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Homeless protection bill launched

January 3, 2013

A bill designed to protect “some of society’s most vulnerable members” has been introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). Ammiano calls his prospective legislation AB5 “The Homeless Person’s Bill of Rights and Fairness Act” and sets out to build protections of “basic human rights.

“We need to stop criminalizing the behavior of people who have no where else to turn,” he said in a statement accompanying his bill’s debut.

In a commentary published originally in the San Francisco Bay View, an aide to Ammiano, Carlos Alcala, wrote, “Current local laws on urban camping, sleeping, loitering and even sitting and lying down, in reality, are often attacks on the homeless, who have few safe options on where to go.”

Alcala noted, “Laws that target homeless are not much different from other laws of the past that stigmatized disabilities or poverty.”


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Citizens of California are going to get exactly what they voted for. All this crap will pass and then more… Sales tax increase will go for more police and fire (union jobs) to deal with this issue. We will be seeing much of these decisions as the foxes are now in charge of the hen houses. Sit back and enjoy the long ride for the next four years. Obama, democrats and the United Nations, what more could we ask for!


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“What is Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s address and how many homeless people is he going to allow to camp in his yard?”

Spot on… And all homeless can move to San Fran right now. It is a sanctuary city and has some of the most liberal legislators. Please leave our county and head to this city by the bay…


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Your comment amply illustrates the bigotry his bill is aimed at.


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San Luis COUNTY should start issuing bus tickets instead of building a $10 Million Taj Mahal. A lot cheaper in the long haul!


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San Luis County is just one of many counties which has to deal with a multitude of homeless mainly because of the nice weather. Many homeless people with mental problems come here because of hte nice weather and many benefits they get here. San Luis County is not a sanctuary city yet because of our weather and lenient laws has a growing number of persons who could be elsewhere by choice but stay here because of the lenient laws and good weather…


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What is Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s address and how many homeless people is he going to allow to camp in his yard?


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God Bless those who are with out a roof or hearth to dry and warm their bones. Those who are hungry, sick, cold, alone and without hope, I will advocate for you………………………….


I thank those who take heart ………….


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Scrooge lives ! ( The pre-Ghosts of Christmas one )…. From the tone of the previous comments.


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Dislike?! Check this out, exactly the same in San Luis creek south to basically Avila. Nasty, Dirty, Careless tramps messing up the environment.


http://youtu.be/hpfAgVeMxx0


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Well, if you don’t like them in the creek, why’d you and the other bidness people run them out of downtown? Wouldn’t they be better off camping overnight in your doorway and using the public loo when nature calls? They’re not going to disappear, so how do you prefer to provide for them?


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You should do this to understand. Try this. Drink 80 oz. malt liquor, eat 4 cheeseburgers from Micky d’s. relieve yourself on you front door. Then clean it up in the morning and welcome people to your home. That is what it is like with the imported homeless in town. They are mostly too drunk or impaired to make it to the bathroom and why would they, they are comfortable using a doorway whenever nature calls just like the college kids use gum alley to take a leak nightly. Nasty!


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Hey Bob, what bathroom? If your talking SLO there aren’t any unlocked at night as parks and recs have gone home and the cops are too busy to be securing public restrooms.


This is why drunken students pissing on our lawns is a issue here.


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Sounds like my front yard Friday through Sunday mornings after the cal poly drunks get done pissing, pooping and barfing, and trampling everything too. You feel the same about them as about the homeless, I presume. One way bus ticket out of town!


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So the students are not to blame, it is a result of us not building them suitable restroom facilities? Nice play on personal responsibility. I can guarantee you that I have never disrespected anyone’s property like that ever. Not in grade school, high school, college, or the real world working in both the public and private sectors.


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Great. These homeless by choice (albeit mental health, poor choices of the past including relationships, drugs, or alcohol) or by falling on unfortunate times, that should not be a free license to ruin everyone else’s experience. The massive, and I mean MASSIVE environmental destruction that these careless and dirty people do to our creeks, rivers, and environment is substantial. I think that those that want these “rights” for the homeless to transgress as will should have the homes stay on their property and business taking craps and urinating in their living space. Then lets see who wants it to continue.


Please vote this bill down, oh wait democRAT super majority, no chance it will pass. Hooray for filth and destruction!


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I have an idea. Why don’t you go downtown, Bob; or anywhere else the homeless congregate; and ASK them if they chose to be homeless?

You might then have a better understanding of their plight and situation , instead of pulling cliches out of a personal orifice.


How would you REALLY want to address the condition of the homeless ( the majority of which are children, and a sizeable number are veterans ) ?


Perhaps you would not be like many that would never openly say so; but there are certainly those that think the homeless should just be shot and dumped into mass graves.


This nation is failing, because of the false attitude that the rich are somehow saviours. They are not. We don’t need any more billionaires. In fact, we should eliminate the ones already around.

No, not kill them. Just confiscate the hoarded wealth past 999 million $. I assure you, they can live as confortably then as they do now.


Then, decent society could build plenty of structures to adequately house everyone, while employing millions af caregivers and caseworkers, and make EVERYONE a recipient of the American dream.


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I know why most of them are homeless :drugs, alcohol, relationship choices, mental health issues which are result of drugs almost all of time. choices have consequences and just because people make bad choices doesn’t mean the society needs to endlessly care for them and take care of them for eternity.


There’s no way that anybody supports the killing of homeless people that’s outrageous! I don’t think that they need a blank check to cause pollution and the destruction of private property and the environment just because they made bad choices in the past.


Perhaps a campground of some type is in order where they can work to pay rent and gain experience at the same time. Being drunk and high all day while getting freebies at my expense is not going to work for me, sorry I’m a Scrooge then.


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So what’s your beef with letting people without homes sleep in their vehicles without being arrested or towed, as the happiest place does? Arresting or towing is harassment; would you like to be harassed if you were down on your luck?


We’re very good a harassing people different from ourselves because most of us think we’ll never be in their shoes because, well, we’re better than they are. That’s what this is really all about, people who think they’re better than others. Gives folks like you satisfaction to have somebody you can look down on and be better than.


Furthermore, your characterization of homeless people as people who crap in their living space just shows your stupidity and bigotry, not that you’re a decent person.


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The fact is that they are too lazy and dirty to bother with dumping their drug infested waste into recepticals. It goes on the street and into the creek. A person who is down on their luck does not spend their day high, drunk, and fighting.


Take a walk down any creek and you’ll see that the homeless are totally and completely destroying the riparian environment literally crapping everywhere humanly possible. I believe pigs happen to be cleaner than most of the homeless who have migrated to San Luis Obispo. Chemicals, beer bottles wine bottles shopping carts various amounts of trash spread carelessly around that is the order of the day


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“Take a walk down ANY creek and you’ll see that the homeless are totally and completely destroying the riparian environment literally crapping everywhere humanly possible.”


I live on a creek, and I see none of what you describe. In fact, I’ve never seen it around our part of town. You’re just an inflammatory rhetorician, not a fact stater.


Has it ever occurred to you your inflamed feelings about the homeless might just be bigotry?


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Ok, what creek do you live on? I invite you to contact the police department (for your safety as it is as dangerous) and hike through the creek out of public view. Perhaps you live on a small dry part of a creek, but you would be horrified of the conditions you would encounter.


I am by no means inflamed at anyone. That is silly to be honest. Must you be inflamed to disagree? Am I bigoted because I happen to have experience working with the mentally ill, addicted, and homeless? How many nights have you you helped anyone else out? Rides given? Food prepared?


I suspect that your generosity is limited to taking money by threat of force or imprisonment from those producing in society (taxes) and giving to those who have chosen to rest in the safety net of society that is quickly becoming a hammock of ease for the addicted. What have you personally done or donated? I would love to hear your response!


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Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced the bill, AB5, which would cancel out local ordinances.


The measure would also protect:


— Sleeping in public spaces such as sidewalks and parks


— 24/7 access to bathrooms, showers, water and clean syringes


— Car camping on city streets without restrictions


— “Life sustaining activities” such as urinating and collecting recycling trash


— Welfare cash payments


— Meditating or praying in public


— Panhandling


— Payment for possessions seized in a roust


— Right to refuse the offer of a homeless shelter


— Right to a lawyer in most encounters with the law


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Does it guarantee free alcohol and drugs on demand for those who are inclined?


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LOL constitutional right to clean syringes! 24/7 access to showers/bathrooms! How in the f**** did people survive the Oregon Trail or the settlement at Jamestown without these basic rights? Why, even our soldiers fighting for our freedoms don’t have access to these homeless luxuries while serving! WOW.


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Nice idea…good luck passing it.


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