{"version":1,"tree":{"n":"html","c":[{"n":"head","x":"\n ","l":"\n ","c":[{"n":"title","x":"Desconocido","l":"\n \n "},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../stylesheet.css"]]},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../page_styles.css"]]}]},{"n":"body","a":[["class","calibre"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"| ","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Siguiente","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articlenextlink"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_8/article_1/index_u51.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_8/index_u72.html\", \"frag\": \"article_0\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_8\"}"]]},{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"After Grants Pass","a":[["class","calibre8"]]},{"n":"h1","x":"American cities are criminalising homelessness. Will that help?","a":[["class","calibre9"]]},{"n":"div","x":"How a Supreme Court decision paved the way for more punitive policies","a":[["class","calibre19"]]},{"n":"p","x":"may. 08, 2025 01:50 | Fresno","a":[["class","calibre10"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img1_u20.jpg"],["title","A man skateboards past a row of homeless tents on Skid Row in Los Angeles."],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_8/article_0/images/img1_u20.jpg"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"D","a":[["data-caps","initial"],["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"AVINA VALENZUELA","l":" watches as sanitation workers heave most of her belongings into a garbage truck. The 33-year-old has been homeless for more than a year, and was sleeping in a dusty alley in central Fresno, the biggest city in California’s Central Valley. The truck devours bags of clothes, a pushchair (stroller), a pile of hypodermic needles and around $120—much of it in change. Police officers arrest her and a friend and sit them in the back of a truck. They are given tickets for camping in a public place, which became a misdemeanour in September in an attempt to shrink the city’s homeless encampments. “That’s all I have right there,” she says, once her handcuffs are taken off. “I don’t know how I ended up here.”","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img2_u22.png"],["title",""],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_8/article_0/images/img2_u22.png"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Roughly ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"771,000 Americans were homeless","l":" last year, more than any other year on record and an 18% increase from 2023. A national housing shortage is by far the biggest culprit, but the end of pandemic rental assistance, an increase in migration and natural disasters that displaced people also contributed to the surge. Only about 35% of homeless people in America sleep outdoors rather than in shelters or in temporary housing, but that is a higher proportion than in most other places tracked by the ","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/12/31/homelessness-rises-to-a-record-level-in-america"]]},{"n":"span","x":"OECD","l":", a club of mostly rich countries (see chart). Rough sleepers are more likely than their sheltered peers to be homeless for long stretches of time. Many of them struggle openly with drug addiction and mental-health problems, which can make tent camps look and feel unsafe.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img3_u3.png"],["title",""],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_8/article_0/images/img3_u3.png"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","x":"The entrenchment of homeless encampments has frustrated both voters, who wonder where the billions of dollars poured into fixing homelessness have gone, and politicians whose careers may ride on fixing the problem. A backlash is well under way. Last June the Supreme Court ruled in ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"a","l":" that punishing homeless people for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go was not a cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by the Eighth Amendment. At least 163 municipalities have passed camping restrictions since then, according to the National Homelessness Law Centre, an advocacy group. Almost a third of those bans are in California, which has both more homeless people than any other state and the highest proportion of rough sleepers (see map). The result is a country that, city by city, is trying to end outdoor homelessness by force.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/04/18/is-ticketing-homeless-people-a-cruel-and-unusual-punishment"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"Grants Pass v Johnson","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]}]},{"n":"p","x":"To understand how these bans are being implemented, consider Fresno, where there are more homeless people in the region than there are beds. Residents report encampments they want cleaned up to the city via an app. A special team of police officers and sanitation workers investigate these spots and make arrests. Sergeant Steven Jaquez, who runs the team, argues that the camping ban gives his officers leverage. Violators can face up to $1,000 in fines—an astronomical amount for someone living on the street—or one year in jail. But in lieu of punishment they can ask police to take them to a shelter where they can inquire about housing or treatment. If they complete a rehab programme, their citation goes away. But if, like Ms Valenzuela, they refuse the offer, tickets can accrue. As of April 25th the city attorney’s office had filed charges in 266 cases. Only 33 of them were resolved because the person charged had accepted services. How harshly people will be punished is still unknown: the first case to make it to trial was dismissed by the judge for taking too long.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"h4","x":"Move on","a":[["class","calibre15"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Fresno’s leaders consider the camping ban a success, and insist that outdoor homelessness is declining. But the most recent official statistics are two years old. Dez Martinez was once homeless and now advocates for her “street family” in Fresno. She reckons people are just hiding from the cops by moving under highway overpasses and tying their belongings to trees. Jerry Dyer, Fresno’s Republican mayor and its former police chief, doesn’t mind if that is true. “I’m sure there are people that have now chosen places that are less visible publicly, which is not a bad thing” for businesses, he offers, though he would prefer people to seek help. Yet if homeless people go into hiding it becomes hard to know how many of them there are. The city can claim success, but the problem may persist in the shadows.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Mr Dyer contends that it is more compassionate to coerce homeless Fresnans to accept housing or treatment than to allow them to suffer on the streets. Despite their different political parties, he sounds remarkably like Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, who argued that lower court rulings previously limiting enforcement against camps had “tied the hands” of officials. The Cicero Institute, a conservative think-tank in Austin, Texas, started by Joe Lonsdale, a tech billionaire, pushes a similar argument as it works to pass state camping bans. “We have a deep discomfort with forcing people to do things,” admits Devon Kurtz, who studies homelessness at Cicero. But, he asks fairly, “Is it ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"OK","l":" to let them die out there?”","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"The fact that so many Republicans and Democrats are on the same side illustrates how frustration with the status quo has scrambled the politics of homelessness. Many on the left were once wary of clearing encampments for fear that breaking up communities and trashing people’s belongings could be traumatic for them. That argument is little-heard these days. The risk is that these camping bans prove to be too big a stick, and eventually follow the same pattern as anti-vagrancy laws passed during the 19th century, filling jails and hospitals with people whose crime is having nowhere to live. “There’s a very sordid history of moving from criminalising people who are destitute, to then institutionalising them,” says Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Not every city has taken a punitive approach. Los Angeles is clearing encampments without the threat of citation or jail and the number of rough sleepers there dropped by 10% between 2023 and 2024. But it is far too soon to celebrate: the number of unsheltered homeless people in ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"LA","l":", adjusted for the city’s population, remains among the highest in the country.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"While cities experiment with camping bans, housing wonks warn that new federal policies could worsen homelessness. In President Donald Trump’s budget request, which is mostly a wish-list, funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development would be slashed by 44%, jeopardising rental-assistance programmes that help keep poor Americans housed. “We’ll all be at Donald Trump’s house” if big cuts are implemented, jokes Ms Martinez, “camping on the White House lawn”.","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"■"}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"Stay on top of American politics with ","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"The ","l":", our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and ","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"US ","l":"in brief","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"a","x":"Checks and Balance","l":", a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance"]]}]}]}]},{"n":"div","x":"\n","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]},{"n":"p","x":"This article was downloaded by ","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre16"]],"c":[{"n":"strong","x":"calibre","l":" from ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"a","x":"https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/07/american-cities-are-criminalising-homelessness-will-that-help","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/07/american-cities-are-criminalising-homelessness-will-that-help"],["rel","calibre-downloaded-from"]]}]},{"n":"br","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"br","l":" | ","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_8/index_u72.html\", \"frag\": \"article_0\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_8\"}"]]}]}]}]},"ns_map":["http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"]}