direct attack on the Housing Choice Voucher program.  This piece of legislation strikes local laws in three communities that do not allow landlords to discriminate based on how a tenant will pay the rent.  NCH thought it was important to defend a federal housing program which helps lift a disproportionate number of minority members of our community out of homelessness.  We again thought it was a betrayal of the partnership established over the last 40 years for one state to attack a federal program that helps solve a housing crisis while also accepting millions in federal funding to build and develop affordable housing.  We have yet to hear any public comments condemning the state of Iowa for this horrible piece of legislation.  
We write to you today regarding a bill that passed the Missouri (HB 1606) that the Governor is contemplating signing that is a direct assault on HUD policies and programs.  We urge you to intervene and respectfully ask the Governor to veto this bill.  We ask that you let him know how this will impact HUD funding before June 30 or the bill will become law.  Please inform the Governor of Missouri that this new law is inconsistent with any of the Consolidated Plans approved by the state and nor can it ever be consistent with those plans since it conflicts with Congressionally approved HUD policies.  This new law will result in people living in places not fit for human habitation for an indeterminate amount of time.  Please inform the Governor that this potential law is extremely harmful to those without housing, the social service community and the local governments who could lose all state funding as a result of this law.  The National Coalition for the Homeless sees a sharp rise in homelessness in Missouri as a direct result of this law’s implementation. 
If this law goes into effect, we recommend that you present a time line for reversal of this law or declare that HUD funding would be in jeopardy.  This is a direct attack on housing first policies and the long tradition of working to get homeless people into safe, decent housing. It perverts the Point in Time count into a census that Missouri will measure the success of the local homeless service providers, and if they fail to reduce the numbers they will lose state funding.  This was never the intention of the Congressional mandate to provide a point-in-time count. It is also a direct assault on the 30 year history of partnership between the federal and state governments in addressing the affordable housing crisis.   We urge you to intervene to stop this assault on federal policies.  If this law is allowed to stand other states will adopt similar positions and HUD funding will be misused to force people into internment camps.  The time to act is now. 

By Eva Lyons, NCH Intern Spring 2022

Similar to many other cities during the pandemic, Pittsburgh saw a large increase in the number who fled the shelters and could not find other housing so began living outside. Much of this trend is out of the cities hand, except for how they choose to react to this crisis or minimize it. Pittsburgh is the largest city within Allegheny County. Allegheny County prioritized those without housing to keep them safe during the pandemic. Other cities such as Cleveland, OH, and Santa Fe, NM, went down the same path, but most other cities adopted a law enforcement strategy to homelessness. Because unhoused individuals have many chronic health conditions they are at higher risks of getting COVID-19. There are far fewer places to isolate, which has caused an increasing number of people living on the streets in freezing temperatures.

Allegheny County took a more hands on approach and worked to keep everyone safe. They utilized every federal resource they could find, assembled unprecedented amounts of funding to get people inside. They adopted a prevention strategy, and tried connecting people to available services. In looking at models from the pandemic, we believe that Pittsburgh can serve as a template for other government entities to model in response to a health crisis as well as a better strategy for dealing with the emergency of homelessness.

Abigail Horn, Deputy Director of the Office of Community Services for Allegheny County, and Andy Halfhill, Administrator for Homeless Services for Allegheny County shared that the Health Department played an important and positive role in protecting their homeless population. The Health Department met regularly with homeless providers to determine best practices. They also sent staff to check out the shelters and determine next best steps following any health checks. Ms. Horn shared that they were very hands-on and active within the community.

Allegheny County tried to take advantage of every single resource they had available to help their homeless population during these troubling times of the pandemic. They worked to be very nimble and to meet any needs that came along. One of Allegheny County’s main successes was their focus on getting the Safe Haven Hotel running and available for isolation and quarantine spaces. Families and youth could utilize these spaces which also included single adults. This effort helped to deconcentrate people from congregate single shelters. Part of these spaces were designated to move people who were deemed “higher risk individuals” into a safer space. They also were able to utilize rooms in the winter for winter shelter overflow. These efforts started within the first year of the pandemic, showing where the county’s priorities rightfully laid.

Another great success from the county involves how they used the funding and resources they had hosted community discussions to figure out the priorities and then used the dollars coming in from the federal government to prioritize the needs. They decided to focus on their most vulnerable community members with chronic health conditions who had no where else to stay. They used their funding to provide hygiene centers and toilets to larger encampments. Furthermore, the county pushed to help get everyone vaccinated and tested. They sent medical professional out to the streets, and they offered a space to isolate and quarantine at the Safe Haven Hotel.

Outreach in Pittsburgh

Rather than clearing encampments and displacing individuals, they brought resources to those sleeping rough in Pittsburgh. County officials passed along essential resources and compassion that they hoped would build trust to bring people inside. Historically, Pittsburgh has been really respectful, working with outreach teams and educating their police on the best ways to interact with the diverse homeless population. Police are paired with street outreach who get to take the lead with issues or concerns facing homeless individuals. Furthermore, police defer to street outreach teams to help with clean up when residents request and to help pick up trash. This helps ensure that people’s belongings are not being thrown out.

The county’s funding was also used to help families with the technology barriers for online schooling. They provided additional resources, such as cellphones, laptops, and hotspot access to those in need. These resources also helped families and individuals access the internet and online services to contact doctors and other essential providers. Additionally, IPads were provided to the Safe Haven Hotel to help the people living there temporarily. Allegheny County has long- term efforts in place to serve their homeless sector, as this crisis was here before the pandemic and will be here afterwards until something major is done.

They keep their street outreach teams active throughout the year doing health checks and connecting people to housing and hygiene services. These outreach teams play a huge role in the county. They helped connect unhoused individuals to the Safe Haven Hotel as needed. Allegheny County has worked to get the emergency resources they were given on the streets as quickly as possible. During the pandemic, they worked to show that they were using the federal recovery dollars in a strategic and meaningful purpose.

Both state and national entities came through strongly to support the county’s efforts, enabling them to focus on supportive services that saved people’ lives. This includes an extremely robust eviction prevention program. This program kept the surge in homelessness that was seen across the nation to a minimum in Allegheny County. This program was essential because it provided more ways to keep people in their affordable housing and prevent them from joining the homeless population.

Ms. Horn shared that it was not the amount of funding that needs to increase if local communities are prioritizing their funding in a similar way to Allegheny County; instead, she shared what would help the most would be for government at all levels to provide more affordable housing. Ms. Horn shared, “It is hard for people to successfully leave the system because they cannot find safe, stable, and affordable housing when they leave, and I know that is the same across the nation.”

There are currently a lot of programs for veterans, youth, and families. This covers many of the subpopulations of homeless people, however, there are huge groups that fall through the cracks. Ms. Horn and Mr. Halfhill shared that the sub-population increasing the greatest are those with long term stays without housing and those with behavioral health issues. They would like to focus next on creating better connections between homeless individuals and behavioral health services. Allegheny County used the resources at their disposal to help keep their homeless population safe before, during, and after the pandemic. The models in Pittsburgh/Allegheny County can work in other cities to keep our homeless neighbors safe and while the appropriate housing is developed to lower the numbers.

Dear Mayor Adams:

The National Coalition for the Homeless is alarmed by the subway safety plan released by your administration on February 18, 2022, and are concerned that this will only escalate the issues facing those without stable housing in New York City.  Our concern is this “plan” was tried by the previous administration in New York City and has been tried by other mayors on a smaller scale in many other cities and every time it has failed because affordable housing is never attached to these plans.  NCH and every homeless organization mourns the loss of life in the subways and the escalating amount of violence, but it is misguided to blame these issues on the unhoused.  After 40 years if we have learned one thing it is that use of law enforcement to deal with a social service/housing issues will fail and will only extend the stay on the streets for many caught up in these sweeps.

While we understand that the safety of every rider of the New York subway system (including those without housing) is paramount, our concern is that this plan will only exacerbate the violence.  It also diverts law enforcement resources from solving real crimes to being reduced to crossing guards or curfew violation security officers.  We have seen a number of videos over the last two weeks of encounters between law enforcement and those without housing and it seems as though these encounters are only agitating those who utilize the subway for shelter.  The law enforcement or transit official asks the unhoused individual to move their stuff out of the subway, which typically involves three or four trips down the escalator, and each time the person is more and more frustrated.  We are worried that this subway plan is just going to lead to more and more volatile interactions and eventually people backed into a corner lash out.

What is missing from this plan is where do these individuals go if they are not in the subway?  And based on the videos, shelters are not an option to many of these individuals utilizing the subway.  They clearly describe unsafe, unsupervised and overcrowded conditions that make the streets a more attractive alternative.  We had written to City of New York officials in 2021 about our concern over the shelter conditions and lack of oversight.  Unless you find safe spaces for those you are removing they will continue to utilize the subway, doorways, and bridges to stay alive.  There are so many failed systems that led to people sleeping in the subway and you are entirely focused on the victim of these system failures instead of attacking the causes. 

The National Coalition for the Homeless has many ideas for how local communities can better address the crisis within the behavioral health system and the inability for the market to meet the housing needs of the service based economy we have created, but none of our proposals involve the use of law enforcement to be transformed into social workers. The individuals that you roust from the subways will still use the public transit system, but will be even more suspicious of law enforcement, transit officials, and outreach teams.  Housing First, safe havens, hotel rooms, low barrier facilities all work and are proven to keep people from living on the streets.  We understand the scale of the problem in New York City, but neglecting the population or utilizing police to shuffle people around the city is not going to encourage people to go inside in any capacity. 

The behavioral health system that keeps individuals on a 24 hour hold and then sends them back to the streets; the housing system that takes years to process paperwork and complete inspections, the inability for doctors to prescribe housing as part of the treatment for their patient’s recovery plan; the pharmaceutical industry getting individuals hooked on opioid and keeping the price of other life sustaining medicine too high for many in our society; the vacant and abandoned housing sitting idle while so many sleep outside, and we could go on for 8 pages to describe all the other holes in the social safety net.  But the bottom line is that there is nowhere for these individuals to go and therefore they seek safety in the subways. Until you answer the question where do all these people go, you are just constructing a massive game of hide and seek as part of this security theater for the media. 

Please, for the safety of those who are struggling with their housing and the passengers of the New York transit system, we urge reconsideration of your plan with the publication of a new plan that answers the basic question: where do all these individuals go to stay safe? 

by Rachel Rothenberg, American University student

If the public knew the stories behind the headlines and the negative images they see on the nightly news, would that motivate them to respond?  If voters saw the real histories instead of the myths about those without housing would that change the way society dealt with homelessness in America?  Maurice Smith of Spokane Washington is working to answer that question.  Three years ago, Smith began making documentaries about homelessness in this mid-sized northwestern city that featured a growing homeless population. The documentaries revealed that homelessness was a much larger issue than the city had claimed and the population experiencing homelessness are much different compared to what is portrayed in the media.

Smith has worked alongside those without housing and disadvantaged people of Spokane city for over 15 years. Some of his experience includes operating four different homeless shelters, serving on various organizing teams for Spokane homelessness projects, and co-founding a food rescue organization. Smith’s documentary series “My Road Leads Home” spotlights the housing crisis in Spokane and addresses the way that the city is handling it. He began working on these documentaries to let the Spokane community hear from homeless people and set the tone for discussing homelessness with the practice of Shalom which is a Hebrew word meaning peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquility.

According to Smith, the Spokane community rests on the value of Shalom to create a healthy community in which each of the members are able to fulfill the daily needs and successfully pursue their talents for the good of the entire community.  “You and I look at the community and see things that are not the way they should be,” Smith said and gave examples of people sleeping on the sidewalk or young people ‘couch surfing’. Marchanuna Rodgers, an international development specialist, asks the Spokane community an important question: What would it look like if a community is defined by shalom? She shares a difficult story of her community showing up for her during a hard night. She poses the potential of a genuinely supportive community showing up for each other when the situation presents itself. Sadly, that is not always the case. 

 In The Night of the Unsheltered Homeless and The Hidden Homeless: Families Experiencing Homelessness, Smith specifically demonstrates the way that Spokane downplayed homelessness and was not equipped to shelter more than 52% of the homeless population. Rob Bryceson explains that Spokane’s policy on homelessness is the following: the city provides private funds to organizations that apply to provide resources for homeless people. The main three operating Catholic Charities, Salvation Army, and Union Gospel Mission. Unfortunately, Bryceson said “the need has grown” and the big three agencies need other groups to “come in and add strength” because of a “change in the homeless population.” The change in the homeless population in Spokane to “angrier and younger” has made it more difficult for the city of Spokane to manage sheltering homeless people. 

Another dysfunctional “solution” to homelessness is the practice of sweeps. Law enforcement and government officials of Spokane see sweeps as a quick fix to ending homelessness, although they do not actually “go to the root of the problem,” as civil rights lawyer Andrew Biviano claimed in the video published by Smith. By shifting the issue to be the responsibility of the police, policymakers can easily adopt an “out of sight, out of mind mentality.” Along with sweeps, the Boise court decisions allows law enforcement to “arrest people for conduct crimes such as obstructing the sidewalk” which criminalizes a homeless person’s existence. 

Smith’s work, along with many other advances by the homeless community also catalyzed great progress. The city has a “greater community focus on and discussion about private initiatives to address homelessness,” says Smith. Several projects are starting such as a drop-in day center and resource hub and a homeless village. All the videos about the problem in Spokane can be found at https://myroadleadshome.org/documentary/.  There are still many issues to overcome for example in February 2022, the city installed chain-link fences along the viaduct to prevent tents from going up.  There are still not nearly enough shelter beds, and people are still dying because of their experiences living without housing.  Smith’s documentaries have changed the narrative and spread community awareness about homelessness in Spokane. They have moved leaders to open warming centers and the Mayor has had to admit that there are not enough beds and their needs to be a new strategy.  We hope that these interviews and snapshots into life on the streets of Spokane will lead to meaningful change in addressing the crisis of the unaffordability of rent locally.  

The National Coalition for the Homeless officially opened the Cleveland Regional Field office on November 23 with a ribbon cutting and a forum on racial equity.  There was some confusion among local advocates about this office, and we wanted to clarify our goals and objectives since this is the first of five regional sites we intend to open. 

It is a natural fit for NCH to open our first office in Cleveland for a number of reasons.  The first is our long history of working with the local homeless Coalition and other advocacy groups in the area including the closed Cleveland Tenants Organization. NCH has strong ties to Ohio advocates across the state, including Bill Faith of COHHIO and Donald Whitehead (when he was in Cincinnati) both serving as Board Presidents. Currently, Cincinnati Coalition Director, Josh Springs is a board member, and Brian Davis, now on staff at NCH, served as Board Vice President when he was the local director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.  If we were going to pick one natural fit for NCH it would be either Cincinnati or Cleveland.  

Cleveland has a long history of creative and effective advocacy that were used as models for other communities in the struggle to reduce the number of homeless people. The Key vs. City of Cleveland federal court decision is one of the only federal lawsuits still in existence that protects those who stay outside from harassment by the police for sitting, sleeping, lying, or eating on the sidewalk.  The work protecting those who stayed outside during the 2016 Republican National Convention is used by other cities today when a special event comes to their town. The opening of the waiting list at CMHA to those experiencing homelessness and the attempts to deconcentrate poverty while preserving the overall number of public housing units was used by other cities as a model. Many cities are pushing for a Justice Department meeting with groups of homeless individuals while negotiating a consent decree with the police as Cleveland and Cincinnati both started years ago. The work with the local ACLU on various homeless issues in both Akron and Cleveland including the overturning of panhandling legislation has always been impressive. There are only 15 similar homeless led organizations like the Homeless Congress—a local group of homeless people who meet every month to push an advocacy agenda. One of the first six street newspapers in the country was started in Cleveland and continues to this day.  The outreach work of the local Coalition and getting individuals into hotels during the pandemic was impressive and life sustaining.  

In the long history of moving homeless legislation in Congress, Ohio has been critical to that success with Representatives like Dennis Kucinich, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Senator Sherrod Brown and the current Secretary of HUD, Marcia Fudge, all championing the rights of people who experience homelessness. This office will be a regional office to attempt to bring current advocates together from throughout the region, to support and build stronger networks in places like Akron, Toledo and Dayton. Cleveland has a strong local commitment toward advocacy with the Poor People’s Campaign, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, NAACP Cleveland Branch, Organize Ohio, the Homeless Congress, and the ACLU that we will continue to enhance their work.  We may be able to offer local groups input on national policies or figure out ways to influence change at the national level that benefits Cleveland, but our role will never duplicate or supplant local advocacy.  There is plenty of work to do locally with a continued rise in homelessness and the NCH field office intends to support local efforts already in place.  

The overarching goal of the regional offices is to mobilize people who experienced homeless and those currently experiencing homelessness to add their voices to an effort to create the structural changes necessary to end homeless.  Too often efforts to end homelessness fail because those efforts are conducted in silos.  The goal of Bring America Home Now is to raise the resources to the level of the needs of the people and not just to the level of need of the service sector.  There is far too much suffering for territorialism.  At NCH and through the BAHN campaign, it is our belief that the needs of the people must transcend the needs of the institutional interests.  

Cleveland has been among the top five cities for poverty for two decades now.  It is appropriate for NCH to have its first field office in one of the poorest cities in America, as so many living with low-incomes also struggle with housing stability.  The National Coalition began the process in December 2020 to open field offices, and we saw an opportunity when the previous director of NEOCH became available for our open position of Director of Grassroots Organizing.  Since we were all operating remotely, Brian Davis stayed in Cleveland to begin to make contacts out in the field.  He has regular contact with Coalitions throughout the United States especially in those communities where the rights of people who are unhoused are particularly under attack. NCH began identifying possible field sites in May 2021 with a plan for five regional sites in California, Texas or Atlanta, the Midwest, Florida and the Central Plains or Minnesota.  We announced these plans at our kickoff of the Bring America Home Now Campaign in June 2021, and promoted the idea on our website and in social media.  

Over the last year, Davis and NCH staff have been in discussion with the local Coalition and members of the Homeless Congress, collaborating on awareness events and NCH policy and organizing committees. Over the summer of 2021 NCH firmed up plans for a Cleveland regional office, reaching out to the local Coalition about collaborating. NCH staff have been meeting regularly with the leadership of the Homeless Congress, and Loh, a local advocate with homeless experience, has been on the agenda for, and participated in, several NCH online events. NCH will hope to meet with other local advocates to discuss our plans, including Organize Ohio and the local chapter of the NAACP.  We have made every effort to be transparent about our plans and goals. 

NCH’s field office in Cleveland is in no way meant to construct a new homeless advocacy organization or duplicate existing services and efforts.  We will be working with people who have experienced homelessness in the Cleveland area to setup an advisory group to provide input from those who are currently living without housing on federal policies with the CDC, HUD, and the Department of Justice. This is a natural step for a group founded on the principle of raising the voices of those without housing and being led by people who have experienced homelessness. We believe that those who have experienced homelessness have the expertise and knowledge of how we will ultimately end homelessness. We are excited to partner with advocates in Cleveland, and the larger region, to bring the ideas and direction of people who have been homeless into fruition, truly Bringing America Home and ending homelessness across the country.       

California has been facing a homelessness crisis for years now, but that crisis is reaching new  heights in nearly every major city. As of January 2020, 72% of those without housing in  California are unsheltered. Now more than ever, investment in affordable housing is needed to  help people get off the streets. Instead Kern County has released a “comprehensive plan” that  makes it illegal to be without housing and neglects to provide safe, secure and private places to  re-establish stability while we move out of the pandemic. A “sanctioned encampment” or a  congregate living shelter is not a substitute for affordable housing. By violently disrupting  people’s lives through encampment sweeps that evict them from their tents and communities,  you are only prolonging a person’s homelessness because they are repeatedly starting over. In  keeping with CDC recommendations, the National Coalition for the Homeless strongly opposes  sweeps and displacement during a pandemic. We support utilization of the hotel program as an  alternative to expanding shelter or segregating homeless people into a section of town not of  their choice. A real plan does not involve sweeps of those without housing; it does not force  people into unsafe shelters; and it does not create a parking lot program or other places not  suitable for human habitation as a response. By moving people out of sight, you are only  exacerbating the problem and you will find that homelessness will only increase within Kern  County. 

On November 9, 2021, Kern County will hold a public hearing to discuss and potentially adopt  an anti-camping ordinance. This ordinance would outlaw camping on public land and make it  illegal to store belongings in public areas. By passing this ordinance, Kern County would  criminalize homelessness through fines and citations. While administrative citations may seem  trivial, fines serve as one more obstacle to survival among many, punishing people experiencing  homelessness simply for not having a house. This is cruel and unconscionable. Why fine people  for simply trying to survive? In addition to penalizing unhoused persons, this ordinance would  lead to a cycle of evictions for people experiencing homelessness as the county sweeps  encampments. Imagine being forced to pack up all your belongings over and over again or risk  everything you own being thrown away. These sweeps violently disrupt people’s lives and leave  them worse than before. People have lost their tents, beds, ID, medication, important documents,  and more as a result of street sweeps. This theft and destruction of people’s property alienates an already marginalized community and makes it that much harder to live. Rather than helping  those without housing, sweeps will actively harm them.  

Sweeps don’t solve the problem of homelessness; they only serve to push people out of  “desirable” or popular areas in the county. Rather than help connect people to housing and  outreach services, sweeps are an attempt to make the problem of homelessness invisible. If you can’t see people experiencing homelessness, it is much easier to ignore their existence.  Additionally, as unhoused persons are repeatedly evicted, they often lose trust in services  providers or become increasingly difficult for outreach teams to locate and help.  

Where do you expect people to go when you outlaw camping? No one forced your other  taxpayers where to live or in what section of town they were allowed to reside, but this is the  proposed policy to those who lost their housing. And while it may appear logical to expect  people experiencing homelessness to just go into shelters if they want to avoid fines, this ignores  the many reasons why people camp instead – people don’t choose to live outdoors on a whim.  People in shelters often face violence, stolen belongings, and poor living conditions. Not to  mention the serious risks during the coronavirus pandemic where shelters can put people’s health  in jeopardy and increase the spread of the virus due to large numbers of people sharing space  indoors.  

While this anti-camping ordinance would have terrible consequences if passed, the county has  also announced they will invest $8.3 million to create outreach teams for the homeless, with a  particular focus on mental health. This commitment is crucial for helping people experiencing  homelessness and deserves recognition. However, tying this funding to the anti-camping ordinance risks destroying the program’s positive impacts and harming the very community the  county is trying to help. 

So what can Kern County do to end homelessness? First, it cannot and should not try to  criminalize its way out of homelessness by banning camping. Instead, the county should invest in  affordable housing and outreach that can connect people to necessary housing with wrap around  services. The County should work to prevent any evictions that lead to homelessness. The county  must not sweep encampments to “clean” the streets, rather they should provide services such as  public toilets, showers, and trash receptacles to address cleanliness issues without evicting  people and throwing away all their possessions. Finally, they should listen to those struggling  with housing about their needs and not just the home owners who want to hide the problem.  

Passing this anti-camping ordinance will not reduce the number of homeless people in Kern County. If the county wants to truly end homelessness, they must vote against adopting this ordinance and instead listen to people with lived experience of homelessness to identify alternative solutions. Have you thought about sitting down with those who stay outside and ask  what they need to move inside? The county’s investment into building affordable housing,  improving access to mental health professionals, and substance abuse treatment will help save lives. Don’t undermine this work by criminalizing and punishing the homeless community for trying to survive.  

 

NCH joined the National Homelessness Law Center, Legal Services of Greater Miami, and Southern Legal Counsel to send the following letter to the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice. 

We applaud the actions of DOJ to open an investigation into the Phoenix Police Department and we believe it is historic for the Attorney General to emphasize the  treatment of those without housing in announcing the investigation. As we told your staff, we  believe that the San Diego police are engaged in a much larger campaign to endanger the lives of  those without housing by throwing away personal possessions and displacing thousands of  unhoused individuals. Since our meeting, it has come to our attention that the City of Miami  Police are engaged in a systematic and coordinated effort to make homelessness disappear by  regular harassment of those without housing.  As you know the City of Miami was sued by homeless individuals in the 1980s in Pottinger vs.  City of Miami. There were settlement negotiations in the 1990s and an agreement was struck.  The activists and homeless individuals claimed that there were regular violation of the agreement  and eventually the court ended the oversight of the Pottinger settlement despite a great deal of  evidence that there was regular police harassment of homeless people in Miami. While we recognize that DOJ’s oversight of the City of Miami Police related to police shootings recently ended, we believe the pattern and practice of systemic engagement of those living outside and forcing them to relocate and to regularly have their personal possessions confiscated and discarded demands further scrutiny.  

The National Homelessness Law Center, the Southern Legal Counsel and Legal Services of  Greater Miami join the National Coalition for the Homeless with this letter. The local Legal  Services of Greater Miami have several clients who are unsheltered individuals and have  reported incidents in which City of Miami employees under the supervision of City of Miami  Police have thrown away almost all if not all their property. They have documented the  discarding of medical devices, prescription medications, clothing, shoes, tents, identification  documents, dentures, glasses, family photos, and even a family member’s ashes. Most of these  individuals are African American and LatinX residing on the streets of Miami. In addition to  Legal Services’ clients, we have the contact information for another dozen individuals who have  had these negative experiences with the City of Miami police, and we could solicit additional  voices if necessary.  

Further, on October 28, 2021, the City of Miami passed an ordinance which prohibits  encampments on public property which further criminalizes those experiencing homelessness. Typically, DOJ investigations are opened after a tragedy like George Floyd in Minneapolis,  Brionna Taylor in Louisville or Timothy Russell/Malissa Williams in Cleveland, but we are  hoping to avoid a similarly tragic situation in Miami. The individuals swept by the police are  continually starting over. They are having their health jeopardized by discarding their life  sustaining medicine that a doctor has prescribed to address their mental illness or other chronic  conditions. They feel frustrated, angry and treated as a second class citizens by the City of  Miami. We are asking for DOJ involvement to stop a potentially deadly encounter between  those living outside and the police supervising these clean ups. Any of the organizations signed  on to this letter would be willing to assist in any way we can with a DOJ investigation of the  pattern or practice of the City of Miami police.  

Sincerely,  

Donald Whitehead
Executive Director
National Coalition for the Homeless

Jeffrey M. Hearne Esq
Director of Litigation
Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc.

Eric Tars
Legal Director
National Homelessness Law Center

Jodi Siegel
Executive Director
Southern Legal Counsel, Inc.

by Donald Whitehead

I was a part of a small group of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who often played a lively game of tag football in the Burnet Avenue U.S Post office parking lot in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

I had just scored a long touchdown. As I was finishing my touchdown celebration, I noticed a University of Cincinnati Police cruiser drive by. I saw the woman in the back pointing at some of the people in the parking lot. Minutes later, the parking lot was swamped with police cars. Campus police and Cincinnati officers jumped out in mass with guns drawn, and suddenly we were ordered against the vehicles, and guns were pointed at our heads. We were confused and terrified about what was happening what we had done other than play football on the lot for several hours. Why was there so much anger coming from the police officers? Why did they have their guns drawn?

Donald Whitehead, NCH Executive Director, with Rep. Maxine Waters

I can still hear my best friend say, “let’s run for it.” I sometimes wonder what might have happened if we had taken his advice.  We know from recent history that running would have been a mistake, potentially a fatal mistake.  Luckily one of my brothers who wasn’t placed against the car had gone to get our parents.  Our houses were less than a hundred yards away.  

The white woman in the police car pointing had been robbed and assaulted by a group of black boys, and we fit the description. To her credit, after further inspection, the woman realized that none of our group was involved. The tension faded; however, the damage was done. We were good kids; we went to church every Sunday and sang in the Church Choir; none of us had ever been in trouble. 

This was our first contact with law enforcement ever.

We did not commit the robbery; in fact, it was us that got robbed that day.  We were robbed of innocence, robbed of trust in those that protect and serve—robbed of our belief in a colorblind world.  This is not a unique scenario; it is a lot more common than many would believe.

No child should have to learn such painful lessons with a gun pointed at their head.

That day was the first of many pen pricks of racism that I experienced and still experience to this day.

The incident also taught me not to be silent in the face of discrimination.  Our silence is negligence; we cannot see or experience injustice without protest or at the very least identify it. Our minor protest resulted in season-tickets-for-life to the University of Cincinnati football games.

The other lesson learned for me was the need to understand how and why I fit the description. Why am I suspicious without provocation? Why is my excellence somehow seen as out of the ordinary or achieved through dishonesty or criminality? I immediately wanted to understand history, my history, our collective history. I became a Dr. Martin Luther King fan; unfortunately, this was the only historical figure fully accessible in my post-secondary education.  

I became my own historian, and the more I have learned over the years, the more I have wanted to know.

I have been completely horrified by the middle passage, chattel slavery, black codes, and Jim Crow practices. 

I have also been so proud and grateful to my ancestors.  I am so respectful of their incredible resilience and their ability to survive the unthinkable horrors they endured.  

As my teams and I work to reintroduce the world to our full history, we often encounter the voices of the apathetic or the discouraged. The level of internalized racism is surprisingly significant. I find myself troubled by the thought that nothing will change from some in the community. 

To not believe in change is disrespectful to the many changemakers who have given their lives. Things have changed in many ways, most notably, the end of chattel slavery and the opportunity to gain civil rights have been hard-fought and slow and painful.

In many ways, it does appear that we are going in the wrong direction. From Charlottesville to massive voter depression efforts, it’s easy to be discouraged. It’s easy to ignore the senate election in Georgia or the election of Barack Obama when the Supreme court weakens the civil rights amendment. Watching angry crowds protest students having the ability to learn the unfiltered history of the United States by misrepresenting every attempt as the misunderstood Critical Race Theory, it’s easy to overlook that the Secretary of Defense is a dark-skinned black man.

Our racial reconciliation is recent in history; the first African Americans landed on the continent’s shores in 1619.  Brown versus Board of Education was passed in 1954. For 300 years, we survived on a steady diet of resilience, pride, and hope; we must never abandon those ideals. 

Those discouraged by the current state of our country learn from the setbacks and rejoice about the progress and never stop believing in change. Every living breathing African Americans is a product of success. We are descendants of unfathomable resilience.  Resilience from the 400 years of all of the things I mentioned earlier and resilience from the pen pricks of racism today and those yet to come. The great Booker T. Washington said “Success should not be judged by ones station in life but the obstacles they had to overcome to get there.”

Read more about how centuries of racial injustice affect who experiences homelessness today.

By Zachary Bernstein, Summer 2021 NCH Civil Rights Intern

During our conversation, Loh asked me to imagine my family and I were victims of one of the wildfires currently ravaging the western part of the country. Imagine your documents—passports, birth certificates, etc.—were destroyed in the fire, Loh said, and you do not qualify for assistance based on your economic status. It takes a while to get those documents back, Loh pointed out, and meanwhile you have nothing, and no help—nothing more than people staying in shelters, or tents in the woods, or directly on the street. “This is how people fall into deep poverty,” Loh told me.

Cleveland is one of the most historic cities in the United States, Loh said, and yet they allow nearly half the children in the city (46.1% in 2019) to live below the poverty line. That means one of every two children does not have enough to eat and goes to bed hungry nearly every night in Cleveland. This is clearly not the fault of each individual person, Loh emphasized again and again, but a failure of the system to keep people from slipping into poverty. 

Loh, a community activist in Cleveland, Ohio, works with the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the Homeless Congress, and with the Poor People’s Campaign to amplify the voices of those struggling with housing.  Loh has experienced homelessness for the past ten years. We spoke for just ninety minutes, but over the course of that time, Loh painted me a portrait of a system of shelters, service providers, and government bureaucracy that has failed its most vulnerable citizens at every level. Having dealt with activism and struggling as a person experiencing homelessness and as an activist, Loh understands the ins and outs of this system in great detail—Loh understands why it has allowed its citizens to live on the street, why it has allowed its shelters to fall into disrepair, and why it has repeatedly stonewalled efforts to help these people. But most importantly of all, Loh understands how to thwart that system.

To Loh, the most important principle of organizing for the homeless is that you cannot solely organize people experiencing homelessness. The reason people are homeless, Loh points out, is because they do not have resources, they are already overwhelmed with their own economic and personal issues. In addition, Loh observes, homeless people often do not want to go out of their way to let people know they are homeless. Loh believes that organizing for homeless advocacy must involve targeting those who are housed as well as those with resources and political will. A key is to target the powerful and those who have decision-making authority to enable the movement to thrive and achieve its goals. 

In one story Loh told, a class at the Cleveland Institute of Art wanted to start an artistic outreach project for the homeless community, but had several eye-opening experiences attempting to gain access to people staying in shelters, realizing the extent of the systemic failure experienced by the homeless. Working with Loh and other members of the Homeless Congress, one student in the class changed his project to stage mock groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies that included testimonials from homeless people about their experiences in shelters. The project got publicity in newspapers, and Loh recalls how people were amazed at the stories that shelter residents had to tell. This is merely one example, but it demonstrates the power of pairing the knowledge of people who are experiencing or have experienced homelessness (such as Loh) with the power, time, and resources of those who are not. “You have to be able to organize people outside the system,” Loh emphasizes. Loh is a fixture at the County Council meetings railing against the lack of oversight of the shelters and services by the funders.  By respecting the resources and points of view each other brings to the table, we can build activist movements which have power and influence and are also built around those with lived experience and knowledge of the system.

In speaking about the importance of a systemic understanding, Loh emphasized that it is not enough to merely understand that the police do bad things to the homeless community, or that the justice system is broken, it is necessary to grasp the wider scope of the problem, to understand how systems interlock with one another to produce the problem. This is especially important, Loh says, because homeless people do not have the time or energy to think about why the system does not work. Several of Loh’s stories from the field have demonstrated how the system has failed the homeless community. The story of the art class attempting to reach out to the homeless community is especially demonstrative—at every step, Loh related, the government and service providers would delay or divert their attempts to reach out. When they wanted to create a sculpture for a shelter, they were told that the sculpture had to be metal because, a director told them, the people in the shelter were crazy, angry, stupid, and violent, and would destroy the sculpture in a short time. The reduction and mischaracterization of an entire community based on a dangerous stereotype is just one example of the pervasive and ingrained misunderstanding of the issue of homelessness.

Loh has extensively documented the mistreatment and horrible conditions at shelters with some amount of creatively particularly in the use of photography and poetry.  The shelter Loh stays at, which Loh refers to as “The HELL”. In a series of photos and captions, Loh shows insects on the floor of the only area the homeless people are allowed to eat, mold growing on the showers, and broken toilet stall doors. In a poem, Loh describes the inadequate facilities at the shelter which were originally built as two business buildings, and now involves lots of stairs, heavy doors to navigate. Loh characterizes her experiences as painful due to the injuries sustained from the unsafe environment of the shelter. Loh views these problems as a direct result of systemic failure, a system which causes Loh and thousands of others physical pain because of their lack of care. Loh described to me the network of service providers and government agencies in a dizzying flurry of acronyms. These agencies, which purport themselves to be non-profits, have no real intention of helping homeless people, Loh told me, they simply play politics to make more money. “Society produces homeless people,” Loh often says, because there is simply a lack of care and effort put into solving the problem, and these seemingly impenetrable systems of bureaucracy and capital foreclose any attempt at undermining it.

But that does not mean that there are no ways of doing so—in fact, Loh has successfully staged resistance from the inside. On one occasion, Loh was offered housing in response to complaints about the quality of the shelter. When they offered it, Loh asked if they could give 200 units because there are other people with problems like Loh’s—but they refused. Loh observed how demonstrative this experience was of the systemic failure: “You claim you are an organization to help homeless people and especially those with mental health struggles, but you have no real intention to help them.” But Loh also shows us how the system can be undermined—Loh’s request of 200 housing units is a perfect example of a way in which we can take a stand in spite of the failure of the system. Loh’s tireless dedication to solving the problem of homelessness for all and keen focus on understanding the very roots of that problem can inspire us to think in new ways about homelessness and the systems that perpetuate it. After all, if we can understand what causes the problem, we are one step closer to finding its solution.

On May 1, 2021 a political action committee convinced voters to pass an ordinance forcing the City of Austin to ticket people who violate the ‘no camping ordinance’ within the city limits.  This was contrary to guidelines by the Center for Disease Control which recommended that communities leave people alone to shelter in place until the pandemic is passed, or take advantage of the FEMA and other recovery programs to pay for hotel rooms for the population.  NCH has documented 40 of the 100 largest cities has also undertaken sweeps over the last year contrary to CDC guidelines. The City began warning people to leave their tents in June and then began ticketing people in July.

Proposition B was passed in a special election with only 20% of the voters actually bothering to show up. The dubiously named “Save Austin Now” PAC spent $1.9 million to convince Austin voters to be afraid of people who are unhoused. The legislation also demanded a crackdown on panhandling, despite sweeping judicial protection of the right panhandle. So, a deeply flawed law which violates the constitution and basic humanity for those struggling during a pandemic passed by voters and implemented by local law enforcement began to make criminals out of those who lost their housing in one of the most expensive places to live in the South. 

A number of Austin-based groups led by people who have experienced homelessness reached out and asked for help from the National Coalition for the Homeless. We worked with local groups to draft this national sign-on letter, asking for the Austin city officials to act in favor of humanity and refuse to further criminalize people for having nowhere to go. We are not taking additional endorsements at this time.  If you have questions, please e-mail them to bdavis@nationalhomeless.org

There is news that the Orwellian-sounding Save Austin Now, along with four local businesses, were filing suit against the City of Austin for not enforcing Proposition B against enough unhoused people. The City has denied the charges stating that 18 tickets were issued over the last month. The City of Austin has attempted to place more of the unhoused into hotels, but has not used much of their HUD emergency assistance to give housing relief to those struggling because of the pandemic. In an attempt to pile on, the state also passed HB 1925 which prevents local government from not enforcing anti-camping ordinances.

The millions that have been spent in this effort to criminalize people for being poor by the Texas government and governor, as well as “Save Austin Now” political action committee could have been much better used in ensuring safe, accessible housing for Austin residents!!

Please click here to view the sign on letter supported by 17 local and national groups.