Criminalization Of Homelessness Essay

The policies of criminalizing homelessness and poverty has been occurring, and invented in San Francisco, in 1876 with the introduction of the “ugly laws.” These laws particularly targeted those with disabilities, and restricted people’s ability to appear in public spaces (Punishing the Poorest 2015, 6). These laws have not disappeared, they have just been rebranded, and then redeveloped into even more specific laws directed at the homeless. In fact, the more recent introduction of “quality of life laws” are truly just a re--- of the ugly laws and the continued crusade against homeless people, rather than homelessness. These “quality of life” laws, are really anti-homeless laws; these laws place a housed citizens right to the city and life above those dispossessed citizens.

The Coalition on Homeless reports

There are two parts to these myths and fallacies. There is the part where the issue that the view on homeless people is often misconstrued, and also fallacies that people have about the city, and policies in relation to homeless people are also false. The fallacies people have, according to what the Coalition found, are that, “San Francisco is a liberal city that does not criminalize homelessness, anti-homeless laws don’t criminalize homeless status they criminalize behaviors and affect a small group of disorderly homeless people, anti-homeless laws are critical to maintaining public order, criminalization is necessary to push the “service resistant” into services, and that decriminalizing homelessness does nothing to solve homelessness” (Punishing the Poorest 2015, 65). These broader views on the policies connected to homelessness and poverty are often fueled by those personal biases and myths about homeless people. People who are homeless are often viewed as lazy, or criminal, as well as being a “blight” on the