Housing not Handcuffs 2019: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities.

This report provides an overview of laws in effect across the country that punish homelessness. They examined the city codes of 187 urban and rural cities across the country. In addition to the survey of policies in force across the country, this report describes trends in criminalization laws and tracks the significant growth of these laws since they began tracking them thirteen years ago, and since the release of Housing Not Handcuffs, their last report on the criminalization of homelessness in 2016. This report also describes why criminalization policies are ineffective, harmful, expensive to taxpayers, and often even illegal. Because the end goal is not to protect the right to live on the streets, but rather to ensure that people need not live without housing in the first place, they also offer constructive alternative approaches to preventing and ending homelessness. Included in their recommendations are model policies for federal, state, and local governments to address homelessness in a cost-effective, humane, and legal way.

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Report

National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLIHC). (2019). Housing not Handcuffs 2019: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities. https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/HOUSING-NOT-HANDCUFFS-2019-FINAL.pdf