The Economic Consequences of Homelessness in The US

Food Sharing
Controversial city ordinances ban organizations from feeding people in public, claiming
that doing so constitutes a public health and safety risk.
Police arrested seven people in Tampa, Florida, for distributing food to homeless people
without a permit. Members of the Tampa-based organization Food Not Bombs stated
that the arrests prove the city is criminalizing compassion.
In response to a hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego, the El Cajon City Council passed an
emergency ordinance prohibiting food distribution on any city-owned property. In
November, activists handed out 100 bagged lunches, calling the ordinance “a punitive
measure to dehumanize and criminalize the homeless.” The city finally lifted the ban in
late January.
In Atlanta, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2017, two Food Not Bombs activists
went to a local park to hand out food to the homeless, as they do every Sunday. But on
that day, police ticketed them, citing a rarely enforced law requiring organizations to
obtain a permit before distributing food. According to a flier distributed by the Atlanta
Department of Public Safety (that cites no actual evidence), enforcement is necessary
because “many people become dependent on these activities, leading them to stay on
the streets instead of seeking the help and support they truly need.”
5. Laws criminalizing homelessness make the problem worse.
In addition to being unfair and often inhumane, these laws exacerbate the problems
they purport to address.
Individuals who are saddled with criminal records for engaging in survival activities like
sleeping on the street face steeper challenges finding jobs, housing, or other benefits
like food stamps, thus perpetuating the cycle of homelessness. Under federal law,
people who have spent more than 90 days incarcerated lose their “chronic
homelessness” status and are no longer a priority for permanent housing.
Stay-away orders—often issued alongside tickets for sleeping in public—also keep
people from accessing social services that they urgently need. In San Diego, for
example, most social service providers are downtown. But police regularly issue stay
away orders from these locations to those found sleeping on the street. This means
they can’t get food stamps or other assistance without risking arrest.
Similarly, stay-away orders cause people to lose touch with service providers who are
helping them find housing. According to one such service provider in Baltimore, when
homeless people seeking housing “are forced out of their (outdoor) home bases and
seek refuge in other parts of town, people often lose touch with the points of contact we
have for them. Thus, they lose their long-term housing opportunity.”
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