Don't Let Boulder Criminalize the Homeless Any Longer

Terri Sternburg is a whiz at poker, loves a good novel and has a soft spot for every cat and dog she comes across. Once a concert violinist, she's someone I'd love to have as godmother to my children, a wise woman in her 50s that I'm happy to call a friend and an ally.

She's also homeless and struggling to put a stop to the enforcement of a city camping ordinance in Boulder, Colorado that unfairly singles out those without shelter. You can help her by letting the mayor of Boulder know that being homeless is not a crime.

"The homeless seem to have no voice. We agree to this crazy invisibility that's forced on us from every side. We put our heads down and trudge around," Terri says. "But through fighting for this basic right of having a place to sleep, I have a voice. I can offer myself to this and say, 'We matter.'"

Today, with her grassroots organization the Homeless Ordinance Moratorium Endeavor (HOME), she'll lead a protest against fining the homeless $100 for sleeping in the open. The ordinance forbids camping "within any park, parkway, recreation area, open space, or other public or private property." This is happening in a city with far more homeless individuals than shelter beds. Stand with Terri and the homeless of Boulder. Call for a repeal of the ordinance.

The law simply doesn't work. A resolution from HOME suggesting an alternative solution to the current ordinance points out that from 2005 to August 2009, the city issued 1,583 camping tickets. Only 149 of these tickets have been paid. To repeat, less than 10% of all tickets given were paid. But -- this is where it gets interesting -- violators of this law spent a total of 1,516 nights in jail because they simply couldn't pay the fine. A question naturally arises: is the point of this law really to promote health and safety in the city, as officials have said, or is it to hide the homeless in the local jail?

Usually a leader in progressive social policies, Boulder joins a list of cities like Los Angeles, St. Petersburg and Atlanta that have attempted to make homeless people less visible by forcing them to the margins. Officials in Boulder and other cities should know that laws like these have proven unconstitutional and ineffective time and again.

To use an example from Miami, a federal court struck down a city ordinance nearly identical to Boulder's as far back as 1992, holding that "[Miami's] practice of arresting homeless individuals for performing essential, life-sustaining acts in public" violated the homeless plaintiffs' rights to travel, and due process under the 14th Amendment, and right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Add to this the unconstitutionality of singling out any one group for punishment (no one but the homeless would camp under bushes in winter) and Boulder is asking for a legal fight it will lose.

I don't believe that local leaders in Boulder or any other city which criminalizes the homeless enact these laws out of malice. They're simply misinformed and out of touch with the needs of their homeless citizens. It can't feel particularly honorable to enforce a law that demands money from those with nothing.

Boulder should allow camping safe zones. This would dispense with the tiresome debate over tent cities and provide for a safe, healthy alternative. These safe zones, as HOME suggests, could be in church and city parking lots and would undoubtedly be more easily regulated than a diffuse and vulnerable homeless population. This has become especially important as the number of homeless families increases exponentially. More than ever, we need laws that actually help people. Those that do choose to camp outside these safe zones could still be ticketed and given alternative sentences like mandatory vocational rehabilitation rather than pointless and expensive jail time.

Almost anything is better than punishing the homeless for sleeping outdoors. That's why I'm with Terri. I believe in her and her cause. The cause against punishing our society's most vulnerable, those without a home, is one that's easy to support. I hope leaders in Boulder and cities like it will join us. I hope you will join us.

Above: Homeless Ordinance Moratorium Endeavor (HOME) coordinator Terri Sternburg in a coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado. Photo by the author.