By Joseph W. Mead , Cleveland State University and Sara Rankin , Seattle University Increasingly, local laws punish Americans who are homeless. By severely restricting or even barring the ability to engage in necessary, life-sustaining activities in public, like sitting, standing, sleeping or asking for help, even when there’s no reasonable alternative, these laws are essentially persecuting homeless men, women and children. As law professors who study how laws can make homelessness better or worse , we encourage cities, suburbs and towns to avoid punishing people who live in public and have nowhere else to go. One big reason: These “ anti-vagrancy laws ” are counterproductive because they make it harder to escape homelessness. Many paths to not having a home Why do at least half a million Americans experience homelessness at any time? Researchers find that most people who become homeless have nowhere to live after being evicted , losing their jobs or fleeing an a...
Sorting Through the Debris of Politics and Popular Culture