Discrimination against homeless people

Use of the law to discriminate against homeless people takes on disparate forms: restricting the public areas in which sitting or sleeping are allowed, ordinances restricting aggressive panhandling,[1] actions intended to divert homeless people from particular areas, penalizing loitering or anti-social behavior,[2] or enforcing laws on the homeless and not on those who are not homeless.[3]

The French novelist Anatole France 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".[4]

Precise factors associated with victimization and injury to homeless people are not clearly understood. Nearly one-half of homeless people are victims of violence.[5] There have been many violent crimes committed against homeless people due to their being homeless.[6] A study in 2007 found that this number is increasing.[7]

Per the National Alliance to End Homelessness,[8] in January 2017, there were a total of 553,742 homeless people accounted for across the United States, including territories. Of those accounted for, 192,875 of them were unsheltered and “lived in a place not meant for human habitation, such as the street or an abandoned building”. Many unsheltered homeless camps are located in industrial districts and along highways, far away from public parks facilities where traditional public bathrooms are located. If local municipalities do not provide bathroom access, homeless people are left to urinate and defecate in the streets and waterways near their camps. Robinson and Sickels with the University of Colorado Denver [9] released a report highlighting the criminalization of homelessness across the State of Colorado. During their research, they found that 83% of the people they interviewed were denied bathroom access because they were homeless. Without access to public bathrooms, unsheltered homeless populations across the country are living in third-world conditions. This, in turn, leads to public health concerns such as the hepatitis-A outbreak seen in California. As reported by Dr Kushel with The New England Journal of Medicine,[10] in 2017 alone 649 people in California were infected with hepatitis-A; this outbreak began in the homeless population. If we fail to consider the true cost of denying homeless people bathroom access, we put our communities at risk and leave an entire group of people to live as second-class citizens without basic first-world amenities.