Western Regional Advocacy Project Calls for Support of "Right to Rest Act"

The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) is current lobbying the California Legislature in support of the Right to Rest Act and Homeless Bill of Rights Campaign. They also have plans to introduce the Act in Oregon and Colorado. The Act is intended to address the fact that California cities have an average on NINE local laws that criminalize public standing still, sitting, eating, sleeping, and lying down. In other words, if local law enforcement wants to make life difficulty for people experiencing homelessness, they have nine options to choose from to make your life miserable and get you to move on. More alarming still is that fact that these laws criminalize the homeless based on status which is clearly a violation of both law and public policy in California.

Under the Act local governments will no longer be able to criminalize basic actions such as public sitting, regardless of skin color, regardless of housing status, regardless of income level. The Act will protect the basic human rights of the houseless.

WRAP contends that this country has a long, well-documented pattern of local governments using their authority to implement local time, place and manner restrictions in communities to discriminate against those they want gone. The “crimes” are passed by local governments, enforced by local police departments, adjudicated in local courts by local judges and the people are then incarcerated in local jails. Today’s laws are often promoted, supported and written by local business groups. In Santa Cruz, the recent passage and implementation of the “stay away order” ordinance is an example of policing and public policy being driven by local business interests.

Civic governments have proven that given the authority, selective members of the community will be targeted for exclusion. WRAP’s goal is not to just stop anti-homeless people policing, but to make sure that local laws based on “status only” do not become social policy. WRAP believes that we have a moral and ethical responsibility to do whatever we need to do to see that the Right to Rest Act gets passed. Additionally, support for a reintroduction of The Homeless Bill of Rights, which died in committee last year, could make sure that equal justice for all is not a meaningless slogan.

WRAP Executive Director Paul Boden has called upon Santa Cruz advocates for people experiencing homelessness to help get the Right to Rest Act introduced in the State Legislature by lobbying our local Assembly Member Mark Stone and our State Senator Bill Monning. HUFF (Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom), the Santa Cruz Homeless Persons Legal Advocacy Project and the Homeless Persons Legal Assistance Project are endorsing the Act and are planning to work in support of its introduction and passage.

Full text of the relevant documents can be found @
http://wraphome.org/?p=4027&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=119