Arizona’s Heartless Kick the Homeless to the Curb…Again

They’re baa-ack! It’s those pesky Arizona lawmakers who have a burning desire to make life miserable for our unhoused friends. These legislative dingleberries are continuing to push a bill that would boot people from homeless encampments and then slap them with trespassing charges. Sounds totally kosher, right? (No, not really.) But despite warnings that the bill might be illegal (aka unconstitutional), the lawmakers have kept their dystopian plan in motion.

So here we are again. That bill – Arizona Senate Bill 1413, as sponsored by Republican Senator Justine Wadsack of Tucson – just cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee hurdle, according to KVOA News 4 Tucson. To recap, SB 1413 would also charge cities with the immediate responsibility of gutting homeless encampments, even if the tents are on private property. And to add insult to injury, a person’s belongings would be impounded faster than you can say Land of the Free. Fun times!

A lobbyist for the ACLU of Arizona says this bill would violate federal precedent and the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of homeless individuals, writes the Arizona Mirror. In other words, the bill is a hot mess.

Amnesia and déjà vu simultaneously 

Lest we forget, Phoenix tried a similar stunt a while back that banned “urban sleeping,” but a federal court said, “Nah, that ain’t gonna fly. You can’t just ticket people for sleeping in public yada yada yada.” So Phoenix cooled its jets, somewhat.

And what about southern Arizona? Well, the City of Tucson pulled a fast one with its homeless encampment sweeps at 3:00 in the morning just prior to the annual Tucson Gem and Mineral show. AZPM and KGUN 9 both reported on how this Demolition Man-style nonsense resulted in a lawsuit against the city. Hey, there’s even an official online reporting tool if you’re in the mood to stick it to Tucson’s less fortunate by ratting out their honest efforts to find a place to sleep.

If a tree falls in the forest…

It seems Arizona’s esteemed leaders would rather push homeless people into the shadows than acknowledge we have a bona fide crisis on our hands. And the Senate bill is our state legislature’s version of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “La la la la la! I can’t hear you!”

In case you’re curious, the number of homeless people in Arizona has gone up faster than a greased pig at a county fair. “The number of unsheltered people in Phoenix more than tripled between early 2015 and early 2022,” reports azcentral. In total, more than 13 thousand people were homeless in Arizona in 2022, and over half of them had no shelter at all, reports the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But why let mere facts get in the way of potential campaign donations from the hospitality industry, right?

There you have it, folks. Arizona Republican lawmakers are still rudely incapable of creating or supporting bills that actually improve the quality of life for everyone, including the most vulnerable among us. That’s because, when you lack the empathy and creativity needed to solve society’s ills, you just punt. Meanwhile, our state legislators will continue to criminalize circumstances surrounding poverty, offer no humane, viable, or evidence-based policy solutions, and call it a day. It’s sh*tty politics at its finest.