Did you feel the snow that blanketed the ground outside? Imagine that being your reality, sleeping inside snow covered tents on the side of the road. Or close your eyes and instead feel the cold from being in a freezing concrete cell. Being locked up form two limitations: Not affording a place to stay and being penalized for it with arrest. Sometimes, when temperatures reach sub-zero, officers will pick up unhoused people and place them in holding. Officers know at least there they’ll receive “three hots and a cot” and won’t freeze to death. But this is not that. This is the future ahead for unhoused people if the current Safer Kentucky Act is passed.
Saving lives:Every homeless shelter in Louisville should be open 24/7.
The Safer Kentucky Act is an attack on unhoused people
The Safer Kentucky Act is a bill that focuses on improving Kentucky. I have varying opinions about the methods, but I want to focus on targeting Kentucky’s homeless. It’s an attack against them that’ll be hard to defend against and recover from. If homeless people are banned from local encampments they’ve created, where will they go? Furthermore, with a reduction of federal funds to aid in housing them, there’s another layer of vulnerability from lack of help. This is identifying an epidemic without examining the cause or providing a cure.