Public places and the criminalisation of homelessness from a human rights perspective

 

Sonia Olea Ferreras[1]and Guillem Fernàndez Evangelista[2]

Various concepts of homelessness are used simultaneously in Europe, and they influence the design of the public policies that aim to eradicate it. Various European countries are developing comprehensive national strategies for homeless people, while coercive, repressive approaches against some types of homelessness proliferate. The penalisation of homelessness is a process that involves the criminalisation of homeless people's everyday subsistence activities in public places; their access to the temporary accommodation system and exercising their right to housing is hampered or they are expelled from or concealed in certain areas of the city, and if they are foreigners, they are even arrested or deported to their countries of origin. This article argues that we are faced with the neoliberal approach to homelessness, based more on criminalisation than on satisfying these people's needs from a perspective of human rights.

 

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