Hungary Outlaws Homelessness

I actually wish more places would make that kind of law. It would enable the people that need to be taken care of to get cared for. As it is now, if a person is mentally ill or has a substance abuse problem that has lead to them being homeless, there's nothing anyone can do about it. They can't be forced to receive mental health care against their will or to get treatment for their addiction. If they don't have family that can take power over their affairs, it's almost impossible to get them into the system and get them any aid. Making the homelessness itself an offense that they can be picked up for and mandated by court order to get help for could be a huge help to many. But it's one of those laws that sounds heartless on the surface. No one wants to be the lawmaker who has a headline with his name in it about "making being homeless illegal". If you think it through, you could see the compassion and sensibility in it, but if you just hear that little snippet, it sounds awful.

And since homeless people are usually hungry... Well, you can see the dangerous pun cycle this might lead to, if someone were so careless as to point it out.

Oops.

I wonder how many of the homeless will turn themselves in for access to free room & board. Hungary would do better to just offer shelter to the homeless on a voluntary basis. It would probably be cheaper in the long run, and not make them out to be a bastion of creeping fascism.

Isn't vagrancy already a "crime" (at least on paper) in several countries?

And then we build debtor's prisons and workhouses...welcome to the 19th century!

By all means make it illegal if you have access to housing yet refuse to live in it, but if you have no house what choice do you have? Surely putting people in prison is far more expensive than providing them with basic housing. Perhaps the point of the law is not to persuade homeless people to change, but instead to give the police a legal basis on which to harrass them.

Why stop there? Why not just cook and eat them, too? :/

{If you think I'm serious, please familiarize yourself with "A Modest Proposal")

@ Melissa

If the government really wants to help them they can, nobody is stopping them. I really don't see the need for the government to criminalize the people they want to help.

It makes no sense. It reminds me of ... oh never mind, don't want to invoke Godwins law. ;)

Well on a dumbness scale this law is a high scorer. Its not enough people are so down on their luck they have lost their home, now they get a criminal record as well.

Incomprehensible. /facepalm

@Melissa how naive are you? The Hungarian state have no intention to care for these people, they just want them off the street. The ultimate aim of this law is to have these people leave the country. If the state had any intention to care for the homeless they could do so without passing this idiotic law.

This law is almost certainly in contravention of the ECHR and as such the EU will hopefully be taking action against the Hungarian government.