"federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday that arresting homeless people for sleeping, sitting or lying on sidewalks and other public property when other shelter is not available was cruel and unusual punishment."
New York Times April 15
Arcata Municipal Code
TITLE X - PUBLIC PROPERTYCHAPTER 1 - PARKS AND GROUNDS
SEC. 10004. Overnight use prohibited. (Amended by Ord. No. 1205)
Sleep is a human necessity, not a luxury or privilege. This ordinance prohibits sleeping outdoors in Arcata, thereby punishing the homeless with sleep deprivation. This violates the EIGHTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees us freedom from “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Anti-camping ordinances have been successfully challenged in Portland, Oregon (State of Oregon v. Wickes); Santa Ana, California (the “Eichorn decision”); Miami, Florida (“Potinger v. City of Miami”);
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6 comments:
I wonder if this means that any public area such as the Plaza or City Parks can be slept on? It seems like this would could compell the City to create free camping areas in order to discourage camps from popping up all over the place.
And of course the problem is that some homeless will of course choose to stay on the plaza regardless of that because the plaza is near businesses and people whom they can beg for free money. The chronic homeless will simply see this as a license to behave badly.
Tad if your spiritual being told you not to live in society then you'd be out in the wilds hunting and growing your own food, not scavenging in dumpsters that contain the garbage of those you condemn.
Oh and where's that fuzzy little friend of yours? Bio...that's his name I believe.
Anonymous,
Its obviously you have no idea about my spiritual being, its obviously you have no idea about whom I condemn, and its obviously you have no idea about homelessness, so did you just write your crap to be mean and create a bigger problem?
I pray you can find peace, wisdom, and love inside you before it is too late.
love eternal
tad
Get out of Arcata you filthy homeless bums!!! We don't want you here! You're a drain on the economy and you serve no purpose. Get jobs! Take showers! Brush your teeth! Why the hell do you think it's the working peoples job to support you? What gives you the right to sit on your sore ridden asses all day and demand my hard earned money?
noel,
You are correct to point out that few people are homeless by choice. You are also correct to point out that much free money goes to corporate criminals, and that many of our problems including homelessness stems from the way we deal with corporations in this society.
However, I have a feeling that the attitude against homeless people has little to do with most of the people who are homeless but not by choice, and much to do with the very visible "homeless" who have asked much of the City of Aracta. Some of these visible homeless proudly state that they have no desire to work, or be part of such a corrupt system. So people get the impression that most homeless are homeless by choice... or at least the ones they are annoyed by are. Some of these visible homeless are obviously travelers (moving back and forth between places like Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle), so people get the impression that it was not the economy of Humboldt County that made them homeless. Rather, they became homeless somewhere else and decided to move to Arcata. These things color people's perceptions of homeless people, perhaps unfairly, but these impressions are very strong. So when a homeless person or homeless advocate makes demands that the City provide housing, or at least free camping, or provide health care to the homeless population, a person who works for minimum wage, that you so elquently talked about, and who has the impression, albeit only partially true, that homeless people are out-of-towners who refuse to work, then that person might think think those demands are way out of line.
I realize that this is a very skewed view of homeless persons, since no doubt many homeless people would be happy to be helped out, would be happy to have a job and be able to work to sustain their life. It's just that most people are aware of ther immediate problems that they see. They forget that corporations are plundering the wealth of the world, because these are abstract concepts, and they turn their attention to things that are visible and apparent to their eyes.
Personally, I would love to see corporate wealth redistributed, and I think that the robber-barons are very much to blame for the fact that homelessness is such a large phenomenon. Given that the Supreme Court has decided that cities cannot "take care" of their homeless problems by kicking them out, I think it might perhaps be constructive for small governments that have a large homeless population on their hands, such as Arcata, SF etc.., to demand support from the Federal Government, which has been so happy to force problems down the chain and which through their placating policies to the robber-barons have created this mess in the first place. Perhaps this is a dream, but I do think that it is a dream that both homeless and working people can get behind. Homelessness is a NATIONAL problem and so while the solutions should be local the money to provide these solutions should be paid by the entities that make up the national economy, that includes taxing the robber-barons.
Z
Since when do the liberal fascists running Arcata give a hoot about the Constitution? Measure T might as well be called Measure TP after they get done trashing the 1st and 14th Amendments.
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