American Families, Punished for Poverty: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States

Criminalization takes a toll, not only on adults, but also on the growing numbers of families, children and unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness. This issue of Making the Link reviews the increase in families, children and youth experiencing homelessness, describes the criminalization measures increasingly being enacted and enforced against homeless persons and the severe consequences of these measures, and provides policy recommendations

Downward Spiral: Homelessness and Its Criminalization

A city council recently developed a policy that homeless residents are no longer welcome in the City. City memoranda describe a plan continually [to] remov[e] [homeless people] from the places that they are frequenting in the City. . In one phase of what a court later described as the city\u27s war on the homeless, police conducted a harassment sweep in which homeless people were handcuffed, transported to an athletic field for booking, chained to benches, marked with numbers, and held for as long as six hours before being released to another location, some for such crimes as dropping a match, a leaf, or a piece of paper or jaywalking

The Human Right to Housing: Making the Case in U.S. Advocacy

American anti-poverty advocates are increasingly focusing on expressing homelessness as a violation of fundamental human rights. Conceptualizing homelessness as a human rights violation can help add legal content to advocacy goals, and help build support for the housing resources, policy changes, and improved legal protective measures needed to ensure access to housing. This article explores the right to housing in domestic and international law, how to evaluate compliance with the right in the United States, and how to employ legal strategies in support of claims to the right. Theauthors review the status of international law in U. S. law and courts and discuss legislative, regulatory, and litigation strategies to support a right to housing. The article concludes with reflections on earlier social movements that affirmed the right to housing in the United States and on the way forward.Recent legislative initiatives, and proposed legal and political advocacy, show promise in vitalizing a right to housing movement in the United States. Through political advocacy and litigation advocates can move toward recognition of the right to housing. Unlike proscriptive rights that primarily bar the state actively interfering with human behaviour, a meaningful right to housing requires the nation and the individual states to act affirmatively by adopting legislation and policies and by spending money. Human rights law and practice offers an important framework through which to assess and critique current policy and advocate reform