NEWSBYRANDALL AMSTER

A 20-year-old street kid who lists his business as "busking" is running for a seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission, which oversees public utilities, railroad safety and securities regulation. A 27-year-old tarot card reader with less than a dollar to his name is running for State Treasurer. And a bushy-bearded pedicab driver known as "Grandpa" is running for State Senate. This could almost be an inspirational story, except for one small detail: It's Arizona, circa 2010, where no political trick is too low to be attempted.

In this case, these three "street people" from Tempe, Arizona, have been recruited by Republican operatives to run as Green Party candidates, as recently reported in the New York Times. One of the main architects of this crass ploy is Steve May, a former Republican state legislator who is himself on the ballot this fall. The three homeless candidates all list the local Starbucks as their campaign office, and May performed some political theater there for reporters by shouting out to each one, "Are you fake?" in reference to the apparently sham nature of their candidacies.

The story has since been going viral, with commentators ranging from the DC Examiner to the Dallas Morning News decrying the Republicans' tactics. The scam works because of a quirk in Arizona law that allows individuals to appear on the general ballot if they receive even a single vote (their own, perhaps) in an open primary without an official minor party nominee. Republicans were able to place stealth candidates on the roster in a number of contests around the state — knowing that some left-leaning voters will choose the Green candidate without further inspecting their actual views and values, which could be sufficient to tip the balance in close races toward the Republicans. Under the state's Clean Elections law, these calculating efforts even wind up being funded by the taxpayers, and the political operatives listing themselves as campaign managers for the sham candidates could be paid for their electoral shenanigans.

It's a compelling story with a number of tragic angles that have been largely ignored in the clamor. One is May's apparent descent from his previous reputation as a comparatively "honorable, well-respected" politician, garnered following his disclosure on the Arizona House floor of his homosexuality — which led to his ouster from the U.S. Army and a national spotlight shined on the plight of gays in the military.

The other sad aspect to this story is the blatant exploitation of the homeless for political purposes. On the surface, the notion of homeless people running for office could be seen as a laudable display of democracy and equality in action. But when orchestrated in this manner — the candidates all filed on the eve of the primaries, for instance — it is little more than another denigration of people's character and dignity. The fact that it was a Republican putting them up to run on the Green Party line further indicates the inherently farcical nature of the whole sad affair.

Go ahead, admit it: the headline made you read this story. If I had titled it something more earnestly rendered — such as "Homelessness Increases Due to Faltering Economy" or "People Go Hungry on America's Streets" — you might be reading something else right now. But thankfully you're here, and so am I; thus, I will ask you to read a bit further because there is a point behind the headline.

Let's call it the double-edged nature of sensationalism. This is the situation in which no one will pay much attention to a story without a dramatic tagline — yet when there is a sensational heading, that's about all people will remember. In other words, readers are drawn to the sensationalized news item, but won't get much beyond the surface of the story. Hence we have the socially-conscious writer's dilemma: present the argument in a sober in-depth manner and draw fewer readers, or sensationalize the topic to bring in many more readers who won't do much more than skim the surface.

This conundrum is particularly powerful when writing about issues of intense marginalization and potential despair such as homelessness. People who might otherwise be moved to take action or express their empathy can sometimes develop "compassion fatigue" when asked repeatedly to deal with the harsh realities of the world in which we live. A sensationalized story might break through the doldrums of mundane living and informational overload, but can it foster actual engagement or useful action?

No, says blogger Paul David Tuff, in an insightful essay on the dangers of sensationalism. "The phenomenon of sensationalism satisfies the need of Americans for any kind of excitement to medicate the reality of a soulless social system devoid of harmony and fulfillment," writes Tuff. "If we were a society of united and satisfied citizens, we would be investing our time and energy in striving to attain and maintain a global system of economic, environmental, social, cultural, religious and political cooperation."

As Tuff views it, the lack of a strong impetus toward justice reflects a profound spiritual crisis as much as a political one: "The quality of spirituality in our society is reflected instead in the hopelessness of the homeless, the militancy of our political and economic institutions, the intolerance of our religions, the rage of our criminals, the apathy of our drug addicts, and the despair many of us have of effecting social rehabilitation and cultural transformation."

All this week, End Homelessness is highlighting the negative policies of various cities and the perceptions of their residents when it comes to coexisting with people struggling with homelessness. All too often, the consensus is simply, "NIMBY," or "not in my backyard." Be sure to check out our posts about Sylmar, California, Nashville, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., St. Petersburg, Florida, New York City and the nationwide crisis of affordable housing.

You might not be familiar with Grand Junction, Colorado, but many of the issues recently being experienced there will likely ring a bell. Like many "boomtowns," particularly in the West, Grand Junction (or just GJ) has experienced rapid growth and a creeping gentrification that often results in tensions with homeless residents. And in fact, those tensions have bubbled over of late, leading to classic confrontations over public space utilization and dramatic police officer dismissals for what are ostensibly "hate crimes" against the homeless. The NIMBY forces have indeed been at work in GJ.

The present cycle of homeless persecution began about a year ago, when the city council attempted to adopt two "emergency ordinances" (bypassing normal legislative procedures) aimed at banning solicitation in public places. Following a hearing in which homeless community members and advocates packed the council chambers in opposition, a revised bill was passed in October 2009 that banned "soliciting in medians" and further prohibited being in a median for any reason at all. But there was a problem, and it would soon become — quite literally — a serious "wedge issue" for the city and its residents.

In central GJ there's a small triangular patch of grass bounded by busy roads on all sides; it's called Colorado West Park but is better known to locals as "the wedge," and it's a place where the homeless have publicly congregated. Suddenly and surreptitiously, the park sign, picnic bench and trash can were all removed, and voila! — the park suddenly became a median. The implications were immediately clear: in a city with dwindling public spaces, one of the few remaining islands for the homeless was suddenly turned into a regulated space where their activities would now be criminalized.

This did not sit well with GJ commentators such as those at independent loca

One of the truly challenging aspects of being homeless and being a homeless advocate is the sense of diminished expectations one has to cultivate in order to stay sane. Things that seem self-evident wind up becoming full-on battlegrounds, including basic notions such as that housing should be a human right and that everyone should be entitled to dignity and equal treatment under the law. In the case of homelessness, as with other examples of marginalization, the debate starts so far away from these "self-evident, basic notions" that we oftentimes wind up arguing for outcomes that can seem quite silly and downright insulting.

Exemplifying these watered-down points of contention is the right to sleep outdoors. For weekend campers this is a simple matter of securing a permit or driving into the National Forest somewhere accessible. For the homeless, however, this is actually a matter of survival in many cases, since there are either too few or wholly inadequate indoor sleeping options in many communities. While we might think that something as necessary and fundamentally human as sleeping would be left alone, it is increasingly the case that municipalities are criminalizing "urban camping" as a euphemistic way of making it illegal for homeless people to fall asleep while outside — in other words, making it illegal for most of them to exist.

Okay, so you probably already knew this, since it's highly likely that something like it is happening where you live. But it isn't merely chronic homeless people caught in the web of criminalization; consider the multitudes that have been evicted or foreclosed upon in recent years, and ask yourself where they are sleeping at night. In many locales, sleeping in vehicles is likewise illegal, leaving displaced people with very dubious choices — stay awake? sleep with eyes open? risk squatting? — in order to survive. A 2009 survey of 235 U.S. cities found that 33 percent had laws prohibiting "camping" in certain parts of the city, while 17 percent had full citywide bans in place. And the trend is growing.

But there's some good news to report as well. Charlotte County, which sits to the south of Tampa-St. Petersburg on Florida's west coast, recently rejected by a vote of 3-2 the adoption of an urban camping ordinance despite an outcry from some sectors.

In the ongoing effort to address social problems primarily by talking about them rather than doing anything concrete, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is proposing a set of new definitions of homelessness in order to determine who will be eligible for HUD-funded homeless assistance programs. The proposed changes are in a "public comment" period through June 21, 2010, after which time they will take effect in substantially the proposed form. While this will affect access to certain services, the overall impact is more subtle, and the task of ending homelessness is still in need of much more than simple redefinitions.

Well, it's not all for naught, actually. As blogger David Henderson observed back in March, "If we are to end homelessness, we have to agree on what homelessness means, and how we measure it." In a subsequent piece, it was noted how egregiously HUD undercounts the homeless, potentially leaving multitudes quite literally out in the cold. Most significantly, the proposed new definitions appear to omit people without dependent children who are living in unstable situations, and furthermore extend the time of a required stay in an institution providing temporary residence from 30 to 90 days.

While these changes leave much to be desired, they will at least bring HUD into closer alignment with other agencies' definitions — including the overarching Federal Definition of Homelessness that codes a "homeless person" as "an individual who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence," or "who has a primary nighttime residence" that is either "a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter;" "an institution that provides a temporary residence;" or "a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings." Essentially the federal standard encompasses anyone lacking a stable nighttime residence to which they are allowed to retreat without permission or exception.

In this light, the critical factor becomes housing, primarily its affordability and its fitness for human habitation. Just as in other metrics used to set federal policy — such as employment and healthcare — many people who do not technically meet the federal definition may well exist in a state of being "underhoused" either due to their financial capacity to afford the space or maintain its condition as a habitable domicile. Larger factors including economic recession and neighborhood deterioration contribute to many more people living in substandard and unstable situations than would be officially counted among the homeless.

I live in Arizona, which these days is like saying one is from Germany circa 1939 or Mississippi in the 1960s. You're probably familiar with our draconian immigration laws, including the implications for racial profiling, expanded police powers and a general attitude of exclusion and intolerance. When we consider these trends, there are actually strong parallels with the treatment of homeless people in America. Whereas Arizona's anti-immigrant stance has yielded national outrage, and rightly so, far less attention has been paid to the fact that homeless people are treated this way every day in cities across the country. Here are a few similarities to consider:

"Show us your papers." Homeless people experience routine ID checks, police stops and profiling based on external criteria including physical appearance. In fact, they will often have their IDs taken or destroyed with the implicit intention of making their lives more difficult to navigate. One of the basic struggles of homelessness actually is possessing the proper credentials and identification in order to access services and potential opportunities for education, employment or housing; without the right papers, one can get caught in a self-perpetuating state of disempowerment, as immigrants often experience here.

Forced migration. Being chased from place to place and town to town, people living in a state of homelessness are oftentimes forced into a state of perpetual motion. "No trespassing," "no loitering," "no camping," "no sitting" — to someone without a private shelter the world is a constant set of prohibitions and restrictions. This has the effect of requiring one to keep moving in an attempt to find a safe haven, even if only for a moment. The sense of vulnerability in such a state is palpable and debilitating.

Status crimes. Although denied by officials and policy makers, laws targeting behaviors such as urban camping and sidewalk sitting are intended to impact a particular class of people, just as Arizona's anti-immigrant laws do. Proponents argue that it is only conduct being prohibited, not categories of individuals, but these claims are belied by the reality on the ground since the conduct in question is often unique (or nearly so) to the class intended to be criminalized. As the French writer and Nobel Prize-winner Anatole France once poignantly said, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread."