Link between hate crimes and laws that criminalize homelessness

There is a documented relationship between increased police actions that criminalize homelessness and the rising number of hate crimes and violent acts against homeless people.

It appears that violent citizens become emboldened to attack homeless people because their city has responded negatively to the homeless population. These violent attacks occur especially where the city has portrayed homeless people as the cause of unemployment, decreasing property values, vacant storefronts or other problems.

Advocates from around the country have cited the relationship between municipal laws to banish or restrict visibility of homeless people and hate crimes and violence. This overly broad enforcement of the laws passed by city governments specifically targeting homeless people are documented in NCH's Illegal to Be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the U.S.

This survey of cities and states that violate the civil rights of homeless people concluded that California is the "meanest" state in the nation for poor and homeless people, followed by Florida, Hawaii and Texas. The NCH study also ranked four California cities as among the top 20 "meanest cities" in the nation for violating the human rights of homeless people: Berkeley, San Francisco, Fresno and Los Angeles. [See "California Named as Meanest State in the Nation," Street Spirit, December 2004.]