A report from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty: With inadequate housing or shelter options, many homeless people are forced to live out of doors and in public places. Despite this fact, many local governments have chosen to remove visibly homeless people from our shared streets, parks and other public places by treating the performance of basic human behaviors — like sitting down, sleeping and bathing — as criminal activities.

These laws are often justified under the dubious theory that they are necessary to protect the public interest. Laws prohibiting sitting down on public sidewalks, for example, are allegedly warranted by the public’s interest in unobstructed walkways. Sometimes, these laws are premised on the idea that criminalization is a necessary solution to homelessness because it makes it less likely that homeless persons will “choose” to live on the streets.