Technically, it is not a crime to be poor in this nation, but it sure may feel like that for the homeless

According to a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, in more than half of the cities in the US, it is illegal for someone to sit or lay down on a side walk. You don't have to be living on the street to know how and when such laws are enforced. Other cities use laws prohibiting camping or sleeping in public to keep homeless people off of their streets. This new report studied nearly 200 cities, and found an increase of anti-homeless laws since it's last 2009 study. Three decades of Reaganomics, deregulation and NAFTA from Clinton, and two illegal wars and an economic collapse from Bush have all come together to form a perfect recipe to leave more and more Americans on the street. Rather than offering a hand up, lawmakers treat social programs like a hand out, and they use laws like these to hide the end results of their policies. It shouldn't be a crime to find yourself without a roof overhead, and it's time these cities changed these shameful laws.