A summary of human rights

In shelter deprivation, the homeless experience a primary human rights violation. This violation engenders and establishes secondary rights, necessary to the sustenance of life and the defense of essential liberty:

1) Whereas the homeless have no property on which to store or prepare food, they have a right to life sustaining, community provided food supplies. 2) Whereas the homeless cannot routinely obtain, store or launder clothing, the homeless have a right to life sustaining, community provided, weather appropriate clothing. 3) Whereas the homeless have no homes in which to rest, the homeless have a life sustaining “right to rest” in our public spaces. 4) Whereas the homeless have a right to rest, materials necessary for the life sustaining act of sleeping — such as, bedding, tarps, tents — must be made available. 5) Whereas the homeless have no toilet access on private property, they have a right to 24 hour, community supported toilet access on public property. 6) The homeless have a Constitutional right to privacy in their person and possessions; that is, a right to freedom from arbitrary intrusions and actions by law enforcement personnel. 7) The homeless have a right to peaceably assemble in the public space. 8) The homeless have a right to refuse services, especially where compulsory sheltering is a means of de facto incarceration.

These rights are self-evident and inalienable. No abridgment of these rights erodes fundamental principles of justice, applying with greatest certainty, in any decent society, to the poorest and therefore most vulnerable among us.

— Patrick Newman, Chico