State lawmaker wants homeless to be protected as a special class of citizens

Few would argue that no one should face discrimination for being, or not being, white or black or Hispanic, or young or old, or male or female, or for having ancestors from England or Japan, or for being born in Texas or North Dakota.

But amid the new leftist schemes to provide special protections based on gender ideology and such, there’s one state lawmaker going even further.

Washington State Rep. Mia Gregerson, a Democrat, has a plan pending that would make being homeless a protected status.

That would be so they are protected from “discrimination based on housing status.”

It is the Post Millennial that is reporting that Gregerson’s plan proposes, “[M]any communities within Washington are enacting and enforcing laws that disproportionately impact homelessness or make living in public a crime. These laws are potentially unconstitutional, make it harder for people to exit homelessness, do not solve the underlying problem of homelessness, and waste precious public funds.”

Her agenda apparently is in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said the Constitution allows a city to enforce public camping ordinances, such as bans on camping on public property in some locations and at some times.

One Washington town, Burien, that started enforcing its ban on camping in public places, a move that the county had tried to halt.

“Other municipalities, including, Everett, Washington, began enacting similar policies such as its new Service Facility Buffer Zone, also known as a No Sit, No Lie Zone in its downtown near a local children’s museum,” the report said.

The bill would grant homeless “the right to survive in a nonobstructive manner” on public property, to include parking lots, sidewalks, parks, courtyards, even public transportation and highway medians and shoulders.

People living in RVs could stay wherever the vehicle is parked.

The camping limits got their impetus from a case in 2021, when a homeless meth addict was arrested after attempting to rape a county employee inside a women’s bathroom at the King County courthouse, the report said.

Staying on public lands would be allowed when “that person has no reasonable alternative but to survive in public space and existing shelter facilities within the local government’s jurisdiction are inadequate in number or are functionally inaccessible,” the report said.