Yesterday, the state of Maryland became the first in America to extend hate-crime protection to homeless people. There are several sad circumstances that lead to this type of legislative action, the least of which is that attacks on homeless people increased 65% between 2005 and 2007 and many of those attacks were performed by youth, some as young as 10 years old.
But some homeless advocates, while lauding this legislation, also believe it sidesteps the real issues. As Shannon Moriarty points out in her blog on Change.org, lack of housing is something fixable in someone’s status, unlike their gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity. By passing a law like this, aren’t we in a weird sort of way saying ‘it’s okay to be homeless’? Just like it’s okay to be gay, Asian, etc? Instead of spending time in the legislative process to discuss and pass laws such as this, why not actually admit that we suck at affordably housing people in our communities and do something about THAT?
This law was passed in the shadow of a very sobering study released recently by the National Low Income Housing Alliance, the 2009 Out of Reach Report. I will write more about this study as the summer progresses, as it contains such a rich (no pun intended) amount of data. But among the more dismal findings I’d like to bring to your attention are:
The answers do exist. Housing First works. Affordable Housing projects all over the country are achieving levels of success, one unit at a time, in places as small as Steamboat Springs, CO, or Kenosha, WI, and as big as Houston or Los Angeles. (Don’t believe me? Set up a Google! Alert for ‘affordable housing’ and read it for a week). There are setbacks, to be sure. But I visited an affordable housing project in Redmond yesterday, and it works! There’s even an affordable housing “plan” available out there for us.
When will there be a better time to do this than Right Now, when we’re fed up with rental properties and homes being auctioned off for a quick buck, while more and more families are being forced onto the very streets those properties occupy? Instead of criminalizing people who are homeless, kicking them out of parks at night and off of sidewalks during the day (or not even letting them pitch a tent across the street), might it be possible to craft a community or a country where we don’t need to legislate protective measures for someone based solely on their housing status?
Patrick Kelley
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