The Crime of No Address: America’s Unhoused and the Callous Disregard for Human Rights

In cities across America, a stark tableau unfolds daily: individuals and families living in tents pitched on cold concrete, seeking a sliver of warmth and safety in a world that increasingly wishes them invisible. For many citizens and policymakers, these encampments are a “problem” to be managed, an eyesore to be cleared. But for those within them, it is a fight for survival, an existence shadowed by fear and uncertainty. As cities increasingly turn to criminalization as a “solution,” a crucial question remains largely unspoken in the halls of power: What about the fundamental human rights of people whose only crime is having nowhere to live?

The answer, it seems, is often a deafening silence, a callous disregard that allows punitive measures to supplant genuine aid. One rarely hears politicians, rushing past makeshift shelters on their way to power lunches, speak of the inherent dignity or the human rights of those huddled inside. Instead, the discourse is dominated by ordinances, sweeps, and the “leveraging” of law enforcement against the most vulnerable.

Consider the experience of those who have walked this path. One individual, recounting months of homelessness, speaks of an overwhelming desire to be invisible, even in the most public of spaces. Every attempt to rest, no matter how removed from public view, carried the terrifying possibility of not waking up, of succumbing to violence, exposure, or illness. A constant, gnawing anxiety became a companion – the fear of overstaying a welcome in a coffee shop even after a purchase, the relentless search for a moment’s peace, a safe corner to simply exist. This isn’t a policy paper talking point; it is the lived, visceral reality for hundreds of thousands.

Yet, instead of addressing the root causes – a severe national housing shortage, the decimation of mental health services, the opioid crisis, stagnant wages – the response is increasingly punitive. As detailed in a recent report by The Economist, a staggering 771,000 Americans were homeless last year, a record high and an 18% surge from 2023. Rather than meeting this crisis with an equally robust surge in support, many municipalities, emboldened by last June’s Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which found that punishing unhoused people for sleeping outside when no shelter is available is not a cruel and unusual punishment, have rushed to enact camping bans. At least 163 such restrictions have passed since the ruling, nearly a third in California alone, pushing the nation, city by city, towards attempting to end unsheltered homelessness by force.

Fresno, California, offers a grim case study. With more unhoused individuals than available shelter beds, the city now employs a special police team to investigate encampments reported via a city app. Camping in public is a misdemeanor, carrying fines up to $1,000 or a year in jail – astronomical penalties for someone with nothing. Officials term this “leverage”: accept a referral to a shelter (if one is even available and suitable) or face the legal consequences. The outcome? A police record, further complicating any future attempt to secure employment or housing, and often, simply displacement to a less visible, perhaps more dangerous, location. As one advocate in Fresno, Dez Martinez, noted, people are just “hiding from the cops.” Fresno’s Republican mayor, Jerry Dyer, a former police chief, chillingly admitted that people choosing “places that are less visible publicly… is not a bad thing” for businesses.

This approach, sometimes cloaked in the Orwellian term “coercive compassion,” is a cruel joke. Coercion into non-existent or overcrowded and often unsafe shelter systems is not compassion. As the formerly homeless individual attested, the “offer” of a shelter cot, when shelters are full or present their own dangers, is no offer at all. It’s a threat dressed up as aid. This sentiment finds bipartisan echoes, with even Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of California lamenting that previous court rulings supposedly “tied the hands” of officials seeking to clear encampments. This cross-aisle agreement illustrates a disturbing trend: a collective frustration with the visibility of homelessness leading to an embrace of policies that prioritize optics over actual solutions or human dignity.

The core issue here is the profound disconnect between those making the laws and those living under their punitive weight. Few, if any, politicians who champion these camping bans and “tough love” approaches have ever experienced the gnawing fear of having no door to lock, no safe place to lay their head. They haven’t had to choose between a crowded, rule-bound shelter cot (if available) and the marginal autonomy of a tent, only to have that last refuge declared illegal. They don’t understand what it means for all your worldly possessions, as Davina Valenzuela in Fresno experienced, to be unceremoniously devoured by a garbage truck, your meager savings lost, your dignity shredded alongside your belongings.

This lack of understanding, this experiential chasm, is what allows them to so easily strip away basic human considerations. They speak of “cleaning up the streets,” of “business impacts,” of “public order.” They rarely, if ever, speak of the human right to shelter, the right to exist in public space when one has no private space, or the right to be treated with basic human dignity rather than as a blight to be eradicated. They have no business treating people like criminals whose only offense is poverty and a lack of housing. The claim “but it’s the law” rings hollow when the law itself becomes an instrument of oppression against the most destitute.

The historical parallels are ominous. Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania warns that these camping bans risk repeating the “very sordid history” of 19th-century anti-vagrancy laws, which served to fill jails and prisons with the impoverished, effectively criminalizing existence itself for those without means. Moving people from criminalization to institutionalization is a well-worn path of social control, not social support.

While a few cities like Los Angeles are reportedly attempting to clear encampments without the immediate threat of citation or jail (though its unsheltered population remains alarmingly high), the broader trend is punitive. And this local trend is set against a backdrop of potential federal divestment. President Punk’s budget proposal, as The Economist notes, includes a 44% slash to HUD funding, jeopardizing the very rental assistance programs that are a critical lifeline preventing many more from falling into homelessness. As Dez Martinez bluntly warned, if such big cuts are implemented, “We’ll all be at [Felonious Punk’s] house… camping on the White House lawn.”

The truth is, incarcerating anyone for being homeless is a severe violation of their human rights. It inflicts profound fear and pain. It offers no solution. It merely hides the evidence of a deeper societal failure – the failure to ensure affordable housing, accessible mental health care, and a robust social safety net. As long as policy is driven by a desire to make the unhoused invisible, rather than by a commitment to addressing their fundamental human needs and rights, the crisis will not only persist but deepen, creating a society that is less compassionate, less just, and ultimately, less humane for everyone. The “problem” is not the people forced to live on the streets; the problem is a system that allows them to be there, and then punishes them for it.