Survey Finds City More Accepting of Homeless Than Other Areas
By Michelle Betton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006
If you're homeless, there are worse places to be than Washington.
Fortunately for people who live on the streets, the District does not engage in "the criminalization of the homelessness" as much as other cities, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.
Washington is not among the "top 20 meanest cities" as defined by the report, which was slated for release yesterday. Instead, the District is among locations that have "constructive alternatives to criminalization."
The survey, "A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities," cited the Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District (BID) as an organization that helps make Washington a friendlier place for the homeless to live. BID created and funds a day center with showers, laundry facilities, legal services, job training, addiction recovery and medical treatment.
"Our purpose is to help people get back on their feet, cope with life," said Chet Grey, director of homeless services at the Downtown Services Center, a part of BID. Grey said that the day center serves between 350 and 375 people a day. "We spend a lot of time connecting people to other programs," he said.
According to the report, the number of laws considered by advocates for the homeless to be criminalizing homelessness rose in cities across the country in 2005. It reports a 12 percent increase in laws prohibiting begging in certain public places and a 14 percent increase in laws prohibiting sitting or lying in certain public places since 2002, when 67 U.S. cities were surveyed by the same organizations.
Criminalization of homelessness takes the form of laws that make it illegal to sit, lie down, sleep or store property in public places, selective enforcement of laws against behavior such as loitering and periodic sweeps of areas frequented by the homeless in order to drive them away, according to the groups that produced the report.
And though Washington did not make the list of meanest cities, the report did criticize D.C. police and the U.S. Park Police for asking homeless people for identification even if they are not violating any laws, searching their property or moving them out of the area. Sgt. Scott Fear, spokesman for the U.S. Park Police, said that generally, the relationship between the Park Police and the homeless has been positive. "They respect us, and we respect them," he said.
DeWayne Dowell, a homeless man in Franklin Square, said that he has not had a problem with the Park Police. But Allen Lewis, a homeless man in McPherson Square, said that police harassment of the homeless happens all the time.
Officer Josue Aldiva of the D.C. police said the only time an officer would question a homeless person is when too many homeless people are congregating on the sidewalk or if a homeless person was suspected of violating the law.
The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless prints cards, which outline the legal rights of those living on the street in terms of what the police can and cannot do and describe what constitutes illegal behavior.
The study cites data from a survey of 224 U.S. cities and lists the 20 cities across the nation that are considered by the organizations to be the most hostile to the homeless. Among those, the top five are Sarasota, Fla., Lawrence, Kan., Little Rock, Atlanta and Las Vegas. These cities were rated the meanest because they were found to have "some of the worst examples of inhumane city treatment of homeless and poor people," according to the report.
The cities were judged on the number of laws directed at the homeless, the enforcement of those laws, the severity of punishments, the political attitude held toward the homeless and the cities' history of criminalizing measures, among others.
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