Modify my writing essay
Feng 11
Really needs to work on organization and development of your sources. Your topic sentences aren’t working because they are generalizations; intead focus the topic sentence to a specific aspect of your outline (you appear not to be working from an outline despite the fact that I gave you one in the previous draft). Your paragraphs jump around a lot (in part because they are not anchored to any sort of specific topic sentence—see margins for examples of appropriate topic sentences). You also need to contextualize your sources. You drop quotes in and don’t explain where they come from, who said them or in what relevant context. You also don’t offer any commentary or analysis of quotations. This is an improvement, but still far from passable work. Use the Writing Center online. Use the sample essays. Follow the instructions. I had to stop editing after p.5 because I don’t have time to do any more.
Best of luck. I’m doing what I can to help you, but you are really going to have to put a lot of effort into this with the sources. A lot of what you write here still doesn’t make a whole lot os sense or is a generalized series of repetitions.
On Homelessness in LA (part of a five-part series. The rest are at the bottom of the page: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-homelessness-impact-on-others-20180301-htmlstory.html
Up to date info from Community Organizer: http://cangress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/November-December-2017-CC-Online.pdf
YICHEN FENG
Rachael Louise Collins
WRITING 39C
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Abstract
My topic is about criminalizing and the injustice among the homeless people in Los Angeles. Homelessness is a very serious issue. From the very beginning of the problem, the city did not use the right approach to solve it. They enacted several laws to stop people from sleeping on the streets and make laws to punish those people who tried to help the homeless. For example, the “quality-of-life law.” Which is? Still needs to define here. I will introduce Some of the ordinances and policies in which the City of Los Angeles are [define]
and also the injustice treatment received by homeless people. Also, through the statistics, the problem of homeless seemed much more obvious and thus show the failure of the City of Los Angeles. I will also provide some law cases. Those cases are all about the discrimination received by homeless people both from financial and personal aspect. For example, some of them are forced to leave the street because they are homeless and some of them even killed by police. Also, in some cases, their personal belongings are
seizure/seized by police. By reading my essay, you can get a brief knowledge about injustice events happened among homeless people and how the City of Los Angeles criminalize the homeless people.
My essay examines the criminalization of the homeless in Los Angeles—what it looks like today, its legal history, and the public and city’s role in creating and perpetuating it. Your essay should examine all three of these in three different sections and the abstract information that precedes it should be consistent and specific, discussing what it looks like today in the form of a description of the types of ordinances that the homeless in Los Angeles live with (be sure these are happening right now or in the recent past), referencing at least one key law or policy using concrete, researched information, and providing info about public and city’s role (Nimbyism…some fact about the city council’s efforts to enforce ordinances…the controversy over homeless representatives on city counsel: Comment by Rachael Collins: Grammar/logic Comment by Rachael Collins: incoherent Comment by Rachael Collins: irrelevant to say what you plan to do without providing some concrete definition of what, specifically, the stats, ordinances and laws you mean to examine are. Comment by Rachael Collins: Again, what discriminaition? An abstract should provide specific information that helps reader to see the problem (the abstract example I provided to the class is on homelessness in Los Angeles; you should use it as your guide) Comment by Rachael Collins: Meaning? Comment by Rachael Collins: Don’t generalized. Who? When?
Ordinances and Some Police Enforcements Comment by Rachael Collins: Use correct spacing: double. Change title. This is too vague. Can do something like: Criminalizing the Homeless in Los Angeles: The History of Oppressive City Ordinances and their Origins.
The issue of homeless is very serious. According to Los Angeles Times, the population of homeless people in Los Angeles surged about 75% in the past six years from what to what? Pay attention to my comments on your previous draft.. Even though the city has tried its best to combat the homeless, the problem still exists and the population don’t decrease
. The real problem is that the city didn’t try to solve the original problem . Instead, it kept approving laws and ordinances which seemed inhuman not only to homeless people, but also to the people who tried to help the homeless people. For example, there was an ordinance which ban food-sharing in the public places. If people were found sharing food or helping the homeless people, they will be charged criminals and the results will be getting into prisons. Homeless people are also a part of the city, they should have their own rights to do everything they want. Criminalizing them is totally discrimination. Also, the “Quality-of-life law” which pointing out that people are not allowed to drink in the public places and polices have the rights to arrest them. These ordinances are totally nonsense since they denied and totally ban the freedom of homeless people. According to the law not only in California, but also in other places around the world, everyone has their rights to do everything, including living out door, drinking in the public places. The laws targeting the homeless attack the basic tenets of survival—how?. Besides that, there was another law which exclusively forced against homeless people. Under this law, the police can ticket people and confiscate their carts for supposedly not having the store’s permission to take the cart onto the street. There was a woman named Margaret Mitchell, she was killed by police because she pulled a shopping cart onto the street. Those ordinances are made in the recent years in 2018. There are also many ordinances directly pointing towards the homeless people and discriminate them in the past. Comment by Rachael Collins: Vague, not accurate and doesn’t focus on the important aspect of the assignment right now: using reesaerch to show the problem. Comment by Rachael Collins: inaccurate Comment by Rachael Collins: source? When? Where? Comment by Rachael Collins: Has not established this claim. Show the discrimination; don’t assume it. Comment by Rachael Collins: Again, assumes reader knows this law. You have to cite source material and describe. Comment by Rachael Collins: These are generalizations; wherever you give opinions, especially before you have done the work of using research to describe the problem, you should delete. Comment by Rachael Collins: Worked against? Wording… Comment by Rachael Collins: Cite your sources!!! Comment by Rachael Collins: Inaccurate information Comment by Rachael Collins: Avoid generalization
Back to 2010, the situation of homeless people was not very well. According to a report by [give professional title—sociologist? Criminologist? Journalist?] Janell Ross titled “U.S. Cities Criminalize Homelessness, Violate Human Rights Agreements”, she stated that individuals around the country are not only struggling with the access to running water, but also facing the criminal and civil sanctions. For example, the Skid Row is a place where many homeless people in Los Angeles live most homeless people gather together. The problem in this place is that According to? “the area itself may have remained a place that attracts or is home to perpetrators of crime, regardless of the visible presence of people who are homeless.”—how so? Says who? Lifted out of context and hard to follow. Based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, everyone in the country has the right to safe drinking water and restroom facilities. But? You aren’t providing the necessary follow up. The logic isn’t connecting here. Are the restroom facilities limited on Skid Row? You don’t explain (this is a problem throughout). The federal homeless count data showed that from January 2010, “there were 700,000 individuals in the U.S. who were homeless.” Even though The Department of Housing and Urban Development report found that homelessness grew very little between 2009 and 2010, but the problem is that the people who lack the place to live continued to expansion during that time. Comment by Rachael Collins: Confusing/vague Comment by Rachael Collins: Irrelevant to the rest of your paragraph. Content of paragraphs has to be consistent and anchored to a topic sentence. For example, my topic sentence might say, “Los Angeles’ Skid Row, home to many of its homeless population, has seen its fair share of harsh policies and treatment from law enforcement.” The rest of the sentence should use research to discuss those policies and enforcement. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-skid-row-video-20180108-story.html
Much earlier, the problem of homeless still existed. In 2001, May 22, a 66-year-old woman, was arrested for camping in a public place and storing camping gear on public property. After that, Pete White of the L.A. Coalition noted that the city is criminalizing homeless people in several ways. For example, it set up an ordinance which prohibit aggressive panhandling and it is also “attempting to create a very punitive anti-urination ordinance.” The aggressive panhandling targets the homeless people the most so that the freedom of the homeless people is severely restricted. Besides whose two ordinance, there is another law which denies the homeless people’s access to public service. Homeless people themselves don’t have a very dignity living environment, they need freedom to get their basic need. Those ordinances violate the basic human rights, especially homeless people. Comment by Rachael Collins: vague
Cases Related to Homeless
In November 1999, ACLU filed a class action on behalf of a group of homeless individuals in downtown Los Angeles. In this case, the panel affirmed a conviction in which the police officers conducted a warrantless and suspicious search of a group of homeless people’s hotel room. The panel said that their behavior violates the Fourth Amendment. However, the officers said they have probable cause to believe that the hotel room constituted premises under the control of these homeless people. The panel then rejected the defendant’s contention by saying that without something more, a suspicious search is lawful if authorized by a parolee’s search condition. This case showed that the police officers search homeless people without any warrants and agreements. Every person has his or her own rights to refuse to the search. According to a research written by Gale Holland, a federal judge said that Los Angeles Police can’t seize and destroy, also research homeless people’s properties, homes without sufficient notice. In her paper, there was another case. In that case, a group of homeless individuals and two homeless advocacy groups, sued the City of Los Angeles by saying that the City of Los Angeles “had endangered homeless people by taking their medication and bedding and discarding it or storing it in a hard-to-find spot in a municipal parking lot.”
There was another case happened in 2000. In this case, the plaintiffs are a group of homeless people living on streets and in shelters of Los Angeles. They filed a suit alleging a violation of their First and Fourth Amendment Rights and then filed for a temporary restraining order (TRO) in the court. The plaintiffs want to use TRO to stop defendants from using two anti-loitering statues, California Penal Code § 647(e) and Los Angeles Municipal Code § 41.18(a) to harass plaintiffs. This case has now been settled. Just like the Terry case in the NJC, the police officers can’t search anyone in any place without warrant or reasonable suspicions. Harass can include several aspects including seizure properties and conducting unreasonable researches. Everyone has the rights to refuse police officers from searching them. According to Stephanie Morrow, the Fourth Amendment in U.S. “protects private citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.” It says the following in the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Under the Fourth Amendment, police officers must obtain written permission in order to do their research and conduction.
There are many cases about the personal belongings being seizure or captured without noticing people. As the time travels to 2010, another case rose. In this case, 9 homeless people who lived in “Skid Row” charged the City of Los Angeles for violating the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by “seizing and immediately destroying their unabandoned personal possessions.” Like many other homeless people, they stored their belongs including clothes, important files, sleeping bags and other stuffs in a place together. And then they went out. Without certain reasons, the City of Los Angeles seized and then destroyed some of their belongings. Through this case, it is much more obvious that the belongings of homeless people are not that important in the eyes of the police officers. Based on a scholar research made by Bob Egelko, he said in “Homeless have right to reclaim property” that “A city that seizes homeless people's property from a street or sidewalk must preserve it so that the owner has a chance to reclaim it.” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said that “The government may not take property like a thief in the night; rather, it must announce its intentions and give the property owner a chance to argue against the taking,” which means that everyone has the right to get back his or her own stuffs. Also, another scholar Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness pointed out that many homeless people report that their own belongings are captured and seizure by the police officers without getting noticed. Some of their belongings are even thrown into dumpsters. “It's pretty rare that people can actually get their property back,” she said. Furthermore, about destroying homeless people’s items, Bob Egelko said in his essay that judge Kim Wardlaw said that the police’s behavior of seizing and destroying their belongings “violated the constitutional ban on unreasonable seizures.”
Overall, homeless in Los Angeles is a very serious issue. City of Los Angeles kept criminalizing the homeless people by making laws to prohibit them to live outside and ban their freedom to get access to public services. The discrimination among them is obvious and need everyone to pay attention to.
Work Cited Page
Bob Egelko, “Homeless have right to reclaim property,” SFGATE, September 5, 2012,
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Homeless-have-right-to-reclaim-property-3843236.php
This research written by Bob Egelko talks about the rights of homeless people. They have the rights to protect their basic personal belongings. Also, when their belongings are seizure by police officers, the homeless people also have rights to get their belongings back. According to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, when the police officers are going to take away the homeless people’s personal belongings, the homeless people have the rights to take back. This law is open to everyone not only normal U.S. citizens but also the homeless people. The homeless people deserve equal rights.
Paul Boden and Jennifer Friedenbach, “Demonizing homeless won’t fix problem; practical solutions needed,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 18, 2015, https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Wanted-Solutions-oriented debate-on-homelessness-6451059.php
This article talks about the rights when homeless people’s personal properties are seizure. Jennifer pointed out that the event of homeless people’s belongings are thrown on “Skid Row” is becoming much more frequent. And it is very rare that people can get their things back. This situation is reported by many homeless people. Thus we can see that police officers don’t view homeless people as ordinary, they discriminate them.
Stephanie Morrow, “Know Your Rights: Can You be Searched Without a Warrant?” Legalzoom, https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/know-your-rights-can-you-be-searched-without-a warrant Accessed on 23 July, 2018.
Stephanie Morrow is a college professor. In her research paper, we can see that the Fourth Amendment protects the citizens from unreasonable searches and seizure. People should be aware of those rights so that when they are in danger, they should use their rights to fight against discrimination and injustice. Stephanie also said that “under the Fourth Amendment, police officers must obtain written permission from a court of law to legally search a person and his or her property and seize evidence while they are investigating possible criminal activity.”
Gale Holland, “Seize a homeless person's property? Not so fast, a federal judge tells L.A.” Los Angeles Times, APR 13, 2016,
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless injunction-20160413-story.html
This article, written by Gale Holland, describes the problem that the police officers seizing personal belongings. Because of this, there are many court cases happened in Los Angeles. Many homeless people face this problem. She talks about two court cases describing events happened in Los Angeles.
“Quality of Life Policing.” Incite-national, Accessed on 7 July 2018.
http://www.incite-national.org/page/quality-life-policing
Gale Holland, “L.A.'s homelessness surged 75% in six years. Here's why the crisis has been decades in the making,” Los Angeles Times, 01 Feb 2018,
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-how-we-got-here-20180201-story.html
This article is written by Gale Holland. It talks about the change of homeless people in Los Angeles. Homeless is a very serious problem in Los Angeles. Many homeless people are living in tents, motels and trains. The people who lived from the past, and after encountering the economic crisis, they don’t have much money as the higher level status people to pay for the housing. Under such circumstance, the mayor took out all the sources to help the homeless build their places to live and provide them with the basic needs for lives. However, due to many reasons including lacking permanent places and the economic problems, the project of helping the homeless people hasn’t been successfully launched. Overall, the problem of the loop of homeless is the lack of place for people to live in, just as the article said “... Los Angeles has a severe shortage of apartment units for poor people...”
Illegal to Be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States, National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/Crim2002.pdf
Janell Ross, “U.S. Cities Criminalize Homelessness, Violate Human Rights Agreements,” Huffpost, Oct 26, 2011,
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/26/us-cities criminalize-homless_n_938095.html
This article, written by Janell Ross, describes U.S. citizens criminalize homeless people and sometimes even violate homeless people’s rights. Criminalizing people can be separated into several aspects including harassing them, seizing their properties and capture their personal belongings. Also, the City of Los Angeles made several laws to ban homeless people to sit on the streets and other places.
Will, Amber, "Beating Down the Lowly: The Criminalization of the Homeless and Alternative Solutions" (2012). Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 118.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/cus/118
Cervantes v. International Services, A DREAM DENIED: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF HOMELESSNESS IN U.S. CITIES, http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/casesummaries_1b.html
EMILY ALPERT REYES, “L.A. agrees to pay nearly $950,000 in two cases involving the homeless,” Los Angeles Times, JUN 14, 2016,
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la me-ln-attorney-fees-homeless-case-20160613-snap-story.html
Mitchell v. City of Los Angeles, Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, Clearinghouse, Accessed on 23 July 2018,
https://www.clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=15286
“Quality of Life Policing.” Incite-national, Accessed on 7 July 2018.
http://www.incite-national.org/page/quality-life-policing