Seattle: Save Money by Housing - Not Hounding - the Homeless
- by: Susan V
- recipient: Seattle Board of Commissioners
The State of Washington has become notorious for criminalizing its homeless population - even though this cruel, ineffective response to human misfortune comes at a very high cost.
Instead of helping the homeless get into homes, WA communities “have enacted laws that create over 288 new ways to punish visibly poor people for surviving in public space,” according to a new report by Seattle University School of Law.
Visit http://www.law.seattleu.edu/newsroom/2015-news/law-school-project-releases-briefs-critical-of-criminalizing-homelessness
And because homelessness disproportionately impacts minorities, adds the report, these “modern anti-homeless ordinances share the same form, phrasing, and function as historical discrimination laws, such as Jim Crow.” What they are really about is prejudice and purging the “visibly poor from public space.”
Out of all WA communities, notes a ThinkProgress report, Seattle has been the most aggressive in handing out citations that target the homeless. The law school’s research shows that if the $2.3 million Seattle would spend in the next five years enforcing just 16% of its homeless laws were invested in affordable housing, it would result in over $5 million in savings. Instead of punishing people for surviving the scourge of homelessness and reviving the shameful era of Jim Crow, Seattle could choose to reform its policies on homelessness.
Ask Seattle to stop hounding the homeless and use the savings to provide affordable housing.
We, the undersigned, say Seattle must change its policies that target and punish its homeless and minorities.
Seattle School of Law’s Homeless Rights Advocacy Project stresses that “homelessness and poverty disproportionately impact people of color, women, LGBTQ youth, individuals with mental illness, and veterans.» Therefore Seattle and other WA communities’ attack on the homeless goes hand in hand with discrimination and other violations of Civil and Human Rights.
But what is most important about the research of this Project and that conducted by the State of Utah (which is leading the nation in eliminating homelessness by giving the homeless homes), is that criminalizing homelessness is not profitable. But providing free and affordable housing to the homeless is!
Unless the State of Washington and the City of Seattle are simply motivated by prejudice and a desire to revive the shameful era of Jim Crow, it makes no sense for them to continue with these policies and ordinances that punish the homeless who seek shelter in their cities.
The success the State of Utah has shown with its project to eliminate homelessness and this recent study by Seattle School of Law leave no doubt that Seattle and the state, including all its citizens, would benefit by ending the criminalization of homelessness and diverting funds to affordable and/or free housing.
We request that the Seattle Board of Commissioners approve a budget to meet this goal.
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