LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It has been one year since House Bill 5, also known as the Safer Kentucky Act, went into law. Advocacy groups claim the measure has failed and are voicing their concerns.
“The thing that I wasn’t prepared for is the cruelty. That we are very clearly in the ‘the cruelty is the point’ era,” said David Smillie, executive director for the Louisville Outreach for the Unsheltered.
The bill largely increased penalties for many crimes in Kentucky, but, most notably, created an unlawful camping provision.
Ashley Spalding, research director for the nonpartisan nonprofit Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said the Safer Kentucky Act has exacerbated problems for the unhoused while doing little to create solutions.
“Rather than providing a pathway to provide housing, criminalizing homelessness further destabilizes unhoused Kentuckians’ lives and disrupts access to services,” she said. “Instead of arresting and jailing people for being unhoused, the state should pursue housing solutions that actually work.”
Read the rest at Spectrum News.
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