RI has a Homeless Bill of Rights. Why advocates say it needs an expansion.
PROVIDENCE − Under the Fourth Amendment, your home is supposed to be your castle, which means police can't just come in, or knock it down, without a warrant.
But what about when your home is a tent?
A bill in the House would codify protections for the state's growing unhoused population, "adding teeth" to the 2012 Homeless Bill of Rights by creating penalties for violations, expanding protections and requiring cities and towns to create written policies on how they deal with encampments.
"Here in Rhode Island, we've been experiencing some cold, wet and windy weather," bill sponsor Rep. Jennifer Stewart, D-Pawtucket, said. "Imagine experiencing those conditions while you're living in a tent. Then imagine having the police basically serve you with eviction papers to relocate you or face arrest and then having your tent destroyed and your belongings discarded."
"Then imagine having no recourse because you can't realistically file a lawsuit due to the instability and precariousness of your living conditions," she continued. "And this is why we need to strengthen our Homeless Bill of Rights."
Why demand grows: RI keeps adding shelter space for the homeless, but it's never enough.
What would House Bill 7967 do?
The bill would add a few rights, shore up Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure and let civil rights and advocacy organizations sue on behalf of unhoused people.
Add a right to trash receptacles and toilet facilities to the bill of rights
Create a right to privacy in "temporary housing" equivalent to a permanent residence
Allow civil rights/homeless advocacy groups sue on behalf of unhoused people
Allow a judge to levy a $2,500 fine for violations of the Homeless Bill of Rights (the money would go to the Department of Housing for homelessness issues)
Require police and public works departments to write policies and procedures for dealing with unoused people
Require police departments to have policies that "recognize the reasonable expectation of privacy that a homeless person has in their tent" and that no occupied tent "shall be subject to an unreasonable search"
Keep people's property, seized in an encampment raid, for 30 days
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Contributed to DocumentCloud by Wheeler Cowperthwaite (The Providence Journal) • View document or read text
Repeated instances of unhoused people being targeted
Independent reporter Steve Ahlquist testified about his series of stories on Providence police detectives who ordered people at one encampment out of their tents, something the city repeatedly claimed never happened before reversing course and admitting, indeed, police detectives were there.
"According to the four people I spoke to and an outreach worker, two men in hoodies – undercover narcotics detectives with guns and badges – rousted people out of their tents on Monday morning and said to them, 'We don't need a warrant. You live in a tent,'" Ahlquist wrote on Dec. 6, 2023.
Unhoused woman's plight on RI's streets: Six months pregnant with nowhere to go
One of the people rousted reportedly told Ahlquist that the police detectives kicked the tent, where it was already ripped, before declaring they didn't need a warrant for anyone living in a tent.
"This is a sadly common human rights violation that happens on a daily basis," Ahlquist testified.
Then there's the case of Michael Neugent, arrested for "trespassing" on public land owned by the state. Department of Transportation workers threw away his possessions, including his birth certificate, identification card, bus pass, medical cards and writings.
Last August, unhoused people tried to clear out of the Charles Street encampment as a Bobcat skid-steer fitted with a forest mulcher mulched sleeping bags, tents, clothes and blankets. Advocates stood in the way to stop the operator, a Department of Transportation contractor, from running them, and a pregnant woman, down as they tried to leave the site, advocates said.
Provisions a result of recent events
The changes reflect what unsheltered people and advocates have been saying are needed.
Part of the problem is there are not enough shelter beds in the state.
The state had 1,417 shelter beds as of January, up from 1,125 in October 2023. Of those beds, 91% are being utilized, according to the latest data provided by the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness. At the same time, the number of households on the waiting list is 590 (a total of 830 people).
While the state keeps adding shelter beds there, is not enough housing and therefore, nowhere for people to go when police force them to leave encampments.
"People are scattered, they don't have their outreach workers because they don't know where people have gone," Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project Director Eric Hirsch previously said. "How are they more safe unless offered a reasonable alternative?"
Rep. Thomas Noret, D-Coventry, West Warwick, fixated on private property rights during the hearing and was concerned that the bill, intended to deal with government workers, would be used against him "approaching" a homeless person living in a tent on his property because the homeless person could claim the property owner was trespassing.
The bill does not include any mention of the word trespass.
The Homeless Bill of Rights already includes the "reasonable expectation of privacy" in a person's property to the same extent as someone who is living in a permanent residence. The bill would add that a person living in a tent has "the same right to privacy in his or or temporary housing, including tents, as a permanent residence."
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Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@providencejournal.com or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI's Homeless Bill of Rights could be expanded
