Liman Fellow Tiffany Bailey ’17: Challenging the Criminalization of Homelessness
Tiffany Bailey ’17 was a 2019-2020 Liman Fellow at the ACLU of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she focused on issues related to homelessness. She has continued with the ACLU as the Munger, Tolles & Olson, LLP Legal Fellow, working on policing issues. She wrote this essay for The Liman Center Reports in the summer of 2020.
Challenging the Criminalization of Homelessness and Confronting the Harms of COVID to Unhoused People
As a legal fellow in the Economic Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, I have worked closely with a dedicated team of organizers, policy advocates, and attorneys to challenge municipal ordinances and policies that criminalize and target unhoused persons for disparate and often inhumane treatment. My work is inherently intersectional, sitting at the juncture of economic justice, policing, and criminal justice.
The novel coronavirus has altered the landscape of my homelessness work and shifted some organizational priorities. The unhoused community is uniquely vulnerable in this global pandemic. Unhoused persons have a heightened risk of exposure to coronavirus because they cannot readily engage in the primary mode of prevention — social distancing indoors. Furthermore, they have an elevated risk of suffering serious complications from the virus because they often have inadequate access to medical care and have preexisting medical conditions. Therefore, although we all are vulnerable to contracting the coronavirus and could face long-term consequences, that risk is especially heightened for our unhoused neighbors and cannot be mitigated without significant state, local, and federal action.
“[A]lthough we all are vulnerable to contracting the coronavirus . . . that risk is especially heightened for our unhoused neighbors and cannot be mitigated without significant state, local, and federal action.”
In response, my organization has been engaged in significant local and statewide advocacy. Our advocacy efforts have centered around providing unhoused persons with emergency housing to reduce their risk of exposure. As part of our advocacy effort, we have been closely monitoring the implementation of Project Roomkey, which is a statewide initiative intended to move medically vulnerable unhoused persons from the streets and congregate shelters into hotel and motel units where they can be socially distant and mitigate their risk of exposure.
While the initiative has the potential to benefit the unhoused community, we have identified several municipalities that have banned hotels and motels from participating or have implemented arguably unconstitutional rules and policies for Project Roomkey participants. Some municipalities, for example, have forbidden Project Roomkey participants from leaving their hotel or motel units, subjected them to routine and invasive searches, and placed them under constant surveillance and monitoring. As part of a broader effort, I have assisted in monitoring Project Roomkey implementation and have engaged in advocacy geared towards discouraging municipalities from banning hotels and motels from participating. I have also called on municipalities that have more egregious policies for program participants to rescind policies that restrict the liberties of persons experiencing homelessness.
Our work in this space is ongoing but remains as important as ever, especially given how the coronavirus has continued to ravage this country. Like all our work in the housing and homelessness arena, we hope that our advocacy will bring this vulnerable group one step closer to being afforded their basic human right to housing.
