Burnt Orange Report

Texas Cities "Mean" to Homeless

By Byron LaMasters

No shocker really. Texas is "mean" to children, gay and lesbians, students, the unemployed, the uninsured, the poor and the working class -- why would the homeless be any exception?

The Dallas Morning News reports:

Texas is the fourth "meanest" state in the nation and Dallas, Austin and San Antonio are among the 20 "meanest" cities in how they treat their homeless, according to a national survey released Tuesday.

Angelita Alvarez prepares to sleep on the sidewalk outside the Day Resource Center on Tuesday evening. The National Coalition for the Homeless examined ordinances and activities in 179 communities nationwide that the advocacy group said criminalized homelessness rather than addressed its causes or eased its conditions.

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Dallas, ranked 15th among "meanest" cities, made it on the list for the first time because of ordinances banning panhandling, sleeping in public, obstructing sidewalks and loitering or loafing in public places. Rankings also were based on homeless people's experiences and input from local activists.

Donald Whitehead, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based group, said the survey focused on criminalization of the homeless because "all it does is exacerbate the person's condition. It does nothing to address homelessness. If a person gets ticketed, if a person gets jailed at the end of the day, they're still homeless."

The group's report criticized Dallas for pressuring volunteer groups earlier this year to stop feeding homeless people in a parking lot across from the public library and instead use the small, city-run Day Resource Center.

Then, when about 225 people began sleeping outside the center at night, Dallas police conducted pre-dawn raids and made arrests. Two weeks ago, two homeless people were killed when a truck driver accidentally plowed into their group outside the center.

Share your thoughts on the homeless in Dallas
"It's ridiculous. We're not bothering anybody," Kellie Hecht, a 48-year-old woman who fled her home in August because of domestic violence and now sleeps outside the center, said of the frequent police raids.

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The coalition ranked Austin 10th on its mean city list in part because of a campaign to discourage people from giving spare change to panhandlers. It said the capital city did not offer sufficient services for its homeless, so there was little alternative to begging.

San Antonio was 17th on the list, partly because of police ticketing for loitering and panhandling and proposed crackdowns on urban camping.

Nothin' like a little southern hospitality...

Update: The full release on the study by the National Coalition for the Homeless is available here.