#ResistHomelessHateLaws: could US crackdown happen here?

Arnold Abbott, 90, and two pastors, were arrested in Fort Lauderdale for dishing out plates of food to homeless people – something that he has been doing for over 20 years.

He now faces up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine, according to Local 10 news. “One of the police officers said, ‘Drop that plate right now,’ as if I were carrying a weapon,” said Abbott, who runs the charity Love Thy Neighbor, Inc. “It’s man’s inhumanity to man is all it is.”

New rules were introduced in the city which has an estimated 10,000 people sleeping rough.

On this side of the Atlantic, homelessness has been rising since the recession, particularly after cuts to housing benefits, and is in the spotlight again as the temperature suddenly takes a dive. A new ComRes poll for Centrepoint revealed on Thursday that 18 per cent of young people in Britain have slept in an “unsafe place” at least for one night, because they had nowhere else to go.

Centrepoint said 15,000 young people aged 16-25 faced homelessness this Christmas, and Crisis said the number of people forced to sleep on the streets has risen by 37 per cent since 2010, according to the government’s own snapshot figures.

#ResistHomelessHateLaws

The new restrictions in Fort Lauderdale, which came into force at the start of November, mean organisations have to get permission of whoever owns the space they are setting up food, and to provide public toilets for volunteers and those being fed.

The Florida city is not the only place to introduce them: over 30 American cities have either passed or are considering introducing food-sharing bans, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Turning our streets into hostile places for homeless people is not the answer Crisis

Outrage against what has been dubbed the “food sharing ban” has given birth to the #ResistHomelessHateLaws hashtag, and many protests against it have sprung up locally.

Crisis told Channel 4 News that in the UK there is little appetite for this kind of punitive restriction on services which provide food to homeless people here. But that’s not to say that Britain doesn’t have its own range of “anti-homeless” measures.

Metal spikes

Inch-long metal spikes sprung up at the entrance to a south London housing block in June this year, weeks after people were seen sleeping in the doorway.

One resident said they put people on a par with “animals” while charities said they were “counter-productive”, and that people without a home – the majority of whom are homeless after key relationships have broken down – need somewhere to move to, before they are “moved on.

Although this was just one instance, St Mungo’s Broadway charity said the measure was “not unusual”.

Matt Downie, director of policy and external affairs at Crisis told Channel 4 News: “Turning our streets into hostile places for homeless people is not the answer. For anyone forced to sleep rough, life is hard enough. They may have suffered a relationship breakdown, a bereavement or domestic abuse. “They deserve better than to be forced to search for food or a place to sleep.”

Clearing the streets

Florida’s ban has been criticised for criminalising a charitable act. But in Britain, concerns have been raised about criminalising homelessness itself.

In north London, Police and UK Border Force officials made arrests and issued anti-social behaviour notices in February this year – with a view to following them up with Asbos if necessary – to clear the streets of people taking shelter and begging.

Police said they were trying to make the streets “safe” and that they were encouraging homeless people to access support services elsewhere. Charities took a different view. They said it would force people out of the areas they knew, and subsequently, the local services they used. Some even said it could force people into “survival crime.”

And the new anti-social behaviour act, which came into force on 20 October, gives housing providers, councils or local authorities, as well as police, power to issue public spaces protection orders (PSPO) against anything deemed to be “anti-social”.

Power to landlords

The number of people made homeless after being evicted by their landlord has more than doubled in the last five years, according to new government figures released in September.

Over the last 12 months, nearly 14,000 households were accepted as homeless after their landlord got rid of them.

One problem is the lack of rights and representation for tenants, which contributes to the causes of homelessness, says Shelter. And with over nine million people privately renting their homes, this is a major issue.

Commenting on Centrepoint’s new figures, Minister for Homelessness Kris Hopkins, said: “The numbers of people sleeping rough are falling dramatically, in no small part thanks to the range of measures we’ve taken to maintain strong support for anyone facing the threat of homelessness.”