On April 7, dozens of Californians gathered before the State Senate Transportation and Housing Committee to speak out for an end to laws that de facto criminalize the very status of homelessness. The Committee was considering the Right to Rest Act-path-clearing legislation that would have protected homeless people's rights to sleep, rest, inhabit legally parked vehicles, pray in public, and share food.
Unfortunately, through the course of the hearing, it became evident that greater public education was necessary. The bill's sponsor, Senator Carol Liu (D-Pasadena) and representatives from the more than 140 community groups that backed the bill decided to pull the legislation from the hearing.
On April 30-the legislative cut-off date by which a bill needed to be voted out of committee-Senate Bill 608 left the Senate's consideration for this year. On April 27, the Colorado General Assembly's State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Committee held a hearing on nearly identical, with worse results: With three outstanding exceptions, the committee voted against the Colorado Right to Rest Act. Multiple assemblymembers expressed their gratitude to Assemblymembers Salazar and Melton for introducing the bill, but offered an assortment of disingenuous reasons for withholding support: Civil rights legislation doesn't create housing. A fine on transgressing municipalities would reduce funds available for homeless services. The insincerity of these objections is obvious from one key fact: None of the apologetic opponents of the bill incorporated their objections into proposed amendments, or have offered other legislation that would address their apparent concerns.
In this past month, homeless people have been stymied in their campaigns for the right to sleep legally in Hawai'i, California, and Colorado. Legislatively, April of 2015 has been a grim month for our collective conscience and for the sordid legislative history of the Western states. Thank whatever benevolent powers watch over us that we're not dependent on legislatures for progress.
To return to April 27, while neither legislature was capable of acquitting itself with decency, a marked difference between the California and Colorado experiences could be found not on the dais, but in the audience: In addition to homeless people, service providers, Catholic Workers, and other allies from Colorado, the proponents of House Bill 1264 were accompanied by allies from eighteen states who had by rare serendipity gathered that same week for an unusual conference on the decriminalizaton of homelessness. When homeless people from Denver walked out of the Capitol Building, they walked out with allies from Alabama, Oregon, Connecticut, Texas, and the District of Columbia. Assemblymembers Salazar and Melton swore to bring the Right to Rest Act back next year, just as Senator Liu has done in California.
The legislatures of the Western states have, thus far, been unable to overcome the bigotry and falsehood of their members.
Between now and the next legislative session, there's plenty of work to do. Organizers throughout the country have begun an informal network to share outreach methods and tools. The longer allies work together on these campaigns, the stronger the bonds between organizers throughout the country.
Oregon: What's New in the Homeless Bill of Rights Campaign? Right to Rest Bill 2015...and 2016!
On April 17th a group of core organizers for the Oregon Right to Rest Bill, including several Right to Dreamers, met with Amanda Hess, Chief Advisor for Oregon State Senator Chip Shields and Kimberly McCullough, lobbyist with the ACLU of Oregon. We made the tough decision together not to be move our bill forward for the Human Services and Early Childhood Committee vote on the 21st as we had hoped to do. Though there has been so much hard work and good progress made, we simply did not have the votes needed to get our bill out of the committee.
Senator Shield' staff committed to continuing the struggle in 2016 and we will absolutely keep building our campaign. Our Homeless Bill of Rights partners in California and Colorado, had similar challenging but powerful experiences with our collective Right to Rest bill in their states. We will continue to fight for all of the bills and campaigns to house, support, educate and decriminalize our communities! Winning human rights takes time.
Because this bill did not pass the people of Colorado will continue to be awakened in sleep and moved about the city with no place to legally rest; the people of Colorado will continue to be ticketed and later thrown in jail for covering up with a blanket to stay warm; the people of Colorado will continue to hear taps on their window from officers telling them they can't sleep in their own car. And the list goes on of all the dehumanizing, destructive, costly, and ineffective forces that will continue to be used to criminalize existing in public space.
With that said it should be clear why the State, Veteran, and Military Affairs committee vote against the Right to Rest is not the end of anything. This is only the beginning. We are continuing this fight for our rights to survive as long as they continue to squash those rights. We will be building the movement and coming back next year even stronger...! This year we had this bill in Colorado, California, and Oregon - next year it may be in even more states! We press on until we can all rest...
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