Homeless People Have Right to Sanitation and Survival

United Nations Human Rights Expert Condemns Cruel Treatment of Homeless People in United States

September 29, 2011 by peopleproject

The UN Rapporteur’s report is the latest in a series of condemnations by international experts of the criminalization and mistreatment of homeless persons in the United States. A growing record of both domestic and international law states that homeless persons cannot be criminalized for basic life-sustaining acts. -Street Spirit Editor Note

by Whitney Gent

National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty

On August 24, in an official report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a top UN investigator said that the United States’ failure to provide homeless persons access to water and sanitary facilities “could … amount to cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.” The report was issued by UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation Catarina de Albuquerque.

Tim engineered a sanitation system for the homeless community. Every week, he collects heavy bags of waste, and hauls them several miles to a public restroom.

Art by Christa Occhiogrosso

“The Rapporteur’s report is the latest in a series of condemnations by international experts of the criminalization and mistreatment of homeless persons in the U.S.,” said Eric Tars, human rights program director at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty which helped facilitate her visit. “Earlier this year, the U.S. committed itself before the Human Rights Council to doing more to protect the rights of homeless persons. Where is the action to follow the words?”
Albuquerque visited the United States in February and March 2011, and was struck by the “extraordinary lengths” homeless persons had to go to just to remove bodily wastes. During a visit to the Safe Ground tent community near Sacramento, California, she met a man who called himself the community’s “sanitation technician.”

The man, “Tim,” engineered a sanitation system consisting of a seat overtop a two-layered plastic bag. Every week, Tim collects bags of human waste, weighing anywhere from 130 to 230 pounds, and hauls them on his bicycle several miles to a public restroom. When a toilet becomes available, he empties the contents of the bags. Following the disposal, he secures the dirty bags in a clean one, which he then places in the garbage, before washing his hands with water and lemon.
He said the job is difficult, but that he does it for the community — especially the women.
The UN Special Rapporteur’s report states: “The United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, must ensure that everyone [has access] to sanitation which is safe, hygienic, secure and which provides privacy and ensures dignity. An immediate, interim solution is to ensure access to restroom facilities in public places, including during the night. The long-term solution to homelessness must be to ensure adequate housing.”

In June 2010, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness adopted its first-ever comprehensive plan to end homelessness, including a section promoting constructive alternatives to criminalization. However, the criminalization of homelessness by communities persists, and to date, the Justice Department and other agencies have done little to convey the unconstitutionality of these practices to local policymakers.

“This adds to a growing record of both domestic and international law stating that homeless persons cannot be criminalized for basic life-sustaining acts when the community provides no legal alternative,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the Law Center. “But ultimately, we must remedy this situation because we, as Americans, believe that no person deserves to be treated this way.”


http://www.thestreetspirit.org/un-expert-condemns-cruel-treatment-of-homeless-in-u-s-2/

Whitney Gent wrote this article for The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.
Read the Rapporteur’s Report here.

Peace Camp 2010 Defendants in Court~~ Homeless Not Helpless

Trial Begins for Six Peace Camp 2010 "Lodgers"

dateline ~ Santa Cruz ~ Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Day Two for six Peace Camp 2010 survivors: legal agents are still picking jurors and their understudies.

The Honorable Judge John Gallagher predicted this Lodging trial could take up to two weeks. Attorney Ed Frey is representing himself and five other brave, persisting defendants; one person is MIA and the four others are stuck sitting all day, backs against the courthouse wall to Judge's left, watching these proceedings.

California Superior Court of Santa Cruz County, Dept 2, 701 Ocean St. Not a lot revealed so far. The trial resulted from last summer's ongoing demonstration and protest over anti-sleeping laws used to render homeless people into criminals, for sleeping at night. After more than a month, Santa Cruz County's Sheriff was pressured to "clean up" the demo-campers, and so he authorized ticketing sweeps. Groups of Deputies came, first with City of Santa Cruz sleep ban citations, then with California's quit broad lodging law, 647(e).

The demonstration changed but did not go away until weeks into this sudden criminalization in the very place locals gather to redress their government, to inform the general public, and to share their grievances: the lawn and walkway, under the US and California flags, in front of the Courthouse. Next door to the County Government Building.

As I noted earlier somewhere, a Necessity Defense will be allowed for this "lodging" trial. Necessity, related to homeless defendants in California, is a strictly defined list of qualities required to be met (proved), to demonstrate one has NO other sleepy-time recourse besides sleeping outside (in public). This trial will likely have five necessity defense presentations.

In the past three decades, the growing body of clinical evidence regarding harm resulting from a person not getting enough sleep has been glossed over or prevented outright, in courtroom efforts I've witnessed over three decades, and in general around these selectively administered anti-sleeping laws.

In my view, one of the hurdles is trying to get the judges and commissioners, or occasionally a jury, to UNDERSTAND we are not concerned about a one-time, middle-class outing, here; like say boy scouts camping with their telescopes, or Faire merchants guarding their wares and their generators or stoves or tents along the riverside before the show.

I get concerned about this TREND of making criminals out of individuals, groups and throngs of people who's every single day is at best ten times more difficult and critical and immediate than most folks', and who's nights are a rigged crap shoot of options for the thirty people in every thousand (around here) of sleeping on somebody's couch or back porch, or of getting rolled and robbed in their sleep by a lost drunk or crushed in a municipal recycling truck. Or committing suicide because they have become isolated for way too long. Yes, I am saying about thirty known-to-be homeless people out of each thousand manage to come up with an alternative to hiding all night.

I become concerned when I meet the huge numbers of women in their 40s who lost their stable housing simply because they were faced with urgent medical needs but had no kind of insurance at their jobs, forced to hide now; or upon seeing already disabled people who cannot round up a landlord and all the trimmings by themselves, despite their fixed incomes, thus being put at greater risk because we shun them at every turn.

I'm trying to say for every "bum" and "ingrate on the sidewalk"we experience, there are hundreds of other folks (who also happen to be homeless) whom you'd recognize as fellow humans if you would only see them: going to work, caring for their kids, studying for their midterms at the cafe with a laptop just like housed dudes, fixing their friend's bike, paying their taxes, and trying to clean things up 'round about themselves, no matter where they land.

Our government could not get away with this total failure of social policy -- creating ever greater homelessness while our banks empty our homes they are not able to sell -- if we were not parties to it's creation. It's called tossing the baby out with the bathwater. It is most certainly NOT Christian to blame a whole sub-population for the actions of a few jerks, whether those jerks are the golden-parachute banking crooks or the hustling street rejects who act out our shadow fears: homeless does not mean "bum", homeless does not mean "thief."

Maybe if we could all stop using the word homeless as a euphemism, and start naming the behaviors that we actually fear or loath, our own eyes could acclimate to notice homeless PEOPLE? But I digress. Remember the movie, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (Memory wants me to believe it featured a young Jane Fonda, but...)

Struggling around this latest cattle prod, the Lodging Law, alongside the City of Santa Cruz's camping/sleeping ban, and just like many new municipal and national ordinances across the land exhausts everyone involved. A little widespread integrity could help us cure these efforts at legal trickery as banishment and selective enforcement, with it's dishonest underpinnings. We are leaving innocent people to suffer and die in the dark so we don't have to face our own flawed assumptions, just to forestall our collective discomfort for all the wrong reasons.

We need to become more aware of our own and other people's human rights.

It is, simply, wrong to make sleeping illegal. None of the pop excuses hold water, they're just exhortations of fear. The more US Americans get downsized while we ignore and deny our role as citizens in our own economic sinkhole, the sooner what I'm saying will become self-evident.

Meanwhile, here's hoping it's not YOUR uncle who gets his pack stolen because he fell asleep, losing YOUR phone number again, and here's hoping it's not YOUR granny who gives up and goes to sleep for the last time, in the muddy river tonite.

10 - 10 -10 Becomes World Homeless Day and Everybody Deserves a Home, What Shall We Do in Santa Cruz?

Welcome, WORLD HOMELESS DAY

World Homeless Day, a worldwide collaborative effort, will henceforth be held on the 10th day of October every year. This year it happens to fall on the date 10/10/10

So what should or could be done on this day? Seriously, We are asking you, as the day is there for you to use as you see fit to make change and make a difference in the lives of homeless people in your area.

There seems to be an international day for this or that all the time. Sometimes even an entire week or month is devoted to focusing our attention on an issue or group of people in need. Yet there hasn't been an international day focusing on homelessness ... until now.

To answer questions that might be springing to mind, the idea emerged during discussions amongst members of the World Homeless Forum. And don't worry that it won't catch on -- already, groups in more than 50 countries are making plans for the day, barely a month after the idea was unveiled.

We all know these international days of something or other come and go, but We've learned after talking to some of the organizers of other recognized days that, for groups that take advantage, the days can be very powerful in terms of fund-raising, awareness-raising and garnering significant political power.

There is no prescriptive call to action like everyone light a candle and hold hands or some rubbish like that. World Homeless Day is a gift to the homeless sector and everyone in it to use in any way they want locally, providing the opportunity to point to something larger internationally and draw strength from that.

If you are part of a charity, considering taking advantage of this concept to gain connections with members of the community that you don't have already. For example, World Homeless Day is the perfect excuse to contact a local school, church or service club like Rotary. Contact them, offer guest speaking opportunities and suggest partnering to raise money. Politicians can be encouraged to release new funds or proposals on the day or to acknowledge the good work already being done by people and organizations in their city or state.

In some countries, 10/10 is already being planned as a benchmark day each year to note progress. It should be noted that, to date, current and formerly homeless people have done more than anyone else housed or working in the sector to promote World Homeless Day and encourage charities to become involved.

Linda's Hearth note: Let's help make this happen BIG in Santa Cruz County!

What you can do today to prepare for 10/10/10:

If you have a website: include the supporters button found on the official site (already on 50,000 web pages).

If you are on Twitter follow us @homelessday

If you are a service provider and attend meetings with other service providers, as we all do, put discussion of World Homeless Day on the agenda.

If you need support planning the day or want to collaborate with others involved there is a section in the international forums here: World Homeless Day Forums, http://www.homelessforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=115

World Homeless Day, a worldwide collaborative effort, will henceforth be held on the 10th day of October every year. This year it happens to fall on the date 10/10/10. So what should or could be done on this day? Seriously, We are asking you, as the day is there for you to use as you see fit to make change and make a difference in the lives of homeless people in your area.



Email:
info at worldhomelessday dot org
Website:
http://www.worldhomelessday.org
http://www.homelessforums.org