Sunday, September 23, 2007

NanceGreggs's Journal: Nance Rants - We Are Connected - We Are Not Alone

This is just what I needed today.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Daily Kos: Help Me End Homelessness

Common sense, Housing First, works in Philadelphia.

A Constitutional approach to homelessness by Karl Meyer

HOMELESSNESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMERICA

notes prepared for the Nashville Homeless Power Project
by Karl Meyer 8-27-2007

In the historic traditions of our country, from its beginnings, the human and civil rights listed in the United States Constitution are not regarded as created or granted by the Constitution. According to the founders of our country, these are inherent rights that are merely recognized and guaranteed to all American residents in the Bill of Rights. This tradition is eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men [people], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Some of the unalienable rights of people are routinely violated in Tennessee, and elsewhere in our country, simply because people are homeless and have no secure place to take shelter and to safeguard their belongings. One of these is the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures:

The Tennessee Constitution, Declaration of Rights, Article I, Section 7, says:
“That the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures…”

The U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Amendment IV, says:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The ordinary person who owns or rents a house or apartment has a place to store belongings. Their home is their “castle”. Their property is protected by law against burglary or private trespass, and law enforcement officers can not enter the property or search it without a warrant from a judge, based on probable cause, describing what is to be searched for or seized.

People who are homeless have no such protected places to shelter their persons or their belongings. They often carry all their belongings in a knapsack, shopping bags, or in their pockets. Their knapsacks, shopping bags, the pockets of their pants, should enjoy the same protection from unjustified searches as my house or your apartment. They must not be searched without a warrant from a judge specifically describing anything illegal that the police have sound evidence for expecting to find. Whenever police officers search the belongings of homeless people without warrants and probable cause, the homeless people are denied equal protection of the laws.

The U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIV, Section 1, says that no State shall, “…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Tennessee Constitution, Article XI, Section 16, says that the declaration of rights of the Tennessee Constitution “…shall never be violated under any pretense whatever…” and that everything in the bill of rights “…shall forever remain inviolate.”

Homeless people are denied these rights whenever they are hassled on the streets, or their persons, clothing, or meager belongings are searched without a warrant and probable cause.

RIGHT TO SHELTER

Neither the Tennessee Constitution nor the U.S. Constitution specifically lists or guarantees an inherent right to a home, or a secure place of shelter. However, the Tennessee Constitution, Declaration of Rights, Article 8, does provide that no person shall be “disseized of his free-hold, liberties or privileges, or outlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed or deprived of his life, liberty or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land”.

More pointedly, the U. S. Bill of Rights, Amendment IX, says that:
“ The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”.

The right to sleep is an unalienable right inherent to every person. The right to relieve oneself is an essential right. These are simple rights, so essential to us that it is practically impossible to take them away completely, even by the most intense coercion or torture. These rights are so inherent that we can not even survive without them.

Earth and most of the wealth of her resources was created billions of years ago, without any help from human hands. Yet we live in a society in which almost every square inch of ground and every tool and means of livelihood is owned as private property, or claimed by governments as public property. Ironically, any people with money to own automobiles automatically gain the use of two hundred square feet or more of public street, whenever it can be found, to park a car, or as many cars as they may own. Even a bicycle owner can lock a bike to a post and claim six square feet of public space. But people who do not even have the price of a room for one night, aren’t granted the right to lie down on the concrete pavement and claim even the six square feet needed to lie down and sleep. If they can not find a public washroom (and few are to be found, especially at night), they aren’t allowed the legal right to relieve themselves anywhere at all. To do any of these things subjects them to arrest for the crimes of disorderly conduct, loitering, vagrancy or public indecency.

To paraphrase the Gospels: the foxes have their holes, the birds have their nests, the autos have their parking spaces, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. (see Luke 9:58)



SOLUTIONS

Every person must be guaranteed a minimum right to a readily accessible place to rest and to store personal belongings in safety and security. A “free market” system, such as ours, makes some level of unemployment chronic and inevitable. In such a system every person must be granted access to some reliable and stable means of livelihood to secure a reasonable standard of nutrition, health care and shelter sufficient to support life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

When these basic rights are not socially recognized, unemployed and homeless people are “disseized of [their] free-hold” and “outlawed or exiled” in violation of the Tennessee Constitution. They are denied the unlisted but unalienable rights to shelter and other basic necessities for survival that are implicitly guaranteed in the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The United Nations Universal Declaration of human rights, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948, recognizes the same principle of equal and unalienable rights for all people as is recognized by the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Article 7 endorses equal protection of the laws for all.
Article 22 provides that: “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”
Article 23 (1) says that: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”
Article 25 (1) provides that: “Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Although U.S. delegates played a large role in defining these standards, and the U.S. is one of the countries best able to afford to support such standards, they are still far from being met in the U.S. Because this document is not a treaty ratified by the U.S. Congress, it does not have the force of law in the United States, unlike the provisions of the U.S. Constitution cited above, which are part of the “supreme law of the land”, as defined in Article VI (2) of the Constitution. It is the Tennessee and U.S. Constitutions that implicitly guarantee a right to shelter and a means of livelihood for all, and very explicitly promise the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

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