OKLAHOMA – In response to Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols signing into law an ordinance that targets Tulsa’s homeless population for sitting or standing on certain medians or sidewalks along roads with speed limits greater than twenty-five miles per hour, the ACLU of Oklahoma issued the following response:
The following is attributable to Tamya Cox-Touré, ACLU of Oklahoma Executive Director:
“Being homeless is not a crime. Homelessness is a policy failure. With this ordinance, Mayor Nichols has embraced a cruel and ineffective approach that will not solve this crisis. We cannot arrest our way out of homelessness and poverty. Arrest, incarceration, and institutionalization only further entrench homelessness by separating people from essential support systems and saddling them with records that can disqualify them from future employment and housing opportunities. Additionally, Oklahoma’s system of fines and fees has created a reality where people often face life-long debt and repercussions from even a single interaction with the criminal legal system. As the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in 2020, people experiencing homelessness have the constitutional right to solicit life-saving funds from medians, and cities cannot violate those rights in a callous attempt to hide the uncomfortable truth of our neighbor’s struggle from public view. We need safe, decent, and affordable housing. We need equal access to medical care and voluntary, community-based mental health and evidence-based substance use treatment from trusted providers. But instead of advancing policies that help address the root causes, Mayor Nichols is spending his time and energy punishing people with nowhere else to go and infringing on the First Amendment right of all Oklahomans to engage in public discourse on city medians.”