Argumentative Essay Am I A Criminal - 2178 Words

Diana Gallegos Mr. Thompson English 1A 6363 04 May 2016 Am I a Criminal? Despite communities lacking sufficient affordable housing and shelter space, cities are continuing to penalize people forced to live on the streets and in public spaces and in addition include criminal penalties for violations of these laws. Instead of criminalizing the homeless and wasting millions of dollars, we should unite with advocates that are going to help protect those living on the streets and go head to head with those laws that strongly discriminate against the homeless. As human beings we can be selfish and we do not really care about matters that have little to do with our lives or affect us in a major way, which is why problems that affect us as a†¦show more content†¦It does not make any sense whatsoever to criminalize the homeless and incarcerate them. It has been proven that if we put more of our time and money into helping the homeless instead of strongly passing laws that discriminate against their human rights, not only will we save money but we can also help slowly cease the criminalization of the homeless. Furthermore, laws are criminalizing people just for being homeless and more cities are passing bans on begging, loitering, and sharing or giving away food in public places. As we start to criminalize the homeless for irrelevant reasons, the homeless end up being taken to the hospital and being arrested due to being on the streets and violating these new laws. As a community sometimes we are unaware and not properly informed of the amount it is costing us tax payers, when we could be avoiding these hefty costs by investing in proper homeless shelters and facing the issue head first instead of putting up barriers. Laws that discriminate against the homeless may not change overnight and the fact that a homeless man or woman may be incarcerated for sleeping on the street or begging for some money, but at least there will be less homeless people roaming the streets and less homeless people to discriminate upon and incarcerate. In ad dition to costing tax payers tons of money for incarcerating the homeless and