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Freedom from discrimination is Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the homeless population is not free from discrimination. Discrimination against homeless people is the act of treating homeless people, or people perceived to be homeless, unfavorably. As with most types of discrimination, it can manifest in numerous forms.

Discriminatory legislation regarding homelessness
Main article: Criminalization of homelessness

Use of the law to discriminate against homeless people takes on disparate forms: restricting the public areas in which sitting or sleeping are allowed, ordinances restricting aggressive panhandling, actions intended to divert homeless people from particular areas, penalizing loitering or anti-social behavior, or enforcing laws on homeless people and not on those who are not homeless. An American Civilities Liberties Union (ACLU) report claimed that the government of LA discriminated against the homeless residents. The report lays out the ways in which the government discriminates against the homeless people and holds back essential services that could save their lives including, “harassment, segregation, and issuing citations.”

Another example of discriminatory public policy can be seen in the lack of employment opportunities for homeless people. Sarah Golabek-Goldman advocates for the Ban the Address campaign, which would no longer require people to provide their address to potential employers. Passing this law will help homeless people find jobs and get back on their feet, because currently they either provide the address of a homeless shelter or aren't able to provide an address at all. When the employers see this they realize the applicant is homeless and the company won't even consider them for the job. This law will help protect the homeless from employment discrimination.

There are only 5 states that consider crimes against homeless people, with the reason being due to their homelessness, to be a hate crime. These states are Florida, Maine, Washington, and Rhode Island. It is also considered a hate crime in Washington, DC.

Criminal victimization
See also: Homelessness in the United States § Crimes against homeless people

Nearly one-half of homeless people are victims of violence and a study in 2007 found that this number is increasing. Many of these violent crimes committed against homeless people are due to their homelessness. This is supported by another study that discovered many people do not even perceive homeless people as fully human.

Lack of access to public areas
Per the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in January 2017, there were a total of 553,742 homeless people accounted for across the United States, including territories. Of those accounted for, 192,875 of them were unsheltered and "lived in a place not meant for human habitation, such as the street or an abandoned building". Many unsheltered homeless camps are located in industrial districts and along highways, far away from public parks facilities where traditional public bathrooms are located. If local municipalities do not provide bathroom access, homeless people are left to urinate and defecate in the streets and waterways near their camps.

Robinson and Sickels with the University of Colorado Denver released a report highlighting the criminalization of homelessness across the State of Colorado. During their research, they found that 83% of the people they interviewed said they were denied bathroom access because they were homeless. Without access to bathrooms, unsheltered homeless populations across the country are living in third-world conditions. This, in turn, leads to public health concerns such as the hepatitis A outbreak seen in California. As reported by Kushel with The New England Journal of Medicine, in 2017 alone 649 people in California were infected with hepatitis A; this outbreak began in the homeless population.

Anti-homeless architecture
Many city and town plans incorporate hostile architecture, also known as anti-homeless or defensive architecture, to deter homeless people from camping or sleeping in public areas. Research conducted by Crisis (based in the UK) recorded that 35% said they were unable to find a free place to sleep as a result of the designs. Examples of hostile architectures include; anti-homeless spikes, segregated benches and gated doorways. Anti-homeless architecture is direct discrimination towards the homeless population and therefore denies them their basic human rights.

Stigma around homelessness
Along with discrimination against homeless people, there is also a stigma around the homeless. Canadian sociologist Ervin Goffman theorizes that stigma ruins one's identity and disqualifies them from social acceptance, which means stigma involves extreme negative perceptions of the individual(s) it is attached to. According to the results from a study at Columbia University, the magnitude of the stigma associated with homelessness is equal to that of mental illness, demonstrating that it is very severe. The results of this study also suggest that people who are homeless are blamed by society for their situation, which furthers the stigma.

To prove the severity of the stigma a research team from the University of California San Francisco conducted a study using Twitter. 1.75 million tweets containing the word "homeless" were collected at random, then 6,400 of those were randomly selected to be further studied. From this pool many beliefs many common beliefs about the homeless population were discovered and publish in the journal Stigma and Health. One of the most common beliefs found was that people view the homeless population as dirty and unhygienic. Many of the tweets made jokes about their lack of hygiene and body odor. They even said this about how disgraceful they are by urinating and defecating in public, which fails to acknowledge the fact that public restroom services are often not available to them. Another common belief discovered through the tweets is that the homeless population is violent and they engage in criminal activity. Many people tweeted that they were threatened a homeless person's "bizarre behavior" and "aggressive panhandling". Another common belief discovered in the study was that homeless people deserve to be homeless, and it's a result of their laziness. People tweeted that people homelessness was due to their own behaviors such as substance abuse or refusing treatment for their mental illness. Many of the tweets said that the homeless population had character flaws that caused their homelessness including laziness, lack of goals, and no motivation.