Picture the Homeless

Civil Rights has always been at the core of our work at Picture the Homeless. The City of New York utilizes policing entities to “manage” the presence of homeless New Yorkers by attempting to remove us from public spaces through criminalizing non-criminal life sustaining conduct such as sleeping, standing, walking, panhandling, or eating in public spaces. Not only is criminalizing homeless folks unconstitutional, it is counterproductive to finding long term solutions to homelessness because it diverts critical public resources – from housing for the poorest New Yorkers to jails and police precincts. Rap sheets are no replacement for housing applications or a lease.

"Due process of the law, That is what we're fighting for." "Public Parks are for The People -- We are Only Sleeping, It's Not Illegal!" "Sleeping in the Park is Not A Crime Give Me An Apartment Stop Wasting My Time"

Targeting homeless people for being homeless, and unwelcome in public spaces, constitutes illegal, expensive and destructive city policy. It is unconstitutional because homeless people are targeted and criminalized for being homeless. Laws, as well as rules and regulations such as parks department curfews are to be enforced consistently and when they are not and their application is based on a persons race, economic status, gender, age, sexual orientation/identity or a myriad of other status characteristics then the police and the government employing them is in violation of the law. Whose interests are served by the criminalization of homeless New Yorkers?

The Picture the Homeless Civil Rights Campaign “Whose Quality of Life?” was founded in February of 2002. The principle focus of our civil rights work has been to end the selective enforcement of laws and against homeless New Yorkers by the NYPD, the MTA and Parks police as well as policing entities in our major transit facilities such as Amtrack Police, LIRR Police and Port Authority Police. We utilize multiple strategies to achieve this goal: outreach, providing opportunities for homeless New Yorkers impacted by illegal policing practices to engage in finding and fighting for solutions, educating homeless New Yorkers about their legal rights, research, documentation, media work, educating the public in general about the impact of criminalization, litigation, and building relationships with allies locally and nationally.

Unconstitutional criminalization of homeless New Yorkers also takes the form of other types of constitutional violations – such as our first amendment right to free speech, the right to freedom from arbitrary search and seizure, due process violations (specifically in the case of the State - acting through the police department – illegally confiscating peoples personal belongings) and excessive penalities such as being arrested, illegally fingerprinted and put through the criminal injustice system for Quality of Life violations while other, non-homeless folks would be left alone or only receive a ticket for conduct such as laying down on a park bench, having their belongings on a bench taking up more than 1 seat, or standing on the sidewalk. Imagine a businessman getting arrested or even a ticket for having his briefcase on the park bench next to him. Imagine music lovers attending a philharmonic concert and drinking wine getting arrested for drinking in public.

• Homeless people in this city spend most of our time on the streets while the police spend their working hours on those same streets. It follows that homeless people and police share the same space at the very same time. As a result, the homeless are the most credible experts on "police behavior" and in a position to keep our fair city from becoming a "Police State"!
  
  Jean Rice, leader, Civil Rights Leader