The Big Picture

Let us not criminalize those who are broken and destitute, weak and poor. To be homeless is a fight for survival, they’ve reached the lowest they can go, there is no reason to push them down any further. Though this seems an obvious moral action, our lawmakers and law enforcers don’t seem so sympathetic. Some of their moral injustices include:

• Police in Seattle Washington are instructed to arrest or fine the homeless who are seen sleeping on park benches.(http://www.nationalhomeless.org/projects/nhcrop.html)

• Phoenix, Jacksonville, Columbus, Boston, Austin, New Orleans, Long Beach, Virginia Beach, Atlanta, Sacramento, Tulsa, and Miami have made it illegal to camp or sleep in a park

• the City of Clearwater criminalizes camping in public, sitting or lying down in public, begging in public, and sleeping in vehicles.

• Ordinances in multiple towns have made it illegal to feed the homeless.

• Colorado Springs, Colorado, El Cajon California, and Orlando Florida while admitting to have serious shelter and housing issues have made laws that restricts or prohibits camping, sleeping, begging, and food sharing.(No Safe Place: the criminalization of Homelessness in the U.S.)  

• 34% of cities impose city-wide bans on camping in public.

It is obvious that the Status quo is not only inhumane but tramples on the most intrinsic moral action; helping someone in need.

Actually getting a HotSpot In ground and working to ease the lives of our less fortunate would be monumental. There is the direct idea but we also have to get it past city officials and lawmakers, who currently seem uncaring and apathetic to the homeless’s pain. It would mean that lawmakers would finally be showing sympathy to the plight of homeless people.