Here's What Happened When One City Gave Homeless People Shelter Instead of Throwing Them in Jail

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/heres-what-happened-when-one-city-gave-homeless-people-shelter-instead-throwing-them



Kilee Lowe was sitting in a park when cops picked her up and booked her into jail overnight.

After she got out the next morning, she returned to the park. The same officer who had thrown her into a cell not 24 hours before booked her again. It was back to jail for Kilee.

Kilee has been cycling in and out of the criminal justice system for years. After three and a half years in federal prison, she’s been homeless for a little over a year now.

“Just because I don’t have a credit card in my pocket,” she says, “does not make me a criminal.”

Kilee lives in one of hundreds of American cities that have criminalized homelessness. Sometimes the “crime” is loitering. Sometimes it’s panhandling. In 2014 alone, one hundred American cities have banned sitting or lying down in public places. Wherever it happens, the fallout is frustratingly similar.

[Sienna86]

1. And it saves the city money overall

Besides being a kindness.

[Live and Learn]

2. An obvious solution, why is it taking so long for the rest to figure out? nt

[Stuart G]

6. Hatred and stupidity about the homeless..k and r

As stated in a post below..."If Salt Lake City can do it...so can the rest of cities that deal with this problem.."

[marble falls]

3. If Salt Lake City, a bastion of conservatism can do this, so can the rest of us.

[TheVisitor]

4. I have a feeling...

that they're OK with being decent to people in Utah as long as God is somehow associated with it... but Salt Lake City is not nearly as conservative as the rest of Utah, it's kind of like Austin, Texas... It's a semi-liberal large city that exists in a sea of red...

[magical thyme]

5. it's about time. nt

[theHandpuppet]

7. What a wonderful, compassionate, sensible approach!

This should be the standard across the country!

[raouldukelives]

8. Gosh, it's cheaper and probably lowers crime as well.

Who knew people liked having shelter?
Heck, maybe if people had decent housing, food and healthcare they might feel less inclined to eviscerate others for what they have? Maybe we could deliver a far safer, more humane and much cheaper solution to our problems than additional prisons and expanding and militarizing our police forces.
Oh wait, scratch that. No profit motive. People would rather join & share in the profits from corporate prisons and defense contractors and provide them fiduciary protection for committing acts of terror on our citizenry than take the hard, narrow path of a liberal conscience.
Hard to blame them. Bigger flat screens, shinier cars, fancier foods and monstrously larger carbon footprints are fun, for them, today.

[blaze]

9. For Profit Prisons

is why this will be very slow to catch on in most cities.

Unfortunately.

[fadedrose]

14. How true. They should be outlawed... nt

[PatrickforO]

10. "One hundred American cities have banned sitting or lying down in public places..."

The British did this back in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Except they banned the homeless from sleeping in public at night. They hired hundreds of cops to roust them out - if anyone nodded off in a park, they were awakened and had to move.

Then when day came, they couldn't work because they hadn't had any sleep. Instead, they laid down and slept.

So, wealthy British made fun of them for being lazy.

[JustAnotherGen]

11. Went to article - here are the numbers and how they did it

Salt Lake City crunched the numbers. And the prescription was clear. The city was spending $20,000 per homeless resident per year – funding for policing, arrests, jail time, shelter, and emergency services. Homelessness was not going down. Instead, for $7,800 a year through a new program called Housing First, the city could provide a person with an apartment and case management services.

In 2005, the city was spending $40 million to address chronic homelessness. Several years after starting the Housing First program, in 2013, spending was down to $9.6 million.

And more importantly, chronic homelessness has dropped 72 percent.

[dotymed]

12. For profit

prisons, jails, probation (which usually redirects you to the others) will fight hard against this spreading.
Lives=profit...what a country.
I sure hope this does become the norm.

[marmar]

13. K/R

[fadedrose]

15. This needs to be on CNN or 60 Minutes.....

Finally they are helping some vets get off the streets, but all people should have a little spot where they are safe and out of the elements....