Experts Warn That Punitive Laws Push Unhoused People into Danger While Worsening Stigma, Isolation, and Harm
The growing criminalization of homelessness is contributing to increasing incidences of violence against people who are homeless, according to experts.
Nearly every city across the country has quality-of-life ordinances that restrict or prohibit acts associated with homelessness, such as eating in public or building a temporary shelter to protect oneself from the weather.
These laws are not new, but more than 300 cities adopted new laws or increased penalties on existing ones following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Johnson v. Grants Pass in 2024. The case allows cities to use punitive punishments like ticketing people who are homeless or arresting them for sleeping outside when no other shelter options are available.
Advocates say these laws primarily serve political ends by allowing cities to quickly remove encampments. However, experts say there is a growing correlation between laws criminalizing homelessness and the rising incidents of violence against people who are homeless. This is happening at a time when homelessness is increasing because of the rising cost of living.
“There’s been an increase in violence, and an increase in law enforcement activity that frankly lacks humanity and effectiveness,” Jeff Olivet, senior advisor to Harvard University’s Initiative on Health and Homelessness, said during a recent webinar.
How Criminalization Creates Conditions for Violence
While laws criminalizing homelessness often do not contain language that allows people to commit violent acts against the unhoused, they can inspire violence in several ways.
For instance, laws that criminalize homelessness force people who are homeless into isolated areas, making them easier targets. These laws also help spread a social message that people who are homeless are less worthy of respect and dignity than other folks. They can also increase the number of contacts between unhoused people and police officers, thereby increasing the chances of someone being mistreated.
Outside of the law, the media landscape is replete with stories about homelessness that dehumanize the people experiencing the affliction. It doesn’t take long to see a video of someone in the throes of drug addiction on social media, or to find a news story about an unhoused person committing a crime. The volume of these stories has soured narratives about the experience of homelessness writ large.
Between 1999 and 2022, the National Coalition for the Homeless documented more than 1,900 acts of violence against people who are homeless, including physical and sexual violence, with rising rates. While this figure is almost certainly an undercount, Don Whitehead, NCH’s executive director, said the trend has only gotten worse in recent years.
“I’ve never seen the narrative about homelessness be as negative as it is today,” he said.
Whitehead points to the Grants Pass decision as the impetus for the rising incidents of violence against unhoused people. He said the decision painted a false picture about homelessness by suggesting that it is primarily a mental health and criminal justice issue instead of a social issue.
In turn, NCH has recorded a growing number of violent incidents against people who are homeless in Oregon after the Grants Pass decision, Whitehead said.
“Misleading or false narratives about people experiencing homelessness, we believe, are directly leading to these attacks,” Whitehead added.
Why Punishment Makes Homelessness More Dangerous – And Expensive
Criminalizing homelessness not only leads to more incidents of violence, but it also creates additional risks for people who are homeless.
“Not only is the criminalization of homelessness unconstitutional—even after the Court’s decision in Grants Pass—but it is the most expensive intervention to homelessness both in fiscal and human costs,” the American Bar Association explained in a recent blog post.
One risk is that people who are homeless are more likely to end up in jail than in housing with supportive services. Arrests and imprisonment also have inherent risks of experiencing physical and sexual violence. Moreover, they can make it more difficult for people who are homeless to find jobs or housing, which prolongs their time living without a home.
Census data shows that 38 states spent more on jails than on housing in 2022, the latest data available. Three states spent five times more on jails than on housing, according to the data.
These spending levels are one reason why more than 205,000 homeless people are locked up in jails or prisons each year. More than one-third of them were arrested for property crimes, compared to 18% of the general population. Unhoused people often stay in jail 50% longer than their peers who have homes.
Research shows that locking up people who are homeless is the most expensive way to address the issue. It costs anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 to keep an unhoused person in jail for a year, compared to roughly $8,000 to $20,000 to provide rapid rehousing or housing with supportive services for a year.
“Punishing people for being unhoused in a system that fails to offer safe shelter is unjust and shortsighted,” Tori Truscheit, senior director of strategic partnerships at Sacred Heart Community Services in San Jose, recently told Invisible People.
What Needs to Change
Many communities have laws that criminalize activities homeless people need to do in public to survive, including:
- Sitting or lying down
- Loitering or loafing
- Eating or sharing food
- Asking for money or panhandling
- Sleeping in cars, outside, or camping
Not only is the cost of criminalizing homelessness high, but it does nothing to solve homelessness and violates human rights. Anti-homeless legislation leads to homeless people being arrested or fined, which makes it harder to find housing and jobs and access social services.
Contact your legislators and demand they stop supporting legislation that criminalizes homelessness. Instead, they should support policies that invest in Housing First, a proven, successful approach to solving homelessness.