CRIMINALISATION OF THE HOMELESS (PART 3)
OUR House in Oranjezicht has proven along with many of its international counterparts that housing the homeless will be the only way of eventually eradicating homelessness.
The Rehoming Collective, a collective of both rehomed individuals and sector service providers, has devised a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Cape Town but for this plan to successfully deliver the desired outcome, every one of us will have to buy into it and participate. It’s a plan devised by rehomed individuals. One of the key issues that has to be addressed is the criminalisation of the homeless.
Many have nowhere to live and so sleep in doorways, squats, abandoned buildings, parks and other places unfit for human habitation. There is a huge deficit of bed spaces for the homeless in Cape Town. Unfortunately, living rough on the streets of Cape Town has become a nightmare with your every move potentially resulting in either a criminal record or a fine which we cannot pay.
A conscious policy of exclusion is applied to hide the unwillingness of the City to assume its responsibilities for upholding the human rights of all of its residents.
Social, economic and cultural rights, such as the rights to water, food, health, education and work, cannot be fully exercised without a home. The same can be said about many civil and political rights such as the rights to privacy and family life.
Repressive laws that specifically target homeless people amount to discrimination on the basis of economic and social status.
We see daily how homeless persons are penalised for certain behaviours and actions that they have no choice but to perform in public: sleeping, sitting, lying, littering, lodging, urinating, camping or storing belongings in public spaces.
Individuals who live on the street are increasingly finding that daily life-sustaining activities can result in criminal sanctions and expose them to abuse, harassment, violence, corruption and extortion by both private individuals and law enforcement officials.
Criminalisation pushes homeless persons further and further into poverty and social exclusion, from which they simply cannot escape without holistic long-term poverty reduction and transitional housing made available. It is this that The Rehoming Collective, together with Anchored Lives, will be presenting to the City and the provincial Department of Social Development: housing first supplemented by job-readiness and job-creation that will be self-sufficient and sustainable.
Currently, with insufficient public infrastructure, services and low-cost housing in place, persons living in poverty and experiencing homelessness are left with no viable place to sleep, sit, eat or drink. Not only can this constitute a violation of the right to adequate housing, but these measures may also have serious adverse physical and psychological effects, undermining the right to an adequate standard of physical and mental health.
With few resources and no fixed address, persons living in poverty and who are homeless are unlikely to be able to seek justice or a remedy, or to enjoy equality of arms in any proceedings against them.
Homeless persons should not be deprived of their basic rights to liberty or to privacy, personal security and protection of the family, just because they are poor and need shelter.
Of course, homeless persons would prefer safe, affordable, adequate housing to public parks and bus stations.
One does not choose to live in poverty, and therefore should not be punished for that situation.
This also makes economic sense: given the extremely high costs of policing, detention, prosecution and incarceration, available resources would be better spent on devising housing solutions for the homeless community. Moreover, this would be more in line with the City’s human rights obligations. It should go without saying that homeless persons are equal in dignity, intrinsic value and in rights to all other members of society.