Can a City Criminalize Homelessness?

Cities often pass ordinances that discourage homelessness by criminalizing activities such as panhandling and sleeping outside. Recently, the City of Palo Alto, California even passed an ordinance that will make it a crime to sleep in a car. Punishments for using a car as a “dwelling place” could include a $1,000 fine, a year in jail, or both.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, Palo Alto’s city council passed the ordinance in response to complaints about homeless people’s behavior. Palo Alto criminalized the act of sleeping in a car so the police will have a tool when responding to complaints.

This ordinance in Palo Alto seems unjustifiably harsh. How could it possibly be a crime to sleep in your own car? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is currently in the process of deciding whether a similar law in Los Angeles violates the Constitution. Constitutional challenges to these types of ordinances include:

• The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of the cruel and unusual punishment
• The Constitutional right to travel from the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges and Immunities Clause

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

The protection from cruel and unusual punishment has been applied to similar cases to protect the homeless. For example, Los Angeles previously passed a law prohibiting sleeping, lying, and sitting on sidewalks. The ACLU brought an action against the city for arresting homeless people from sleeping on the streets. The Court of Appeals determined that the law was unconstitutional because those arrested were involuntarily homeless and had no other choice than to sleep on the streets.

The Right to Travel

The other primary constitutional challenge to sleeping ordinances is the constitutional right to travel. If an ordinance criminalizes sleeping on streets or in cars, then the homeless are forced to either move on or risk being cited or arrested. Since sleeping is a vital necessity, this discourages migration and puts a burden on the person’s right to travel.