Homelessness Is Not a Criminal Offense

As Alice Callaghan intimated in her Nov. 27 commentary, “Wheels of Commerce Are Rolling Over the Homeless,” it is like a war zone at the front door of our soup kitchen, with the police detaining anyone who simply looks like he or she might be homeless.

The Central City Assn. claims that the current conflict is between tough love practiced by high-minded people like themselves who want to empower the police to arrest the “criminally homeless,” and softheaded, compassionate people like us who mindlessly defend the “rights” of the poor to sleep on the streets.

The truth is that skid row is like a war zone. Housing and social services are scarce, and the police, like soldiers in combat, do not make fine distinctions between the benign homeless and the criminally homeless; they simply round up the enemy. In the absence of civic compassion, civil rights are the last option for the poor.

The right to sleep on the streets isn’t all that great, but it surely beats the heck out of the right to sleep in jail.

Jeff Dietrich

Los Angeles Catholic Worker