homeless, and urban camping rights

[Jhanananda]

Hello friends, mystics are often forced into poverty, or choose it, as a means of leading a rigorous, self-aware, contemplative life, which is rarely supported by organized religions.  So, I started the research this morning on homeless, and urban camping rights.  The following link will take you to a comprehensive essay on this subject, and should be downloaded by anyone who is homeless or poor in the USA.

A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities

Please pay special attention to page 147.

[Jhanananda]

Criminalization Measures Violate Constitutional Rights

Measures that criminalize homelessness are legally problematic and do not make sense from a policy standpoint. Laws that make it difficult for homeless persons to stay in downtown areas of cities force homeless persons away from crucial services and outreach. When a homeless person is arrested under one of these laws, he or she develops a criminal record, making it more difficult to obtain employment or housing. Further, criminalizing homelessness is an inefficient allocation of resources. It costs more to incarcerate someone than it does to provide supportive housing.

[Jhanananda]

National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty
2000 M St NW, Suite 210   |   Washington, DC 20036
p. (202) 638-2535   |  f. (202) 628-2737
Civil Rights
Criminalization
Domestic Violence
Housing
Human Rights
Youth & Education

Hate Crime Bill Might Make Md. A Pioneer

By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 17, 2009

Maryland would become the first state to list the homeless as a class protected from hate crimes under legislation that is headed to Gov. Martin O'Malley's desk.

No Safe Place: Advocacy Manual

another Advocacy Manual

[Jhanananda]

It’s unconstitutional to ban the homeless from sleeping outside, the federal government says

Washington Post, By Emily Badger August 13
We all need sleep, which is a fact of life but also a legally important point. Last week, the Department of Justice argued as much in a statement of interest it filed in a relatively obscure case in Boise, Idaho, that could impact how cities regulate and punish homelessness.

Boise, like many cities — the number of which has swelled since the recession — has an ordinance banning sleeping or camping in public places. But such laws, the DOJ says, effectively criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep. From the DOJ's filing:

    When adequate shelter space exists, individuals have a choice about whether or not to sleep in public. However, when adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of being homeless and the conduct of sleeping in public. Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity — i.e., it must occur at some time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.

Such laws, the DOJ argues, violate the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, making them unconstitutional. By weighing in on this case, the DOJ's first foray in two decades into this still-unsettled area of law, the federal government is warning cities far beyond Boise and backing up federal goals to treat homelessness more humanely.

"It's huge," says Eric Tars, a senior attorney for the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, which originally filed the lawsuit against Boise, alongside Idaho Legal Aid Services.

[Lifting bans on sleeping outside won’t stop criminalization of homelessness]

According to a NLCHP report last year that surveyed 187 cities between 2011 and 2014, 34 percent had citywide laws banning camping in public. Another 43 percent prohibited sleeping in vehicles, and 53 percent banned sitting or lying down in certain public places. All of these laws criminalize the kind of activities — sitting, resting, sleeping — that are arguably fundamental to human existence.

And they've criminalized that behavior in an environment where most cities have far more homeless than shelter beds. In 2014, the federal government estimates, there were about 153,000 unsheltered homeless on the street in the U.S. on any given night.

Laws like these have grown more common as that math has actually grown worse since the recession.

"Homelessness is just becoming more visible in communities, and when homelessness becomes more visible, there’s more pressure on community leaders to do something about it," Tars says. "And rather than actually examining what’s the best thing to do about homelessness, the knee-jerk response — as with so many other things in society — is 'we’ll address this social issue with the criminal justice system.'"

[Lifting bans on sleeping outside won’t stop criminalization of homelessness]

According to a NLCHP report last year that surveyed 187 cities between 2011 and 2014, 34 percent had citywide laws banning camping in public. Another 43 percent prohibited sleeping in vehicles, and 53 percent banned sitting or lying down in certain public places. All of these laws criminalize the kind of activities — sitting, resting, sleeping — that are arguably fundamental to human existence.

And they've criminalized that behavior in an environment where most cities have far more homeless than shelter beds. In 2014, the federal government estimates, there were about 153,000 unsheltered homeless on the street in the U.S. on any given night.

Laws like these have grown more common as that math has actually grown worse since the recession.

"Homelessness is just becoming more visible in communities, and when homelessness becomes more visible, there’s more pressure on community leaders to do something about it," Tars says. "And rather than actually examining what’s the best thing to do about homelessness, the knee-jerk response — as with so many other things in society — is 'we’ll address this social issue with the criminal justice system.'"

It's also easier, he adds, for elected officials to argue for criminal penalties when the public costs of that policy are much harder to see than the costs of investing in shelters or services for the poor. Ultimately, though, advocates and the federal government have argued, it's much more expensive to ticket the homeless — with the court, prison and health costs associated with it — than to invest in "housing first" solutions that have worked in many parts of the country.

Criminal citations also compound the problem of homelessness, making it harder for people to qualify for jobs or housing in the future.

"You have to check those [criminal] boxes on the application forms," Tars says. "And they don’t say 'were you arrested because you were trying to simply survive on the streets?' They say 'if you have an arrest record, we’re not going to rent to you.'"

NLCHP's goal, Tars says, isn't to protect the rights of people to live on the street, but to prevent and end homelessness. That means adding a lot more shelter beds and housing options in places like Boise — which has three shelters run by two nonprofits — so people have options other than the street.

The DOJ's argument is based on the logic in an earlier Ninth Circuit decision, striking down a vagrancy law in Los Angeles, that was ultimately vacated in a settlement. That logic specifically says it's unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping outside if there aren't enough beds for them to sleep indoors. If there are, the constitutional question would be different, although the moral and policy implications may remain the same.

"Homelessness never left town because somebody gave it a ticket," Tars says. "The only way to end homelessness is to make sure everybody has access to affordable, decent housing."

[Jhanananda]

Justice Department asks judge to block enforcement of homeless camping ban

Gale HollandGale Holland, LA Times, August, 6, 2015
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday urged a judge to block enforcement of an anti-camping ordinance in Boise, Idaho, by employing the rationale from a seminal Los Angeles homeless-rights case.

The outcome in Boise could reverberate in Los Angeles -- where officials are considering resuming enforcement of the city's own anti-camping ordinance, considered among the strictest in the country.

It bans sleeping, sitting or lying on sidewalks and other public property.

In 2006, the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the ordinance, finding that banning sleeping in public by people who have nowhere else to go violated the 8th Amendment provision barring cruel and unusual punishment.

Two years later, Los Angeles settled a lawsuit by agreeing to suspend enforcement between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. until additional housing for the homeless could be built.

Earlier this year, officials said they expected to reach the construction milestone the city agreed to as soon as next month. Several officials, including L.A. police Chief Charlie Beck, have said strict enforcement of the anti-camping law could start up again, but the city has issued no formal opinion.

The Justice Department's filing Thursday came in a 2009 lawsuit by seven homeless people convicted of violating a Boise ordinance against sleeping or camping in outdoor public spaces.

The city said the camps were unsafe and unsanitary.

But "if a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless, " the department said.

"Needlessly pushing homeless individuals into the criminal justice system does nothing to break the cycle of poverty or prevent homelessness in the future," principal Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Vanita Gupta said in a statement.

"Instead, it imposes further burdens on scarce judicial and correctional resources, and it can have long-lasting and devastating effects on individuals’ lives.”

L.A.'s homeless population has grown to 26,000 people as of January --  a 12 % leap in two years. Countywide, the number of people sleeping in outdoor encampments or vehicles jumped 85% in the same period.

More than 70% of homeless people in L.A. County sleep outdoors because of a lack of shelters, a higher rate than in much of the rest of the country, homeless advocates said.

The spread of unsightly encampments has drawn public outcry from businesses and L.A. residents, who say they sow unsanitary conditions and cause petty crime in the communities.

Last month, Los Angeles adopted an ordinance making it easier to dismantle homeless encampments; the city also has stepped up the cleanup of tents and other homeless possessions.

Attorney Carol Sobel, who represented homeless people in the 2006 L.A. case, said the Justice Department filing should be a "strong message they need to go back to drawing board and figure out how to respond to the causes of homelessness and not punish people for their status.

"It's unconscionable to seek to penalize people again for the city’s failures," she said.

A spokesman for City Atty. Mike Feuer said Thursday that resuming overnight enforcement against homeless people sleeping outdoors was a policy decision for the mayor and City Council to make. He added his office was "confident that the ordinance will withstand any and all legal challenges."

Mayor Eric Garcetti and council members who have served on the city's new homelessness committee did not respond to emails seeking comment.

[Jhanananda]

Lifting bans on sleeping outside won’t stop criminalization of homelessness

washington post, By Terrence McCoy August 13, 2015


The clearest sign of an oppressed population is when the law criminalizes its actions or defining characteristics. History is full of examples of Jim Crow justice and laws banning intermarriage.

But even though those pillars of oppression have been dissolved — and as a new age of growing gender equality and same-sex marriage dawns — the law has settled its gaze on another enemy. The homeless.

The criminalization of homeless behaviors, however, came under assault last week. In a statement of interest filed by the Justice Department in a case out of Boise, Idaho, the federal government said it was unconstitutional to ban people from sleeping or camping in public places. The argument also provided a thorough summation of the modern homeless crisis and what cities have done — or not done — about it.

[=http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/08/13/its-unconstitutional-to-ban-the-homeless-from-sleeping-outside-the-federal-government-says/It’s unconstitutional to ban the homeless from sleeping outside, the federal government says]

Housing and shelter accommodations across the country haven’t kept pace with the homeless population’s surging numbers since the recession. In Santa Cruz, Calif., more than 80 percent of the homeless have no safe shelter options, according to a report by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. In Orlando, it’s a third of the homeless population. In total, more than 40 percent of the homeless population sought shelter in places not intended for human habitation last year, Justice’s filing said. They bedded down under bridges. On park benches. Huddled inside vacant buildings. Crammed inside vehicles.

To criminalize that behavior, the filing said, is to criminalize homelessness. “No inquiry is required to determine whether a person is compelled to sleep; we know that no one can stay awake indefinitely,” the document said. It later said, “Enforcing the anti-camping ordinances and criminalizing sleeping in public violates the Eighth Amendment, because it is no different from criminalizing homelessness itself.”

The Justice filing could ultimately help undermine ordinances criminalizing homelessness — but it won’t be easy for two reasons.
One, cities are actively expanding laws that target the homeless population. The National Law Center on Homeless & Poverty surveyed 187 cities and found that other activities by the homeless had suddenly become illegal in an increasing number of cities. Since 2011, bans on begging increased by 25 percent. Prohibitions on loitering, loafing and “vagrancy” ballooned by 35 percent. The number of bans prohibiting sleeping in cars increased by 119 percent.

“This increase in citywide bans shows that the nature of criminalization is changing and that cities are moving toward prohibiting unavoidable, life sustaining activities throughout entire communities rather than in specific areas, effectively criminalizing a homeless person’s very existence,” the report said.

The other reason is that it would require dismantling years of ingrained prejudices against the homeless population, which have long manifested themselves in law. There’s a current fiction that the criminalization of homelessness is somehow a nascent phenomenon, sparked by the recent rise in the homeless population. But such laws have long defined Western society. Throughout Europe, from the United Kingdom to Germany, the act of “idleness” — or unemployment — has been reason enough to commit someone to a labor house or prison. The goal of these laws weren’t dissimilar to what they are today: to cleanse the street of “undesirables.”

This disdain for homelessness isn’t bound by national borders or cultural identities. To some degree, its originsare in human nature, wrote Randall Amster in the academic journal Social Justice.

“What is it about the homeless that inspires such overt antipathy from mainstream society?” he asked. “What is so special about their particular variety of deviance that elicits such a vehement and violent response to their presence? After all, ‘the homeless’ as a class lack . . . power, posing no viable political, economic, or military threat to the dominant class.”

Still, throughout modern history, the laws have continued, seizing Miami around the turn of the 20th century. It wrote “vagrants” and “penalty for vagrants” into its 1917 city code. Its definition of vagrants: “rogues and vagabonds, idle or dissolute persons who go about begging.” The city charter vested the police to “arrest any vagrant . . . without a warrant in case the delay in procuring one would probably enable such alleged vagrant to escape.”

Eric Tars, an attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, said laws against homelessness have such resonance in the United States because of the puritanical work ethic woven into its social fabric.

“This is the assumption: that people are homeless because they aren’t trying hard enough,” he said. “There’s the sense that something must be wrong with them, rather than something is wrong with society.”

The knee-jerk reaction many local governments have when the number of homeless residents swells is to criminalize the population’s behavior. But that, Tars said, targets the symptoms of a societal problem, rather than its causes.

“People want to find ways to exclude anyone less than desirable and push them out of public view,” he said. He said the recent federal filing is an encouraging sign that the government is mobilizing to decriminalize homelessness. But such an endeavor wouldn’t be easy, he conceded.

It wouldn’t just mean undoing decades’ worth of ordinances — but a precedent left by hundreds of years of history.

[Jhanananda]

The New Homeless In America's Wealthy Capital

[Alexander]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkgRkwE9KFU

[Alexander]

A good quote from the comments:

I remember when we waged war on poverty, not poor people.

This is another symptom of our country's sickness; its growing inequality and falling away from its values.

[Jhanananda]

Thank-you, Alexander, for posting a link to the video Hiding the Homeless (Trailer).  Yes, I agree ignoring the poor and the homeless is certainly "another symptom of our country's sickness."

I have lately been reflecting upon the fact that there are so many homeless people with genius IQs.  Why?

I found while spending 15 years of my life studying and doing research at various universities in the USA that good students from poor families, who are geniuses, tend to be used as indentured servants in research; whereas, students from wealthy families typically walked right through their PhD and into a tenured professorship.  Why?  This might give us an answer to the question at the end of the above paragraph.

This means poverty is a class war.  The poor continue to be trodden upon by the wealthy.

[Jhanananda]

I received an urban camping ticket this morning at 3:30AM.  I plan to for now on carry the Justice Department statement of interest on me at all times.  It states:

Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276 Filed 08/06/15 Page 9 of 17
the conduct is inextricably linked to one’s status, such that punishing the conduct is indistinguishable from punishing the status. See, e.g., Jones, 444 F.3d 1118 (finding anti- camping ordinance violated Eighth Amendment because it criminalized sleeping in public when homeless individuals had no other choice but to sleep in public, and therefore criminalized the status of homelessness itself); Johnson v. City of Dallas, 860 F. Supp. 344, 350 (N.D. Tex. 1994), rev’d on other grounds, 61 F.3d 442 (5th Cir. 1995) (same); Pottinger v. City of Miami, 810 F. Supp. 1551, 1563 (S.D. Fla. 1992) (same)...

See Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae, Joyce v. City and County of San Francisco, No. 95-16940 (9th Cir. Mar. 29, 1996); Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae, Tobe v. City of Santa Ana, No. S03850 (Cal. June 9, 1994). In those briefs, the United States took the position—as it does here—that criminalizing sleeping in public when no shelter is available violates the Eighth...

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES – pg. 9
Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276 Filed 08/06/15 Page 10 of 17

Amendment by criminalizing status. In the twenty years since the United States last weighed in on this issue, courts’ analyses of these statutes have remained divergent...

Consistent with the position taken in its previous filings, the United States now urges this Court to adopt the reasoning of Jones v. City of Los Angeles, 444 F.3d 1118 (9th Cir. 2006). Although the Ninth Circuit ultimately vacated its opinion in Jones—pursuant to a settlement agreement between the parties, 505 F.3d 1006 (9th Cir. 2007), not for any substantive reason— its logic remains instructive and persuasive.
The Jones court considered the enforcement of a Los Angeles ordinance prohibiting sitting, lying, or sleeping in public. There, like here, the court was asked to consider a statute that, on its face, criminalized conduct rather than status. Importantly, the plaintiffs in Jones presented evidence suggesting that there was an inadequate number of shelter beds available for homeless individuals, so many individuals had no choice but to sleep in public in violation of the city’s ordinance. See Jones, 444 F.3d at 1137.

The Jones court found enforcement of the ordinance to be unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiffs because of inadequate shelter space. The court based its decision on its conclusion that, “[w]hether sitting, lying, and sleeping are defined as acts or conditions, they are universal and unavoidable consequences of being human.” Id. at 1136. Because sleeping is unavoidable, the court then considered whether the plaintiffs had a choice to sleep somewhere other than in public, concluding that they did not: “for homeless individuals in [Los Angeles’] Skid Row who have no access to private spaces, these acts can only be done in public.” Id. at 1136. As a result, the court found that sleeping in public is “involuntary and inseparable from” an individual’s status or condition of being homeless when no shelter space is available. Id. at 1132.The court...

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES – pg. 10
Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276 Filed 08/06/15 Page 11 of 17

concluded that, under those circumstances, “by criminalizing sitting, lying, and sleeping, the City [of Los Angeles] is in fact criminalizing [Plaintiffs’] status as homeless individuals.” Id. at 1137.

Defendants assert that reliance on Jones would be “misplaced, factually unsupported, and
immaterial to this case.” Def. Rep. at 7. In advocating against the applicability of Jones, Defendants rely on a conduct-versus-status distinction that does not withstand close scrutiny. Id. (stating that the Boise ordinances “avoid criminalizing status by making conduct an element of the crime”). However, Defendants’ position is unpersuasive because the Eighth Amendment analysis is not limited to a reading of the plain language of the statute in question. Rather, the practical implications of enforcing the statute’s language are equally important. Those implications are clear where there is insufficient shelter space to accommodate the homeless population: the conduct of sleeping in a public place is indistinguishable from the status of homelessness.

It should be uncontroversial that punishing conduct that is a “universal and unavoidable consequence[] of being human” violates the Eighth Amendment. See id. at 1136. It is a “foregone conclusion that human life requires certain acts, among them . . . sleeping.” Johnson, 860 F. Supp. at 350. As the Jones court noted, it is impossible for individuals to avoid “sitting, lying, and sleeping for days, weeks, or months at a time . . . as if human beings could remain in...

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES – pg. 11
Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276 Filed 08/06/15 Page 12 of 17

perpetual motion.” Jones, 444 F.3d at 1136. Once an individual becomes homeless, by virtue of this status certain life necessities (such as sleeping) that would otherwise be performed in private must now be performed in public. Pottinger, 810 F. Supp. at 1564; see also Johnson, 860 F. Supp. at 350 (“they must be in public” and “they must sleep”). Therefore, sleeping in public is precisely the type of “universal and unavoidable” conduct that is necessary for human survival for homeless individuals who lack access to shelter space. Id.

In this way, the Boise anti-camping and disorderly conduct ordinances are akin to the ordinance at issue in Robinson, at least on nights when homeless individuals are—for whatever non-volitional reason(s)—unable to secure shelter space.14 When adequate shelter space exists, individuals have a choice about whether or not to sleep in public. However, when adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of being homeless and the conduct of sleeping in public. Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity—i.e., it must occur at some time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless. See id. at 1136-37.

But these concerns are not at issue when, as here, they are applied to conduct that is essential to human life and wholly innocent, such as sleeping. No inquiry is required to determine whether a person is compelled to sleep; we know that no one can stay awake indefinitely. Thus, the Court need not constitutionalize a general compulsion defense to resolve this case; it need only hold that the Eighth Amendment outlaws the punishment of unavoidable conduct that we know to be universal. Moreover, unlike the hypothetical hard cases that concerned the Powell plurality, the conduct at issue in the instant case is entirely innocent. Its punishment would serve no retributive purpose, or any other legitimate purpose. As the plurality in Powell itself noted, “the entire thrust of Robinson’s interpretation of the Cruel and Unusual...

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES – pg. 13

Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276 Filed 08/06/15 Page 14 of 17

Punishment Clause is that criminal penalties may be inflicted only if the accused has committed some act [or] has engaged in some behavior which society has an interest in preventing.” Powell, 392 U.S. at 533 (emphasis added).

Using this reasoning, the vital question for the Court becomes: Given the current homeless population and available shelter space in Boise, as well as any restrictions on those shelter beds, are homeless individuals in Boise capable of conforming the necessary life activity of sleeping to the current law? If not, enforcing the anti-camping ordinances and criminalizing sleeping in public violates the Eighth Amendment, because it is no different from criminalizing homelessness itself. The Jones framework, developed from analyses of earlier cases, makes it clear that punishing homeless people for “acts they are forced to perform in public effectively punishes them for being homeless.” Pottinger, 810 F. Supp. 1551, 1564; see also Jones, 444 F.3d at 1136-37; Johnson, 860 F. Supp. at 350.

The realities facing homeless individuals each day support this application of the Eighth Amendment. Homelessness across the United States remains a pervasive problem. As the Jones court observed, “an individual may become homeless based on factors both within and beyond his immediate control, especially in consideration of the composition of the homeless as a group: the mentally ill, addicts, victims of domestic violence, the unemployed, and the unemployable.” Jones, 444 F.3d at 1137. Regardless of the causes of homelessness, individuals remain homeless involuntarily, including children, families, veterans, and individuals with physical and mental health disabilities. Communities nationwide are suffering from a shortage of affordable housing. And, in many jurisdictions, emergency and temporary shelter systems are already underfunded and overcrowded. For example, the 2010 Hunger and Homelessness Survey conducted by the...

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES – pg. 14
Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276 Filed 08/06/15 Page 15 of 17

U.S. Conference of Mayors found that 64% of cities reported having to turn people away from their shelters.16

At least one of the Justices in Robinson was concerned with how criminalizing certain conditions (there, addiction to narcotics) may interfere with necessary treatment and services that could potentially improve or alleviate the condition. See Robinson, 370 U.S. at 673-75 (Douglas, J., concurring). Those concerns are equally applicable in this context. Criminalizing public sleeping in cities with insufficient housing and support for homeless individuals does not improve public safety outcomes or reduce the factors that contribute to homelessness. As noted by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, “[r]ather than helping people to regain housing, obtain employment, or access needed treatment and service, criminalization creates a costly revolving door that circulates individuals experiencing homelessness from the street to the criminal justice system and back.”17 Issuing citations for public sleeping forces individuals into the criminal justice system and creates additional obstacles to overcoming homelessness. Criminal records can create barriers to employment and participation in permanent, supportive housing programs.18 Convictions under these municipal ordinances can also lead to lengthy jail sentences based on the ordinance violation itself, or the inability to pay fines and fees associated with the ordinance violation. Incarceration, in turn, has a profound effect on these individuals’...

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES – pg. 15

Case 1:09-cv-00540-REB Document 276 Filed 08/06/15 Page 16 of 17
lives.19 Finally, pursuing charges against individuals for sleeping in public imposes further burdens on scarce public defender, judicial, and carceral resources. Thus, criminalizing homelessness is both unconstitutional and misguided public policy, leading to worse outcomes for people who are homeless and for their communities.

CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, the Court should adopt the analysis in Jones to evaluate Boise’s anti-camping and disorderly conduct ordinances as applied to Plaintiffs in this case. If the Court finds that it is impossible for homeless individuals to secure shelter space on some nights because no beds are available, no shelter meets their disability needs, or they have exceeded the maximum stay limitations, then the Court should also find that enforcement of the ordinances under those circumstances criminalizes the status of being homeless and violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

Submitted this 6th day of August, 2015.
s/ Sharon Brett
Sharon Brett
Attorney for the United States of America

[Cal]

This is a bunch of crap, Jeff. So you've been harassed 3 times in less than a week, to my knowledge. I read an article http://www.moderntimesmagazine.com/page16/Arizona_Urban_Camping_130730/Arizona_Urban_Camping_130730.php that really opened my eyes to what they are capable of doing in Pheonix. I did note that in the above statement of interest that if you are turned away by a shelter due to overflow or what-have you, then the act of police fining you is actually considered criminalizing you for simply being homeless. Perhaps you may look into this angle. It sounds like that recent article has painted a target on your back =(, which is something you also might look into. If you can lean on this letter of interest from the Supreme court, hold your ground on freedom of speech and expression, all while bringing light to the fact that the harassment is due to, you may be able to get them off your back. I'd talk to someone more knowledgeable  about the details though. I'm sorry friend =( only in a mad world would things like this happen.

[Jhanananda]

Hello, Cal, and thank-you for your kind support, and for the excellent article on urban camping in my region.  Yes, it is the third time I have been harassed in less than a week, so it does indeed look like I am being harassed due to the article.

The article Fight Against Urban Camping Continues In Phoenix, which you posted a link for is dated from July 30, 2013.  Whereas, the statement of interest is from 08/06/2015.  So, it is current, and supersedes any and all anti-urban camping ordinances nationwide.

The article that you linked did have a link to a useful document, Homeless in Phoenix: Know Your Rights from the AZ office of the ACLU.

I actually do not have to be rejected by any of the shelters here, because it is a known fact that they are far to little to meet the homeless demand here.  The statement of interest also gives me an out.  No one needs to stay at a shelter, if he or she can demonstrate that for health reasons the shelter will not work.  The shelters are full of bed bugs, alcoholics, and drug addicts; and I am a sick old man, who can take better care of himself in his van.

However, the message here is the saga in Prescott continues.  I expect that the drama will continue, but come to an end when I submit the letter of interest to the local judge who will be presiding over my case on March 15th. Otherwise we should expect to be left alone before the July retreat takes place here.

[Alexander]

The city of Worcester, where I live, just lost a major lawsuit trying to criminalize homelessness/panhandling. Ironically I remember Worcester listed in one of the almanacs you posted earlier. Although now they're being countersued (which I don't approve of) for 1.2 million which would extract that cash from the (relatively poor) city's taxpayers and give it to the opposing side's lawyers.

[Michel]

How distressing it is to hear of your problems with the officials, Jeffrey. Is the ticket for a fine?