opinion

Abdul: Indy’s homeless ‘bill of rights’ is pointless

One of my favorite quotes is from C.S. Lewis. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep…his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

This is especially true when it comes to the “homeless bill of rights” recently passed by the Indianapolis City-County Council.

This “bill of rights” will accomplish nothing, but will cause litigation problems for the city. Allow me to explain by walking through these “rights.”

• The right to move freely in public spaces, including sidewalks, parks, buses and buildings. Homeless people already have those rights, just like everyone else. What they don’t have the right to do is loiter and obstruct entrances and exits to buildings, just like everyone else.

• The right to equal treatment by city agencies. Guess what, they already have that right as well. I spent an hour on the city’s website looking for language that said if you are homeless you will be treated differently than someone with a place to live. I had the hardest time finding it because it didn’t exist. I did, however, find several pages about assisting and helping the homeless, the most recent one dealt with help for homeless veterans.

• The right to emergency medical care. Once again, I went looking for any language on the city’s website and the local hospitals that could even insinuate that if you did not have a home you could not get emergency treatment, and once again I came up with nothing.

• The right to vote, register to vote and receive documentation needed for a photo ID. This one was just place silly. The U.S. Constitution, the last time I checked, took care of that whole right to vote stuff. And the State of Indiana has rules that allow people with no permanent address to be able to procure an ID and vote.

• The right to protection from disclosure of private records, as well as the right to confidentiality already protected by federal law. Once again, that pesky U.S. Constitution has taken care of most of this. The last time I checked that whole Fourth Amendment jargon about the rights “of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” took care of most of that.

• The right to the same "reasonable expectation of privacy" for their personal property as someone with a permanent residence has. Once again, that whole Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution takes care of that too.

So it seems to me, all the council did was try to grant rights, for the most part, that already exist are granted by higher legal authority. So what was the point in all this?

Now there was another provision in the ordinance that would make it harder for the city and the police to move homeless people into a safe environment and could allow for homeless tent cities to set up on Monument Circle because it’s more difficult to displace the homeless from public places. You think I’m kidding, read the proposal for yourself.

Let’s hope Mayor Greg Ballard will veto this “Bill of Rights.” It’s a feel good proposal that accomplishes nothing and will cause more problems for the individuals it’s supposed to help. This is why I prefer robber barons over moral busybodies.

Abdul is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPolitics.Org. Email him at abdul@indypolitics.org.