Colorado Supreme Court declines
to hear homeless camping case
A Boulder attorney is vowing to continue his crusade against the city's anti-camping law even after the Colorado Supreme Court refused to hear a case alleging the ordinance is unconstitutional.
In a split decision, the high court justices announced that they would not take up the case of David Madison vs. City of Boulder.
The decision means that Madison -- a homeless man in Boulder who was convicted of camping without a permit after police found him sleeping in a sleeping bag on Nov. 24, 2009 -- likely will have to pay a fine of $50 or perform five hours of community service.
But beyond the single case, the decision also essentially upholds Boulder's law that forbids sleeping overnight on public property.
"Obviously, we're disappointed," said David Harrison, one of Madison's attorneys, who helped appeal the case along with the American Civil Liberties Union.
The appeal was based on the theory that Boulder's anti-camping law violates state and federal constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishments, contravenes due process guarantees and infringes on the constitutionally protected right to travel.
Read the
Boulder Daily Camera report
here.
Rancher who helps homeless
may lose control of his property
A rancher who has long been at odds with the county over housing homeless people is on the brink of losing custodianship of his property because he hasn’t complied with county codes, say lawyers for San Luis Obispo County.
But Dan De Vaul, who operates who operates a nonprofit sober living program called Sunny Acres, contends that he has met terms of a court order that includes moving tenants out of illegal buildings and supplying safe drinking water on his 72-acre ranch.
The county is expected to ask a judge to appoint a receiver who would oversee the progress of De Vaul’s compliance while forcing him to foot the bill of cleaning up his property.
"The extent to which the county will lie to try to do me in is astonishing,”
De Vaul said outside of court. “They’re flat out making things up because I don’t bow down to them.”
Read the
San Luis Obispo Tribune report
here. And see previous post (“I’m proud to go to jail for housing the homeless”)
here.
Chaotic lives underlie troubles of homeless
A strong link between sleeping rough and other "chaotic life experiences" was found in a new study of Britain's homeless people called Understanding Complex Lives.
Nearly half of those surveyed had spent time in institutions, had drug or alcohol dependency or had been involved in "street activities" such as begging, prostitution or shoplifting. Almost two in five have attempted suicide.
Theresa McDonagh, the report's author, said the two-year study of 1,286 homeless people highlights the need for workers in health, housing and social services to collaborate more effectively to prevent clients winding up on the streets.
"Homelessness comes quite late in the day in the story of their lives getting more and more difficult," she said. "Usually they'll have had lots of low-level contacts with different agencies, but still fall through the cracks."
Read
The Independent article
here. And read the entire report
here.
Registering the poor to vote is
"like handing out burglary tools to criminals"
Stone Soup Station calls out a very un-American argument to disenfranchise "the poor" in a blog called the "American Thinker." Read the post
here.
St. Pete mayor to Tampa:
Deal with your own homeless
St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster has a message for Tampa: Don't depend on St. Petersburg to deal with your homeless — especially during next year's Republican Convention.
The warning came during a City Council meeting, when police officials described a slight increase in homeless people from Hillsborough County seeking services in Pinellas, such as bus tickets or shelter space at
Pinellas Safe Harbor.
Read the
St. Petersburg Times report
here.
Welfare drug testing challenged in federal court
A state law that requires poor Floridians to pass a drug test before receiving cash welfare assistance -- a key tenet of Gov. Rick Scott's campaign -- is now being challenged in federal court.
The
lawsuit, from a Navy veteran in Orlando and the ACLU of Florida, acknowledges that the state can drug test in specific instances, such as when there are public safety issues or in cases affecting certain public school children.
But a blanket law ordering tests for all adults who apply for cash help amounts to "unreasonable and suspicionless searches" and violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, according to the lawsuit.
Read the
St. Petersburg Times report
here. And see previous posts
here and
here.
Yes, there are hungry people in Orlando
One in three Orlando
* households with children did not have enough money to buy needed food at times in the last 12 months.
The Orlando metro area's 33.9% rate of food hardship in households with children is the second-highest in the nation. Only Winston-Salem had a higher rate.
Five of the metro areas with the highest rates of food hardship were in Florida, the most of any state. The others in the top 25 are: Lakeland-Winter Haven, 33.0% in third place; Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, 29.4%; Cape Coral-Fort Myers, 27.7%; and Jacksonville, 27.6%.
Read the report, "Food Hardship in America 2010," by the Food Research and Action Center
here.
---------------
* The numbers are for the Orlando-Kissimmee Metropolitan Statistical Area. MSAs are Census Bureau-defined areas that include central cities plus the surrounding counties with strong economic and social ties to the central cities.
St. Pete ordinance would make it illegal for panhandlers
to tell lies on their cardboard signs
St. Petersburg is proposing a new ordinance aimed at truth in advertising -- on those cardboard signs people hold up on the side of the road.The new ordinance would ban "fraudulent panhandling," making it illegal for panhandlers to claim that they're homeless or disabled or a veteran or stranded if they're not.
"Most of the people who fly the cards say they're homeless or veterans, but most aren't veterans or homeless," said Robert Marbut, the city's consultant on homelessness. "But they are making a lot of tax-free money."
But the proposal raises many questions: How would the police check the accuracy of those claims? Can the city really regulate what people write on signs? And after the city's
successful crackdown on the homeless and panhandling population, who's left to break the new law?
Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender Bob Dillinger already sees a flaw in the law: a homeless person could incriminate himself just by answering an officer's questions. The Fifth Amendment protects against that.
"It's the criminalization of homelessness," Dillinger said. "And in this case since it's a criminal offense, you don't have to answer.
"You prove that I'm not homeless. You prove that I'm not a veteran."
If any of these cases ever go to court, the area's top public defender added: "I'll try some of those myself."
Read the
St. Petersburg Times report
here.
By the way, this is already illegal in Orlando. Section 43.86(4) of the City Code prohibits "false or misleading" panhandling, including saying that you're homeless, when you're is not.
Update: Well, never mind. The proposed ordinance has been withdrawn. Assistant city attorney Mark Winn believed a recently passed state law banned aggressive panhandling, but that legislation died in committee.
"I was mistaken," Winn said. "There is no state legislation on this, so there is no need for us to be addressing this issue at this time."
Read the
St. Petersburg Times report
here.
