Perth Plumbing.

In your article, you call Rhode Island's new law "a compassionate response" to "protecting people on the streets from legal citations" when they are "trying to find a safe place to sleep outside."

However, the original vision for the bill was much more substantial than that.

The first draft of the Homeless Bill of Rights was actually born out of a critical, ethnographic study that my nonprofit organization conducted of the homeless provider system in Providence from October 2010 to May 2011. As principal investigator, I used covert participant observation to achieve full situational immersion by interacting with providers and accessing services as would a person experiencing homelessness.

The study entitled "Power in Homeless Shelter Staff-Client Interactions: Influence on Length of Stay" is published on the PATH program website.

Surprisingly, I experienced and observed client abuse by shelter staff and security personnel that meets the state’s legal definition, administrative neglect, and discrimination from the shelter's housing locators, external housing agencies, and potential employers. Our research shows that the administrative neglect and discrimination increased shelter stays by four to five months. We are in the final stages of determining if the abuse also led to longer shelter stays by demotivating clients.

Bottom line: increased stays increases costs, increases funding demands, and puts an undue burden on budgets that are already bursting at the seams.

I also discovered that there were no public advocacy or legislative efforts to prevent such maltreatment similar to those in place for other vulnerable populations in the state and across the country — namely, nursing home patients and residents in long term care facilities.

In response, I received the vision for, researched, drafted, and lobbied local advocates and elected officials for their support of an anti-abuse and anti-discrimination Homeless Bill of Rights. Our proposal was later adopted and adapted by local advocates to become the final anti-discrimination only bill that was signed into law.

My recent legal analysis published by JURIST examines the evidence-based need for and legally-based feasibility of passing the critical anti-abuse and anti-discrimination elements of my original proposed bill.

Your closing assertion is dead on: the most important element in "a more powerful Bill of Rights" is "the right to a safe place to call home." My original 25-point bill mandates that these vulnerable individuals have safe temporary shelter while seeking to secure a safe, permanent home.

As part of our New Civil Rights Movement: Equal Treatment for the Homeless campaign, I am working hard to ensure all 50 states enact comprehensive anti-abuse and anti-discrimination laws to protect these citizens not only on the streets, but also in the shelters and transitional living facilities.

While governments and organizations work their 10-year plans to end homelessness, it is irresponsible for leaders to allow these vulnerable individuals to be maltreated.

100,000 Homes/Housing First has the right idea, "off the street THEN attack the underlying issues". In many cases, once the anxiety of the lack of a place to stay is lessened or relieved, half the battle of reintegration into society is won.

Hell, I'm homeless and I'd be overjoyed to have nothing more than a place only big enough to lie down in, with a door that locks and where I can leave my few meager possessions instead of carrying them with me always, electricity, and plumbing!

Keep up the insightful commentary, I often reprint your thoughts or links to them, in my blog;
HomeLessCide–Life on the Street, http://www.homelesscide.blogspot.com

Thanks for your advocacy and compassion on our behalf
Dave

Dave