Roundtable #9 | The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States and the United Kingdom

Section One: State Laws on Homelessness in the United States

Across the United States, states have taken steps to address homelessness, ranging from the enforcement of state supreme court decisions to the passage of sweeping legislation. At the same time, individual state legislatures have become battlegrounds for homelessness rights in states that attempt to reduce the visibility of homeless individuals rather than address the systemic issues behind the rise in homelessness. To this end, many states have resorted to indirect anti-homelessness legislation, including laws and ordinances that ban loitering and begging. Moreover, despite the passage of effective, progressive legislation in states such as New York, many states have been far more conservative. Even in nominally progressive states, legislation such as the Rhode Island “Bill of Rights” has stopped short of guaranteeing long-term change. Ultimately, discrepancies between the efficacy and intent behind state homelessness initiatives have shed light on the limited capacity of state legislatures to curb the nation’s homelessness crisis and highlighted the need for comprehensive federal action.

In New York, landmark state Supreme Court cases have established many of the core rights that form the basis of the “Homeless Bill of Rights” adopted in many states. Among these rights, the right to shelter was first outlined in Callahan v. Carey. In response to the growing homelessness crisis in the 1970s, lawyers cited Article XVII of the New York Constitution’s guarantee of “aid, care and support of the needy” as the legal basis for guaranteeing shelter to those who qualify for the state's home relief program or are otherwise homeless “by reason to physical, mental or social dysfunction. ”[1] Callahan also established the baseline standards for shelters, specifying such conditions and necessities as the provision of beds, laundry services, sanitary products, and private storage facilities. [2] Subsequent cases would expand the right to shelter to encompass homeless women (Eldredge v. Koch) and families without threat of separation due to inability to find adequate housing (McCain v. Koch,Cosentino v. Perales). [3][4]

In addition to establishing the right to shelter, New York court precedents have also actively reinforced the voting rights of homeless people. In Pitts v. Black, the court ruled that the state’s initial interpretation of the residency requirement as excluding those without permanent housing violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [5]. Furthermore, the ruling in Pitts broadly construed the term “residence” to include non-traditional dwellings in which an individual intends to spend an indefinite amount of time. This holding was later reinforced in Coalition for the Homeless v. Jensen, which explicitly stated that requirements that potential voters register in traditional dwellings place an unconstitutional burden on the voting rights of “groups likely to include transients.” [6]

These cases have provided some of the main precedents used to protect the rights of homeless individuals within New York. Due to the decentralized nature of statewide homelessness initiatives, however, other states have been more hesitant to adopt wide-reaching, comprehensive legislation without the support of direct federal funding. For instance, despite being the first state to pass a definitive “Homeless Bill of Rights” in 2012, Rhode Island has remained conservative in its stance toward government sanctioned relief. [7] Favoring “negative rights,” the Rhode Island state legislature has focused on protecting the “right to be left alone” without conceding to more specific guarantees for the homeless. [8] The Rhode Island “Homeless Bill of Rights” explicitly prohibits discrimination from state agencies, private employers, and other state actors on the basis of housing status. From a federal legal standpoint, this legislation reaffirms the constitutional protections of the Equal Protection Clause without advancing novel legal interpretations of the status of homeless individuals. Consequently, some have questioned whether the Rhode Island “Homeless Bill of Rights” offers anything beyond nominal support, criticizing the bill as a reiteration of the same basic rights guaranteed to all Rhode Island citizens. Others nonetheless view its passage as a significant step toward securing positive social welfare initiatives on the statewide level by shifting American perceptions of homelessness and opening up effective legal avenues of decriminalizing the symptoms of deeper, systemic issues. 

Ultimately, questions remain regarding the efficacy of individual state-led initiatives, especially in light of evidence of selective enforcement in states such as California, which lack the funds to sponsor greater initiatives without federal assistance. [9] It becomes evident then that the job of combatting homelessness is one that requires comprehensive federal oversight with the cooperation of state and local governments.

Andersen Gu

Roundtable Contributor

Section Two: Homelessness, Judicial Activism, & the US Constitution

The United States continues to suffer from an intractable homelessness crisis. More than half a million Americans lack stable housing, and, in many cases, resort to sleeping on sidewalks or in parks. [1] Cities sometimes crack down on such encampments in the interest of public health and safety. In some cases, displaced individuals have filed constitutional claims in court, relying on a variety of arguments based on provisions in the Bill of Rights, including the First and Eighth Amendments. Though often creative, these arguments are generally unpersuasive. 

One example is the 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence. As part of an outdoor protest in Washington, D.C., the Community for Creative Non-Violence planned for activists and homeless people to sleep in tents in a public park. [2] The city attempted to ban the demonstration; the protesters then filed a lawsuit alleging a violation of their First Amendment rights. The district court ruled in favor of the government, but the en banc D.C. Circuit reversed on a 6-5 vote, holding that preventing the protestors from sleeping in the tents would infringe their First Amendment right to free expression. [3] 

The Supreme Court correctly reversed the D.C. Circuit by a 7-2 vote. Even if one were to grant the debatable assertion that sleeping can be protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of “freedom of speech,” the camping restrictions were entirely reasonable “time, place, and manner” restrictions unrelated to suppressing the message of the demonstration. [4] [5] As Justice White wrote in the majority opinion, the D.C. Circuit effectively sought to “assign to the judiciary the authority to replace the Park Service as the manager of the Nation's parks.” [6] The D.C. Circuit’s ruling displayed insufficient respect for the important government interests in public order at stake, and threatened to open the floodgates to all manner of demonstrations the government would be forced to allow. 

More recently, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals addressed two cases involving homelessness and the First Amendment. In First Vagabonds Church v. City of Orlando (2011), the en banc court extensively cited Clark in properly rejecting the argument that the Free Speech Clause protects the right to give away free food to homeless people in any public park at any time. [7] Seven years later, in Food Not Bombs v. City of Fort Lauderdale (2018), a three-judge 11th Circuit panel was forced to decide the question that First Vagabonds Church had dodged in 2011: whether “outdoor food sharing is expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.” The court found that it was -- a plausible holding given that “the surrounding circumstances would lead the reasonable observer to view the [food sharing] as conveying some sort of message.” [8] Even so, under First Vagabonds Church, reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on food sharing remained permissible. [9] 

In addition to the First Amendment, the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause has been used to justify invalidating regulations related to homeless persons. In Jones v. City of Los Angeles (2006), the 9th Circuit held (in a since-vacated opinion) that the “right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment” prevents the government from outlawing “homeless individuals involuntarily sitting, lying, or sleeping on the street due to the unavailability of shelter in Los Angeles.” [10] Then, in Martin v. City of Boise (2019), the 9th Circuit again held that “the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping outside on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to.” [11] 

This holding was misguided. In fact, the “primary purpose” of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause “has always been considered … to be directed at the method or kind of punishment imposed for the violation of criminal statutes.” [12] Although the Eighth Amendment additionally “imposes substantive limits on what can be made criminal and punished as such,” the Supreme Court has cautioned that those limitations are “to be applied sparingly.” [13] As a dissenting judge wrote, Martin “stretches the Eighth Amendment past its breaking point.” [14] 

Another case that did not directly deal with homelessness also has some bearing on the question. In Chicago v. Morales (1999), regarding an anti-loitering ordinance, a plurality of the Supreme Court found a “right to engage in loitering” in the Constitution’s Due Process Clause. [15] But as Justice Thomas explained in dissent, for a liberty to be considered fundamental for substantive due process purposes, it must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” [16] Yet “[l]aws prohibiting loitering and vagrancy have been a fixture of Anglo-American law” for centuries. [17] Such laws were imported from England by the American colonists, and remained on the books through the 19th and 20th centuries. [18] 

Although the urge to read the Constitution to provide protection for the homeless (or those who feed them) is understandable, courts have engaged in judicial activism by stretching constitutional provisions beyond their fair meaning. The job of protecting homeless Americans is largely one for Congress or state legislatures to deal with in the manner they judge best, not federal courts. 

Will Foster

Roundtable Contributor

Section Three: The 19th Century Roots of UK Law on Homelessness 

In the United Kingdom, overt criminalization of homelessness occurs via The Vagrancy Act 1824, which makes begging and rough sleeping criminal offenses. Despite Scotland’s abolition of the Act, accusations in the 1970s that it was being used to target young black men, and nearly two hundred years of repealing and reforming, these two offences managed to survive in England and Wales. [1] To this day, Sections 3 and 4 enforce archaic provisions in a circular, ineffective, and ultimately discriminatory manner to target people of low socio-economic status.

One of the central objectives of the Act’s 19th century drafters was to pre-emptively police “rogues” and “vagabonds.” To this end, Section 4 sanctions the arrest of rough sleepers who cannot give “a good account of” themselves and are “wandering” about and lodging themselves in various public or abandoned places. It also criminalizes “being in enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose” and requires only a single witness – including the officer himself – to effectuate an arrest on this suspicion. These provisions are all that remains of Section 4, but even from these bits one can glean the development of pre-crime principles that plague U.K. law. McCulloch and Wilson, criminology professors writing on policing and surveillance, define pre-crime as the state’s aim “to punish, disrupt, incapacitate or restrict those deemed to embody future crime threats.” [2] Unlike criminals prosecuted for conspiracy or attempt, vagrants have committed no crime beyond begging or sleeping rough.

This pre-crime approach to criminal justice is rationalized by the broken windows theory that disorder and crime are “usually inextricably linked in a kind of developmental sequence.” [3] This theory classifies rough sleeping and being “unaccounted for” as antisocial behaviours that cultivate an appearance of disorder and thereby occasion even more crime. However, this crime-leading-to-crime narrative reflects a logical fallacy: the justification is premised on vagrants being criminals, but they are only criminals by virtue of the Vagrancy Act, making such a classification circular at best. Furthermore, in J.L. (a Youth) v. Director of Public Prosecutions, a 2007 case where the police found a “rogue” in an enclosed yard, the High Court warned that Section 4 should be used as a “last resort” and “only with caution.” [4] These counsels reflect a judicial acknowledgement that this outdated section fits awkwardly with the contemporary law of attempt and must be kept from producing convictions as tenuous as that of the boy in question, who was merely hiding from the police in the yard – which is not a crime! In this way, the worryingly wide reach of Section 4, which hinges on the artificial preconception that rogues and vagabonds are criminals, legitimizes arbitrary policing.

Worst yet, Section 3 of the Act criminalizes begging “in any public place, street, highway, court, or passage” and categorizes beggars in such places as “idle and disorderly persons.” The way the courts have interpreted section 3 is teleological in the sense that it targets a specific person, the habitual beggar. This is evidenced by Pointon v Hill, an 1884 High Court case that expressly recognized the provision to be “directed against a particular habit or mode of life,” making it necessary for the Crown prosecutor to demonstrate that the individual has adopted “the calling of a beggar.” [5] This was reaffirmed in R v Dalton, a 1982 Magistrates Court case, which added that one cannot be considered a beggar on the basis of an isolated instance of begging. [6] The failed 1991 Crime of Vagrancy (Abolition) Bill criticized the Vagrancy Act for enforcing a cruel and asinine cycle whereby the categorically penniless are fined up to £1,000 (a Level 3 fine). In other words, the Act creates a catch-22 situation: to pay their fines, victims are compelled to beg and so commit the offense once again. If they refuse to pay, they rack up criminal court charges, effectively inflating already unpayable fines.

Whilst laws in the United States are normatively analysed by reference to the Constitution, the United Kingdom has signed the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), incorporated into domestic law via the Human Rights Act 1998. It may be argued that Section 3 of the Vagrancy Act breaches Article 14 of the ECHR, which prohibits discrimination according to a “personal status”, by targeting beggars specifically. [7] Furthermore, Article 10 protects the right to freedom of expression. Criminalizing non-invasive beggars hinders their ability to communicate their message of need. Flyers advertising a charity would certainly constitute a protected form of expression – why shouldn’t begging?

In conclusion, the criminal law’s involvement in the sphere of homelessness via the Vagrancy Act has been haphazard, outdated, circular and potentially in violation of human rights. As the population of the so disdained “rogues” continues to grow, it’s high time for the entirety of the Vagrancy Act to be tucked into legal archives and for Parliament to adopt more practical and compassionate solutions to vagrancy. [8]

Alexandra Tsalidis

 Cambridge Roundtable Collaborator

Section Four: The Path toward Decriminalizing Homelessness

In an era that supposedly champions equality, solidarity, and tolerance, the criminalization of homelessness is manifestly incongruous. Further, it also fails to meet its own aim of ‘disincentivizing’ begging and rough sleeping, instead exacerbating the underlying causes of homelessness. [1] Contrary to popular sentiment, moreover, the criminalization of homelessness costs taxpayers more than simply housing and caring for these individuals. [2] It is thus clear that change is urgently required. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to consider all the reforms needed, the United States, as well as England and Wales, should adopt new legal frameworks for addressing homelessness. In particular, both the United States and the United Kingdom should combat homelessness through legislative reform and repeal rather than judicial amendments to existing law. Moreover, the focus should be on fighting the conditions that cause and sustain homelessness, such as eviction and inadequate rights for homeless individuals.

Interpreting the current legislative provisions in a way that supports rather than harms the homeless displays laudable judicial intentions, yet it leaves open the possibility of contaminating legal doctrine. As discussed in section one, U.S. Supreme Court rulings have benefited the homeless at the expense of contorting constitutional amendments. [3][4] There is a similar risk in England and Wales. Because the courts in these countries cannot strike down legislation, they change the law through particular interpretations of the statute at hand. Given the overt reference to ‘beggars’ in the Vagrancy Act, 1824, however, creatively interpreting the statutory language as the U.S. Supreme Court has done would pervert Parliament’s intentions to deliberately target this group. Doing so would be constitutionally unsound, irrespective of the normative arguments in favour of re-writing the statutes. 

Furthermore, given the Vagrancy Act’s aim to deliberately target and punish the homeless, it will be very difficult for English and Welsh courts to interpret it ‘in a way which is compatible with human rights’ under section 3 of the Human Rights Act without drastically rewriting the statute. Instead, they will have to rely on the section 4 Declaration of Incompatibility (between the legislation and human rights), which effectively requires the legislature to either repeal or redraft the act. [5][6] Thus, it is necessary for the federal/national legislature to address the criminalization of homelessness head-on in order to ensure substantive legal clarity and radical change. 

But what exactly will these reforms entail? Firstly, anti-homeless policies aim to reduce the visible presence of homeless individuals on the streets. They are about aesthetics and therefore do little to address the actual causes of homelessness. [7] As discussed in section three , the Vagrancy Act reinforces the cycle of homelessness by imposing huge fines on perpetrators, compelling them to beg to pay it off and thereby commit the offense again. Similarly, anti-homelessness legislation in the United States has exacerbated the nation’s homelessness crisis. Once associated with a criminal record, homeless individuals are much more likely to face barriers when applying for housing or employment. [8] Further, it is questionable whether such legislation is cost-effective. Indeed, one study found investing the $3.7 million spent in criminalizing ordinances over the five years covered in the investigation in housing the homeless would have saved taxpayers $11 million. [9] Although costs will undoubtedly differ from state to state, these statistics nevertheless indicate that current laws waste resources which could be spent fighting the causes of homeless and thus conserving finances in the long term. Therefore, it is time for states to repeal existing anti-homelessness laws and rethink their approach to combating homelessness. 

Both the United States as well as England and Wales could draw upon the Aotearoa/New Zealand Homelessness Action Plan introduced in February 2020. This plan outlines 18 immediate actions that aim to reduce homelessness across New Zealand by 2023. [10] Backed with over NZ$ 300 million, the plan includes funds to aid local initiatives and expand support services to those in emergency housing, helping these residents find work and permanent housing. It also sustains short term tenancies in order to foreclose the very possibility of homelessness for many tenants, as the threat of eviction has loomed particularly large in the context of the ongoing pandemic. Applied in the United States and the United Kingdom, New Zealand’s scheme would fill the void in support for homeless individuals exacerbated by anti-homelessness legislation Greater funding may also bolster England and Wales’ Homelessness Reduction Act of 2017. Though aimed at reducing homelessness, this Act leaves in place barriers to assistance for many on the brink of homelessness as local authorities fear squandering resources. [11]

Amid the current pandemic, eviction has become a key driver of homelessness as the pandemic has caused a severe economic downturn prompting unemployment and a concomitant inability to pay rents. In the United States, it is estimated that 30-40 million are at risk of eviction [12]. Although it is unclear how many of these individuals are at risk of so-called ‘Covid’ eviction, 230,000 tenants in England and Wales are susceptible. [13] To prevent mass evictions, the United States has put a nationwide eviction moratorium in place until January 31st, 2021, while England and Wales have paused evictions until January 11th. [14] [15] Given the likely continuation of the pandemic, however, evictions should be stayed in the long-term and more public housing prepared post-pandemic for those who can no longer afford to live in private housing. Combined, these initiatives will stymie a surge in homelessness.

Alongside these reforms, the ‘Homelessness Bills of Rights’ adopted in some US states should be implemented on a nationwide level. Beyond espousing the right to be left alone, states should establish positive rights that specifically target the ills suffered by homelessness individuals. Such rights would include the right to a home and the right not to be discriminated against in employment or when accessing social security. One notable obstacle to a more positive conception of rights is Britain’s general aversion to the semantics of ‘rights.’ Indeed, it was with much trepidation that Britain agreed to the European Convention on Human Rights and enforced the Human Rights Act. [16] Thus, positive rights should be afforded to the homeless in England and Wales under the guise of broad homelessness reform rather than through a distinct legislative document.

In sum, homelessness must be decriminalized. It is a costly, counter-productive and archaic approach to addressing the plight of such a vulnerable population. Instead, adequately funded national reform, as well as eviction prevention and the expansion of the Homelessness Bill of Rights, is needed to combat the causes of homelessness. With such changes in place, the law will aid rather than harm those most in need. 

Poppy Kemp

 Cambridge Roundtable Collaborator

All Roundtable Sections Edited By: Jessica Lin

Sources:

Section One

[1] “The Callahan Legacy: Callahan v. Carey and the Legal Right to Shelter.” Coalition For The Homeless. https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/our-programs/advocacy/legal-victories/the-callahan-legacy-callahan-v-carey-and-the-legal-right-to-shelter/. 

[2] Callahan v. Carey, No 79–42582 (NY Sup. Ct., New York County, 1979) https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/CallahanConsentDecree.pdf

[3] Mccain v. Koch, 117 A.D.2d 198, 502 N.Y.S.2d 720 (N.Y. App. Div. 1986) https://casetext.com/case/mccain-v-koch-4

[4] Cosentino v. Perales, 546 NYS2d 75, 153 AD2d 812 (1st Dep't 1989) https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/02/opinion/l-too-often-child-welfare-system-breaks-up-poor-families-743096.html

[5] “Court Decisions on Homeless People's Voting Rights.” National Coalition for the Homeless. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/projects/vote/court.html. 

[6] Matter of Coalition for Homeless v. Jensen, 187 A.D.2d 582, 590 N.Y.S.2d 502 (N.Y. App. Div. 1992) https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=139529140950533878&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

[7] S 2052 Substitute, 2012 Jan. Sess. (RI. 2012). http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText12/SenateText12/S2052B.pdf

[8] Rankin, Sara K. "A homeless bill of rights (revolution)." Seton Hall L. Rev. 45 (2015): 383. https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1669&context=faculty

[9] “California Unleashes Hundreds of Millions in Emergency Aid for Cities and Counties to Fight Homelessness.” Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. CA.Gov, December 5, 2019. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/12/04/california-unleashes-hundreds-of-millions-in-emergency-aid-for-cities-and-counties-to-fight-homelessness/. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/12/04/california-unleashes-hundreds-of-millions-in-emergency-aid-for-cities-and-counties-to-fight-homelessness/

Section Two

[1] State of Homelessness: 2020 Edition, National Alliance to End Homelessness, https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-2020/ (last visited Dec 7, 2020); see also Thomas Fuller, Tim Arango & Louis Keene, As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash, The New York Times, October 21, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/us/california-homeless-backlash.html (last visited Dec 7, 2020).

[2] Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288 (1984). 

[3] Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Watt, 703 F.2d 586 (D.C. Cir. 1983). 

[4] Cf. id at 622-27 (Scalia, J., joined by MacKinnon and Bork, JJ., dissenting). 

[5] Clark, 468 U.S., at 294-95. 

[6] Clark, 468 U.S., at 299. 

[7] First Vagabonds Church of God v. City of Orlando, Florida, 638 F.3d 756 (11th Cir. 2011) (en banc). 

[8] Food Not Bombs v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 901 F.3d 1235, 1238, 1242 (11th Cir. 2018). 

[9] First Vagabonds Church, 638 F.3d at 761. 

[10] Jones v. City of Los Angeles, 444 F.3d 1118 (9th Cir. 2006), vacated, 505 F.3d 1006 (9th Cir. 2007). 

[11] Martin v. City of Boise, 920 F.3d 584, 603 (9th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 674 (2019). 

[12] Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514, 531–32 (1968) (plurality op.) (emphasis added). 

[13] Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 667 (1977). 

[14] Martin, 920 F.3d at 603 (Bennett, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc).

[15] Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 54 (1999) (plurality opinion). 

[16] Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721 (1997); see also McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010) (right to bear arms); Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, 671 (2015) (right to marry). 

[17] Morales, 527 U.S. at 102-105 (Thomas, J., dissenting).

[18] id

Section Three

[1] Paul Lawrence, “The Vagrancy Act (1824) and the Persistence of Pre-emptive Policing in England since 1750” 57 The British Journal of Criminology 1, 513 (2017).

[2] Jude McCulloch, Dean Wilson. Pre-Crime: Pre-Emption, Precaution and the Future. London: Routledge, (2017).

[3] George L. Kelling, James Q. Wilson, Broken Windows, The Atlantic (2014), online at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/broken-windows/309142/ (visited November 17, 2020).

[4] J.L. (a Youth) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2007] T.L.R. 08/10/2007.

[5] Pointon v Hill (1884) 12 Q.B.D. 306.

[6] R v Dalton [1982] Crim. L. r. 375.

[7] Article 14 of the ECHR lists various grounds on which discrimination might occur including the open-ended “other status”. This has been interpreted in the caselaw as any characteristic or status inherent to the person (as opposed to external factors like geographical location). The term “personal status” was used in the leading case of R (Clift) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] 1 AC 484.

[8] Pyper, Douglas, Georgina Sturge, and Hannah Cromarty, Rough Sleepers and Anti-Social Behaviour (England), House of Commons Library (2019), online at https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7836/ (visited December 1, 2020).

Section Four

[1] Aykanian, A., and Lee, W. “Social Work’s Role in Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness: Opportunities for Action.” Social Work 61, no. 2 (2016): 183–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/sww011.

[2] Culhane, D. P. (2010). Tackling homelessness in Los Angeles’ Skid Row: The role of policing strategies and the spatial deconcentration of homelessness. Criminology & Public Policy, 9, 851–857.

[3] Jones v. City of Los Angeles, 444 F.3d 1118 (9th Cir. 2006), vacated, 505 F.3d 1006 (9th Cir. 2007). 

[4] Martin v. City of Boise, 920 F.3d 584, 603 (9th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 674 (2019). 

[5] Human Rights Act 1998, s 3

[6] id s 4

[7] Aykanian A., Fogel S.J. (2019) The Criminalization of Homelessness. In: Larkin H., Aykanian A., Streeter C. (eds) Homelessness Prevention and Intervention in Social Work. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03727-7_9

[8] National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. (2011). Criminalizing crisis: The criminalization of homelessness in U.S. cities. Washington, DC: Author.

[9] Howard, J., Tran, D., and Rankin, S. “At What Cost: The Minimum Cost of Criminalizing Homelessness in Seattle and Spokane.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2602530. 

[10] Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. “Aotearoa New Zealand Homelessness Action Plan.” Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga - Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, September 10, 2020. https://www.hud.govt.nz/community-and-public-housing/support-for-people-in-need/aotearoa-homelessness-action-plan/. 

[11] Homelessness Reduction Act 2017

[12] Forde, K. “What You Need to Know about America's Eviction Crisis.” Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, December 29, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/12/29/new-york-passes-strong-anti-eviction-law-amid-looming-crisis. 

[13] Shelter. “230,000 Renters at Risk of 'COVID-Eviction' When Government Ban Lifts.” Shelter England. Accessed January 3, 2021. https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_release/230000_renters_at_risk_of_covid-eviction_when_government_ban_lifts. 

[14] Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. “Complete Ban on Evictions and Additional Protection for Renters.” GOV.UK. GOV.UK, March 18, 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/complete-ban-on-evictions-and-additional-protection-for-renters. 

[15] Temporary Halt in Residential Evictions To Prevent the Further Spread of COVID-19: Agency Order, Vol. 85, Federal Register [no. 176], September 3, 2020, 55292-55297

[16] See, for instance the House of Lords’ Comments on Introducing a British Bill of Rights and the negative connotations of using such semantics: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201516/ldselect/ldeucom/139/139.pdf