The Orbis

Las Vegas, San Francisco and New York City ranked first, second and third respectively. Just ahead of Nashville was Santa Monica and ranking just behind was Honolulu. Crucial to the report was detailing the illegalization of various activities that homeless people often engage in, such as the obstruction of sidewalks and public places, loitering in public places and sleeping in public.

The report, available online at www.nationalhomeless.org, explained that as cities are increasingly unable to provide affordable housing to the poor, they turn to criminalizing insignificant acts — deemed a nuisance — in order to make the problem of homelessness disappear.

The Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, Donald Whitehead, explained in the report that "at the national level, we see a relationship between municipalities' efforts to make homelessness a crime and the increases in hate crimes and violent acts directed at homeless people in those cities." Whitehead is himself formerly homeless.

Also, the report cited the arrest of more than 300 individuals at Fan-Fair, a country music celebration day where popular country music singers come to town to sign autographs and meet fans. The report claims that "in five days, 340 people where arrested and lodged in jail on loitering and trespassing charges."

According the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 600,000 men, women, and children are homeless on any given night in the United States. The department categorizes the homeless into temporarily homeless, episodically homeless and chronically homeless. Temporarily homeless are those who experience only one spell of homelessness. Episodically homeless individuals are those who are intermittently homeless. Chronically homeless are those who are without a home for up to or more than a year.

A July 2004 policy paper issued by the National Conference on Ending Homelessness estimated the number of as closer to a million, and remarked that the number is so high "in spite of a $2 billion per year system designed to deal with the problem."

The policy paper estimated that number of homeless in the U.S. is due simply to the inability of people to make high enough incomes to afford housing. According the paper, the average income of a homeless person in 1996 was $4,404 a year, or $367 a month. However many argue that despite the existence of homeless, a certain level of dignity of appearance in America's cities must be maintained.

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