The new “homeless penalty” law passed by Mayor Corradino and the Common Council of Oswego, NY,  is not a solution to a systemic problem. It is an attack on the unhoused and poor people in our community, it is an attack on the freedom to use taxpayer funded, public spaces that are intended to be accessible to all, and it is a statement to the most vulnerable people in our community that they are not welcome and should be criminalized. 

The new law follows a housing reassessment that led to the increase in taxes for homeowners, many of whom spoke at common council meetings expressing their inability to afford the houses that they had paid off years ago. The law also was announced in the same meeting that a 3% tax increase for community members added to the city budget. This all comes at a time when everyday people are struggling to deal with increased pricing in rent, food, gas, and basic essentials, when 26.2% of adults in Oswego County are experiencing food insecurity. 

We cannot allow and must vehemently oppose laws that push vulnerable people, who are in need of help and housing, into further debt, into jail, or that push people out of our community. These are people who the government and the community have failed. Providing secure and permanent housing is the only compassionate and humane response to unhoused people. Research has shown that giving people permanent housing is cheaper than criminalizing them and that housing-first initiatives keep people from becoming unhoused in the future. 

Instead of giving more money to the Oswego Police Department, which is already the highest paid department in our county, so that they can kick unhoused people, kids, families, and other community members out of parks at night, we could (and very much should) fund accessible and permanent housing solutions. 

The rates of people unhoused are only increasing. With increasing taxes in our already struggling community, we can expect more people to end up unhoused. All it takes is an unaffordable medical emergency, a house fire, a landlord raising rents, the loss of a job, and other everyday occurrences that cause financial burden to our neighbors. 

Our fates are intertwined with the fates of our neighbors. How we respond to the insecurity people experience is how we will experience those same insecurities. And we can all agree that people deserve to have shelter and that our tax dollars should be used in compassionate, helpful, and solution-focused ways. Criminalizing poor and unhoused people is not a solution. It is an inhumane way to ignore and push a systemic issue down the road for a different administration to “deal with.” Organize Oswego rejects this law and vows to fight back against it.