Making a Home for the Homeless in Hate Crime Legislation

Several jurisdictions in the United States (e.g., Florida and Washington) have recently incorporated the status of homeless under the protection of hate crime legislation. This was largely promoted by new data and reports by the National Coalition for the Homeless urging added protection for the homeless. The issue of whether the homeless belong under hate crime provisions raises the following question: What criteria must a group meet to be eligible for its inclusion? What similarities do the homeless have with other protected groups? Finally, what implications does the recognition of economic status have on other economic groups, particularity the top wealthy 1%? In this article, I explore some of the issues raised by including the homeless as a protected group. I survey several rationales offered for the selection of protected characteristics. I argue that the rationales currently offered suffer from descriptive inadequacy by either being under- or over-inclusive. I turn instead to the political conception of disadvantage for an identity marker that better explains the link between the various protected groups and identities under hate crime legislation. Moreover, the use of disadvantage allows for the inclusion of the homeless without the need for incorporating other socio-economic identities.