Sleep, food, water, and shelter: the basic requirements for human survival. But what happens when you can’t afford a home or food for your family and the shelters don’t have any beds? Where would you sleep? How would you eat?
For many Coloradans, it has meant turning to the streets, asking for help, and catching a few hours of sleep when and where they can.
Rather than providing assistance and helping people get back on their feet, cities across Colorado have responded by passing and enforcing cruel and inhumane laws that make homelessness a criminal condition.
A new law, which will be heard in the state legislature this Wednesday, will ensure that all people, regardless of their economic circumstances or social status, have the right to rest and move about in public places without fear of being ticketed, harassed, or arrested.
Please tell legislators to vote YES on HB 1264 and support the Right to Rest Act.
In many Colorado cities, sitting or lying down is illegal. Police have arrested and charged people for using a backpack as a pillow or for covering themselves with a blanket on a cold night. Some cities have made sharing food a crime. According to a recent report, 90% of people who are homeless report being ticketed, arrested, or harassed by police over basic acts of survival, like sleeping or going to the bathroom.
These measures go far beyond valid restrictions on aggressive or genuinely criminal behavior, and they fill our jails and courts with people who don’t deserve to be there — all on the taxpayers’ dime. They do nothing to address the actual causes of homelessness, just criminalize it, hide it from sight, or drive it somewhere else.
