way2go! 6. Practice Pack, Arbeitsheft

40 Unit 07 | The story of my life Read the text about homelessness in America. Complete the sentences (1–7) using a maximum of four words. Write your answers in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. READING 3 The laws cities use to make homelessness a crime There’s nothing shocking, really, about Houston’s new law, which makes it easier for homeless people to be arrested simply for being homeless. Not when over 100 American cities have already changed everyday life for the homeless for the worse, making crimes of all sorts of activities from sleeping outside to brushing teeth in public. Even as cities become more socially conscious about LGBTQ 1 rights and drug policies, they’ve become less tolerant of their neediest inhabitants. Instead, the police and the justice system are used in order to get rid of the ‘human trash’. Camping bans in cities have increased by 69 percent throughout the United States. What used to be seen as annoying is now considered a crime, resulting in fines or jail time for those who certainly can’t afford it. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty has been tracking these changes since 2006, and they found some shocking facts. For example, in 33 of the 100 US cities they studied, it’s illegal to publicly camp. In 18 cities, it’s illegal to sleep in public. Asking people for money is illegal in 27 cities. In 39 cities, it’s illegal to live in cars. For extreme sports junkies (like sports climbers in Yosemite National Park, who try to live in their cars), this makes life difficult. For the homeless, it leaves no alternatives, especially if shelters are too far away, too full, or too violent (a common problem). For some people, the choice might be between living in a car or sleeping outside – but what if both are illegal? In Dallas the police issued over 11,000 summonses 2 for sleeping in public from January 2012 to November 2015. That’s about 323 summonses per month, or around ten per day. These generally come with fines, and if people can’t pay (which of course most of them can’t, being homeless), worse legal trouble may follow, and they may end up spending time in jail. Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, wants to do something similar. His “no public camp- ing” law means it’s illegal to use “fabric, metal, cardboard, or other materials as a tent or temporary structure” for humans to live in. The result is that the Houstonian homeless have no protection from the weather, and they are at risk of being arrested by the police. Officials say that these measures against the homeless are to ensure neighborhood safety, however, it seems this is simply a way for people to ignore anything negative happening in their home areas. City officials in Houston claim tent cities make it easy to hide illicit 3 activity. If by ‘illicit activity’ they mean drug use, then sure. However, tent cities are often formed to provide some degree of protection from the elements – not just a place for drug use. Mayor Turner says he’s balancing the ban on tents by increasing the number of shelter beds, and that the police in his city first give warnings and try to take homeless campers to hospital, if needed. All of this would be good if true, but what the new law really does is give the police more power to arrest the weakest members of society. As with many minority groups – including drug users, sex workers and immigrants without legal status – this means the homeless will increasingly fear the police instead of being able to rely on them for help. Worst of all, is there anything logical about putting homeless people in jail for being home- less? 1  LGBTQ: ( abbr. for ) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or questioning) 2  to issue a summons: eine Vorladung ausstellen; vorladen 3  illicit: (gesetzlich) verboten Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv