Common-Sense Protections Soon to Be Enshrined in State Law
Pennsylvanian lawmakers are taking steps to preserve the protections that homeless people lost after the Grants Pass decision. A new bill soon to be introduced in the state legislature will restore the requirement for municipalities to provide alternate shelter to homeless residents before enforcing any punitive criminalization measures. The proposal is known as the Shelter First Act.
Shelter First Just Makes Sense
The lawmakers behind the Shelter First Act are asking Pennsylvanians a simple question: how can you punish someone for a crime they have no choice but to commit?
By criminalizing basic human activities like sitting or sleeping, the state is creating an unsolvable problem for anyone who can’t afford access to private spaces in which to do so. No one can go without sitting or sleeping 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And in most places, there is a severe lack of shelter space and housing options. So, they have no other choice but to sit and sleep in public, which has now become a crime.
The Shelter First Act is designed to prevent enforcement actions from taking place against individuals found living in public if there is no other “adequate alternative indoor space” available to them. It’s just common sense.
And before someone pops a blood vessel screaming about “wokeness gone too far,” remember that this is not a new development at all, but simply a return to the status quo that was in place for years before being overturned by the relatively recent Grants Pass decision of the Supreme Court. Before then, arresting and fining people for performing basic life-sustaining activities in public when they had nowhere else to do them was considered cruel and unusual punishment. The facts haven’t changed; it’s just that more people in power now seem to think that homeless people are deserving of such treatment.
Furthermore, it does not repeal any criminalization measure currently in place. It is simply a common-sense carve-out to prevent the punishment of people who were made criminals not by any action of their own, but by the decisions of the state.
Dignity for all Pennsylvanians
Sponsors of this bill have released a memo explaining its importance in upholding the dignity of all Pennsylvanians. The memo also says that, “People who are unsheltered are at increased risk for chronic disease, mental illness, substance use issues, and early death. The hardships experienced by people who are unsheltered, including increased incidence of chronic homelessness, are compounded when the only response of their governments is via criminal and civil penalties.“
Essentially, these state lawmakers would like you to keep in mind that excessive fines and punishments do nothing to help people get out of homelessness, and in fact, they keep many people stuck without housing for longer. For that reason, the most anti-homeless among us should also be the most vehemently opposed to criminalization measures that kick people when they’re down. They’re only making the problem worse for everyone. Unless, of course, you just like to see people get kicked.
The memo has another message for NIMBYs, and it’s that “Proper indoor shelter spaces are the best way to keep our public spaces available to the community and prevent undo burdens on our justice system with issues it is not equipped to address.”
Yes, giving people somewhere to go that’s better than a park bench will leave more park benches open for everyone, and it shouldn’t be too high a hurdle to clear.
Legal Basis for the Shelter First Act
Proponents of the Shelter First Act argue that the Act is less of a new piece of legislation and more a clarification of existing laws in the Commonwealth that protect its residents against cruel punishments. Specifically, the Shelter First Act “clarifies that threatening or imposing civil or criminal punishments on people experiencing homelessness for undertaking life-sustaining activities in the absence of adequate alternative indoor spaces violates Article I, Section 13 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania, which protects people from excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel punishments. Before imposing any penalties, municipalities must first provide adequate shelter.”
This is similar to the situation in many other states that have laws on the books providing protections against cruel or unusual punishments, but Pennsylvania lawmakers are actually seeking to do something to enforce those protections rather than just looking the other way when they’re stripped from people deemed as “undesirable.”
Limited Resources Can Be Put to Better Use
Scaling back cruel punishments for people who have no choice but to offend and reoffend, as long as they are living without shelter, is in the best interest of everyone on either side of the aisle.
Obviously, it helps the unhoused people themselves avoid contact with the police and so-called justice system that can be damaging as well as dangerous.
But it also helps the community at large to be able to spend the money that would otherwise go toward arresting the same people over and over again and keeping them incarcerated on other things that can actually have a positive impact in the community.
Courts don’t need to be clogged up with chasing fines and judgments against people who have little ability to ever pay them off. Instead of spending countless police hours rounding up peaceful people for sleeping in public, we could be providing shelter that works for people, improving public spaces permanently instead of just “cleaning them up” with constant sweeps, and we would still have resources at the ready in the event of an actual police emergency.
Rep. Izzy Smith-Wade-El (D-Lancaster) put the problem succinctly, saying, “This is not a somewhere else problem…I think we have to ask ourselves if we want money to be spent incarcerating people, or if we want that money to be spent bringing our neighbors home.”
There is a much higher societal return on investment for spending money on keeping people in stable and secure housing. Especially compared to a prison system that often keeps people stuck in a cycle of release and re-offense.
It’s just common sense.