The Laws Cities Use To Make Homelessness a Crime

There’s nothing shocking, really, about Houston’s new law making it easier for homeless people to be arrested simply for being homeless. Not when over 100 American cities have effectively criminalized everyday life for the homeless, making crimes of things from sleeping outside to brushing teeth in public. Even as cities become more socially conscious about LGBTQ rights and drug policies, they’ve become less tolerant of their neediest inhabitants and more comfortable with cops and the justice system sweeping up the human trash, as it were.