Hey there Steemians!
Today I had a chance to talk with one of the city councilors for the town I live in, and brought to her attention the fact that the city is criminalizing a very human behavior, sleeping.
You see, here in Corvallis Oregon there is a law which says if you are sleeping in public, you can be given a ticket, in essence saying that since you can't afford to pay for a place to live, you have to pay for not being able to afford a place to live.
When you get the sleeping in public ticket, if you don't the have money to pay the ticket, you can avoid jail time by doing community service, using your time not to improve your lot in life, but rather to avoid being further punished for not having housing, so the time which that person could have been using to job hunt, or work for themselves, is instead used to avoid jail time for the crime of sleeping in a way that is banned by the city.
CLASS WARFARE VIDEO
There are quite a few people being displaced by gentrification from Portland and Seattle to the north, as well as Medford and Sacramento to the south, also with the increase in wild fires, land slides, flash floods and other natural disasters associated with global warming there are bound to be even more homeless people, so it makes sense for the city to choose a progressive policy to address the challenges of homelessness, rather than further criminalizing the poverty stricken, decriminalizing basic human behaviors like sleeping seems to be the best solution.
This is why I have been asking city council, the city planner, and the mayor to adopt the Right To Rest Act, also known as The Homeless Bill Of Rights.
The Right To Rest Act is model legislation which says in essence, that human behaviors, behaviors which all humans must engage in as a part of daily life should not be a crime, that sitting, standing, laying, eating, drinking, sleeping, and praying should be allowed in all public places.
Currently the the city spends A LOT OF MONEY on police action, judicial proceedings and incarceration of the homeless, as a result of criminalizing basic survival, the city doesn't have extra money for a lot of it's genuine needs, like affordable housing for instance, so it makes sense, financially speaking, to decriminalize sleeping, because a sleeping person is of no threat to anyone, and where there is no victim, there is no crime.
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Thanks for taking the time to read this far!
I have other posts about social inequity, like this one about the Private prison industry and this one about how corporations are above the law.