Sacramento advocates want local governments to categorize crimes against homeless people as hate crimes

Homeless protesters still occupied the sidewalk along Ninth Street as a press conference began in front of City Hall this past Thursday morning. They chanted “House keys, not handcuffs,” a response to the more than a dozen arrests and anti-camping ordinance citations by police since New Year’s Day.

But the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, the organization that held the press conference last week, says homeless people don’t just experience law-enforcement harassment: According to a report by SRCEH and WIND Youth Services, a nonprofit that provides outreach to homeless youth, discrimination of homeless by many groups other than cops is on the rise.

Their solution: They want local governments to categorize crimes against homeless people as hate crimes.

“I think the main thing we need to do is declare homeless people a protected class just like the gay and lesbian community, people of color and people with disabilities,” SRCEH executive director Bob Erlenbusch told SN&R. “When there’s an attack on a person of color, or gay, or whatever, that’s considered a hate crime. And that’s what we want.”

According to the recently released SRCEH report, 75 percent of the 297 homeless youth and adults that they surveyed often suffered harassment and discrimination by not just law enforcement, but also medical and housing providers and the community at large.

Erlenbusch says that in order to aid the homeless, a local bill of rights needs to be put in place to protect homeless people.

“The reality of having a homeless bill of rights for homeless people in our community is that our leaders would be saying, both at the city level and the county level, that, ’We protect people out on the streets until we can build enough affordable housing,’” Erlenbusch said.

The city spends $14 million a year on homelessness issues. But Erlenbusch questioned the need to spend money on, for instance, the nearly 50 police officers, some in riot gear, that disrupted a seemingly peaceful homeless protest in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

“It cost a lot of money, and we are saying, ’Put that money into housing [for homeless],’” he said.

City electeds did not respond to SN&R’s requests to discuss issues in this story by deadline.

City officials and police officers say that they’ve handed out fliers with information on places that provide shelter to the homeless protesters at City Hall. Many of the activists argue the barriers to entry at shelters are too high, or there aren’t available beds.

Meanwhile, another recent study by SRCEH looked at violence on Sacramento’s streets. According to the report, nearly 25 percent of homeless deaths in the past 13 years recorded by the Sacramento County Coroner’s office were caused by blunt-force trauma, gunshot wounds, stabbing or hanging.