Eliminate city ordinances that criminalize life-sustaining behavior.
Target actors: Local legislators.
Localities should review and eliminate any ordinances that criminalize unavoidable behavior associated with poverty or homelessness, such as sleeping or camping outside, loitering, and panhandling. Research shows that criminalization measures do nothing to alleviate homelessness and instead perpetuate a cycle of homelessness and incarceration.[]Chris Herring, Dilara Yarbrough, and Lisa Marie Alatorre, “Pervasive Penality: How the Criminalization of Poverty Perpetuates Homelessness,” Social Problems 67 (2020), 131-149, https://perma.cc/UT57-VWMZ.
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