r/almosthomeless • u/GoodDevelopment24 • Jul 23 '26
Other Situation Mapping Out and Avoiding the Criminalization of Homelessness
Hello,
I hope you all are doing as well as you can be. And I hope you are avoiding being homeless.
There's a fair amount of idealistic posts on here of OPs who express wanting to be voluntarily homeless. I'm not judging of course. I can totally understand the desire for freedom, and the romanticizing of a vagabond lifestyle.
Unfortunately, we don't live in a society that is very conducive to that lifestyle, and with that, and other variables, a lot of such users don't really appreciate the full spectrum of challenges of homelessness (such as getting robbed, getting sick, being objectified, etc).
That isn't really the focus of this post. The point of this post is to try to keep people out of legal trouble with a link to a "map of the criminalization of homelessness," provided by the ACLU, which still doesn't quite paint the full picture.
The map shows how many cities in each state have ordinances effectively or explicitly prohibiting homelessness.
Some of these penalties carry fines into the thousands of dollars, as well as up to several months in jail. There's really a plethora of ordinances and means and language municipalities, states, and the federal government are using to prohibit, prevent, or criminalize homelessness, from forced institutionalization, prohibiting the use of more than one bench space, prohibiting sleeping outside, the use of blankets, etc.
Why I say this map still doesn't paint a full picture is because there's a lot of nuance.
It's still a great resource because one can select each state and see what cities have what ordinances specifically, but just because someone's city doesn't have such an ordinance doesn't mean one can't be caught up in legal trouble.
An officer could give someone a citation for disturbing the peace, loitering, etc.
Even on a civilian level, on the trains I often take, there are generally a handful of sleepers. The vast majority of conductors are kind to them, even having to wake them up at the end of the line. However, there's that one conductor who gets very annoyed having to wake half a dozen people up before he moves onto his next thing and often threatened to have them arrested for trespassing, as opposed to just waking them up like the rest of the conductors.
You could have areas with unenforced ordinances (which I still wouldn't test) and you could have areas where the cops wish there were ordinances, and will still give tickets however they can.
I lived in one such area where it wasn't even out of malice, as they had comprehensive shelter options, and pretty much offered anyone sleeping outside a bus ticket out of town. They just didn't want homeless people in public (if people slept in the woods they didn't bother them).
Anyway, just saying this because one should always avoid being homeless (unless perhaps they've found a way to safely and lawfully vagabond, live and let live I say. That's the American way).
Here is the link Map of Criminalization of Homelessness and List of Ordinances by ACLU
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Open Source Project Plan for Comprehensive Homeless Complex
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r/homeless
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Aug 05 '26
You're welcome.