Some proponents of food sharing restrictions have argued that sharing food with people in outdoor locations enables them to remain homeless.
More likely, persons who receive food from outdoor food programs may remain homeless due to lack of affordable housing, shelter space, and services, or due to their struggles with physical or psychiatric disabilities or substance addiction.
Instead of removing food sources, cities would more likely reduce or end homelessness in their cities by finding solutions to the underlying causes of homelessness.
Framing sharing food as a factor in enabling people to remain homeless is misleading. Food is not an addiction; food is necessary for survival.
Depriving a person of food means that she must put all of her energy into obtaining food and less energy on improving other aspects of her life. Food sharing programs that reach out to those in public spaces may be the only way some homeless individuals can obtain healthy and safe food.
Feeding Intolerance: Prohibitions on Sharing Food with People Experiencing Homelessness: A Report by The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and The National Coalition for the Homeless 15nov2007: "The right to food is a well-recognized human right. This basic human right is explicitly mentioned in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and over 120 instruments of international law.
13 Twenty-two countries have included a right to food in their domestic constitutions.
14 As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has stated, a nation must refrain from taking “actions that result in increasing levels of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.”
15 Food sharing restrictions deny homeless persons this basic human right. Placing restrictions on food sharing at a time where there is an increased need for housing and food assistance leaves many people with nowhere to turn for basic survival needs."
'via Blog this'
CONCLUSION
Make your own conclusions. As politicians try to invent lackey ways to deal with high density urban problems, like homelessness, those same politicians are diminishing your and my freedoms.
These laws to prohibit feeding the homeless on city streets come with hefty fines and prolonged visits to jail. It is personal, and in your face.
Having something to eat is a basic human right.
__________________Reference
http://www.mindfully.org/Food/2007/Sharing-Food-Prohibitions15nov07a.htm
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/foodsharing/index.html
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13 Laura Niada, Hunger and International Law, 22 Conn. J. Int’l. L. 131, at 166.
14 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Fact Sheet, available at http://www.fao.org/WorldFoodSummit/english/fsheets/food.pdf.
15 United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, www.righttofood.org
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