Do you know the kinship you feel when someone mentions your favorite obscure band, or makes a reference to a movie you thought you were the only person to have ever seen? That feeling that someone else stumbled onto this awesome music/movie/media on their own, and now you can discuss it? Sometimes that’s how I feel about the issue of homelessness.
I realize that’s an odd thing to say, since I work in homeless services and read articles on homelessness and even write about what I’m learning, reading, and thinking here in The Race to End Homelessness. I just mean that outside of those dedicated circles, it seems as though homelessness is an issue people are uncomfortable discussing. Telling people about my job at parties will often send them heading for the snack table, or at least grasping for a subject change.
That’s why I was surprised when I read the United Nations April 2014 report that criticizes the United States for several often discussed controversial policies – Guantanamo Bay, NSA surveillance… and one less publicized issue – the poor treatment and criminalizing of Americans experiencing homelessness. It wasn’t just that the content of the report that stunned me, (although the findings are quite astounding) but rather that the issue of homelessness is finally a talking point at an international level.
Of course it would be preferable if this were an issue the U.S. could address domestically and not be embarrassingly criticized on an international stage, but as long as criminalizing those without a home is a problem that persists in the United States, it deserves worldwide attention. If the United Nations committee on Human Rights calls a practice, “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” will we see change in the way cities treat homeless individuals? Approaching homelessness as a crime has been consistently demonstrated not to work, illustrated most recently by James Boyd, shot multiple times for camping in the mountains of Albuquerque, and Jerome Murdough, imprisoned for sleeping in a New York City stairwell and then left to roast in a 100+ degree jail cell. Even so, many cities and policies seem determined to prove that homelessness is wrong via arrests, fines and other punishments. Instead of sticking a homeless person with legal charges or bail that will keep them stuck in poverty, the UN report recommends state and local governments “ensure close cooperation between all relevant stakeholders … to intensify efforts to find solutions for the homeless in accordance with human rights standards.”
It is my hope that the United Nations recommendations will not be the last international look at the treatment of those experiencing homelessness. We need this issue in the news, in the UN committee reports, and on the minds of government leaders and individual people. Criminalizing homelessness is an issue that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable American people, and it is too important to have it be an obscure issue we are uncomfortable discussing.