To applause from the gallery on both sides, the Homeless Bill of Rights passed out of the General Assembly and now heads to the Governor’s desk for signing.
Officially titled the Rhode Island Fair Housing Practices Act, it was introduced in both chambers back in January. A revised version passed the Senate on May 2nd. But the House had shown little movement, and advocates feared it being “held for further study” meant that it would not be passed. However, on June 10th it was suddenly scheduled in the House Judiciary Committee for consideration, and a new revised version passed out of that committee on Tuesday, then being added to the House Calendar.
With zero debate, it passed 60-5. That version was then submitted to the Senate, where it was also passed, in a 33-2 vote.
The Homeless Bill of Rights acts to prevent discrimination against homeless people by various state and local agencies as well as employers and medical facilities.* According to advocates, if signed by Governor Lincoln Chafee, it would be the first of its kind in the nation.
The legislation was sponsored by retiring Senator John Tassoni in the Senate and freshman Representative Chris Blazejewski in the House.
UPDATE: Due to reader comments about the nature of these bills, it seems prudent to expand the original article.
What the Homeless Bill of Rights does is prevent harassment or discrimination towards homeless people. This means kicking people off of park benches or out of libraries when they’re not doing anything wrong. It means that when someone applies for a job, the fact that their mailing address is listed as a shelter can’t be used as a reason to reject them. It means that a homeless person can’t have their stuff seized or searched if they’re not causing trouble. Basically, if the Governor signs this, it’s now a little bit easier for the homeless to enjoy all the little niceties of public life.
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Correction: An earlier version of this article stated “businesses” instead of “employers and medical facilities.” Thank you to our keen readers for pointing this out.
Yet another addition to the wildly profitable frivolous-litigation factories that Title VII, USERRA, the ADEA, and the ADA have become. The plaintiff’s attorneys of RI must be licking their lips in anticipation.
What was wrong w/ the 14th Amendment that we had to create a new class of people? And why should this apply to businesses?
…and this helps the homeless how?
Uh… seriously? This is like the shortest article I’ve written and you missed the part where it says it prevents homeless discrimination?
If it’s anything like the ADA, it won’t help homeless individuals get jobs. The employment rate of disabled individuals has fallen sharply since the ADA was passed, and the effect is most pronounced in states that have a large amount of ADA-related litigation. Ironically, businesses quickly become afraid to interview and hire such individuals because they fear being sued.
What it will do is drum up business for the scummiest of the plaintiff’s attorneys in RI. Just like a large percentage of the Title VII and ADA claims already being brought, it will be more expensive for businesses or agencies to fight the claims in court than to settle for some low 5-figures amount. A number of homeless individuals will figure this out rather quickly and pair up with eager plaintiff’s attorneys to extort RI businesses out of settlements. This has already happened with every other anti-discrimination statute, so I see no reason why this wouldn’t just be one more tool in the cottage industry’s belt.
Quid hoc ergo propter hoc. Case closed, eh? That’s just nonsense…
“Did the ADA Reduce Employment of the Disabled?”
[quote]
“Apart from a short-term effect of the ADA’s requirement of special accommodations, the ADA was not causally linked to declining disabled employment over much of the 1990s.”
In a recent paper, Disaggregating Employment Protection: The Case of Disability Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 10740), NBER Research Associate Christine Jolls and co-author J.J. Prescott use variation in pre-ADA state disability discrimination laws to disentangle the employment effects of the ADA’s two main requirements, one of which requires special accommodations for disabled workers, and the other of which imposes a conventional employment protection rule prohibiting firing and other employment decisions based on disability…
The authors find no evidence that the ADA’s traditional employment protection rule, prohibiting firing and other employment decisions on the basis of disability, reduced disabled employment… With respect to the ADA’s requirement of special accommodations for individuals with disabilities, the authors find a significant negative effect on disabled employment in the period just after the ADA’s enactment, but not in the subsequent period. That short-term effect may reflect the fact that many accommodations, including physical alterations to the workplace and modification of workplace policies, imposed obvious but often one-time costs on employers – costs that may well have been exaggerated or particularly salient in employers’ minds just after the ADA’s enactment. [end quote]
My statement isn’t “nonsense.” If you read it more carefully, you’ll see that it’s not inconsistent with anything that the study found. But there is a significant amount of other research that suggests the ADA may have had a negative impact on the disabled employment rate, and in any case, has not helped it.
I see, so your contention is that because the homeless require special accommodations of some sort they will be less likely to be hired? That’s the part of the ADA law that temporarily affected the job numbers. There was also some evidence that some affected by the ADA may have pursued education resulting in short term changes in teh jobs numbers. Perhaps that would occur if more homeless were admitted to colleges. If that’s the case, I say great.
But let’s try this part again…
The authors find no evidence that the ADA’s traditional employment protection rule, prohibiting firing and other employment decisions on the basis of disability, reduced disabled employment.
Well, regardless of the issue of whether the short-term employment downside continues into the long-term, my main points are that this won’t help homeless employment and is only going to make a handful of plaintiff’s attorneys richer.
“my main points are that this won’t help homeless employment”
But you reach this conclusion by extending an analogy, the initial term of which PHL has shown to be false.
I don’t know why you think it’s legitimate to simply re-state your position twice, rather than provide any evidence to support it.
Analogies are common and logically valid forms of argument. No part of my statement has been “shown to be false.” Disabled employment has fallen since the ADA was passed, and the study he provided confirms this. This lends support to the argument that the ADA has not helped disabled employment.
Begone, troll, before somebody drops a bridge on you.
“No part of my statement has been “shown to be false.” Disabled employment has fallen since the ADA was passed, and the study he provided confirms this.”
The authors find no evidence that the ADA’s traditional employment protection rule, prohibiting firing and other employment decisions on the basis of disability, reduced disabled employment.
Are you for real?
And they acknowledge that disability employment has fallen since the passage of the ADA, and they acknowledge that there may have been a short-term negative impact upon its passage. It’s consistent with what I said. I’m truly sorry if you choose not to accept that.
“they acknowledge that disability employment has fallen since the passage of the ADA”
You say the ADA caused a drop in employment of the disabled.
They say the ADA did not cause a drop in employment of the disabled.
These two statements are the opposite of each other.
You say this new legislation will cause a drop in employment of the homeless, just as the ADA caused a drop in the unemployment of the disabled.
You have yet to provide any evidence that the ADA caused a drop in the employment of the disabled.
You have no analogy.
Actually, what I said is that it wouldn’t help homeless unemployment, which is different from causing homeless employment to drop.
You have a pattern of putting far too much faith in a single social science study when it suits your argument to do so. The vast majority of social science studies are not reproducible.
What I did point out earlier is that other studies have suggested that the ADA might have had a negative impact on employment of the disabled.
Here is one:
economics.mit.edu/files/17
“Although the
number of disabled individuals receiving disability transfers increased
at the same time, the decline in employment of the disabled does not
appear to be explained by increasing transfers alone, leaving the ADA
as a likely cause. Consistent with this view, the effects of the ADA
appear larger in medium-size firms, possibly because small firms were
exempt from the ADA. The effects are also larger in states with more
ADA-related discrimination charges.”
You are prevaricating, because you know that you have been cornered by the facts.
“what I said is that it wouldn’t help homeless unemployment, which is different from causing homeless employment to drop”
You said this new legislation will not help homeless unemployment, because this new legislation will be like the ADA , which, according to you, caused employment of the disabled to drop.
“Analogies are common and logically valid forms of argument.”–RTW
Your analogy was that this new legislation would do what the ADA did, according to you: cause businesses not to hire homeless people out of fear of being sued, which will cause employment of homeless people to drop.
Your argument consists of two claims:
1) the ADA caused employment of the disabled to drop, because of litigation.
2) this new legislation will cause employment of the homeless to drop, because of litigation.
PHL challenged your first claim, and now you are trying to retract the second.
“You have a pattern of putting far too much faith in a single social science study when it suits your argument to do so. The vast majority of social science studies are not reproducible.”
I bet this statement of yours means you are about to introduce a single social science study, because it suits your argument to do so, even though the results of the study are not reproducible.
“What I did point out earlier is that other studies have suggested that the ADA might have had a negative impact on employment of the disabled.
Here is one:
economics.mit.edu/files/17 ”
Yes. This study supports the claim that the ADA caused a temporary drop in employment of the disabled, because of requirements to build accomodations for them.
But you didn’t read this study.
If you had read it, you never would have posted it, because way at the end, not in the abstract, which is all that you read, but way at the end, the study makes this little claim:
Contrary to the concerns of its fiercest opponents (e.g., Olson 1997), it seems highly unlikely that the ADA led to a climate of fear of litigation that signifi- cantly reduced the overall level of employment.
How do you even get out of bed?
I didn’t make such strong claims as you say that I made, and anyone can go back and read my comments and confirm this for themselves. I never said that the ADA definitively caused the long-term disability employment rate to drop. I said that it hasn’t helped disability employment, and that some research suggests that it may have had a negative impact. Any stronger reading than this is not accurate and is being advanced solely for argumentaton purposes. Unlike you, I’m careful about making definitive claims based on one or two social science studies on controversial topics. Again, anyone can go back and read my comments for themselves. I don’t need you to paraphrase me, because you usually get it wrong.
As always with your trolling threads, you’re not interested in having an actual discussion. You just want to rage, and hurl insults, and create endless arguments over semantics and who said what and who is stupid in your opinion. You argue every point to the death and never give an inch of ground or extend the benefit of the doubt. Plainly put, you don’t argue in good faith. You argue for the sake of arguing and never offer substantive comments of your own beyond criticizing and insulting others. This is troll behavior.
You are doing severe damage to this blog by creating a vicious environment in which people are attacked over and over and over again for purely ideological reasons, simply for commenting. I hope you realize that you are hurting this site.
Every time you lose on the facts you retract your claims, start name-calling, and then plead, ‘won’t someone think of the site!’
Shall I retract my claims, call you names, or look for the fainting couch? no. I think I’ll stick to repeating the best part of this thread.
You said this: “If it’s anything like the ADA, it won’t help homeless individuals get jobs. The employment rate of disabled individuals has fallen sharply since the ADA was passed, and the effect is most pronounced in states that have a large amount of ADA-related litigation. Ironically, businesses quickly become afraid to interview and hire such individuals because they fear being sued.”
And then you–you!–you yourself cited a study that says this: “Contrary to the concerns of its fiercest opponents (e.g., Olson 1997), it seems highly unlikely that the ADA led to a climate of fear of litigation that signifi- cantly reduced the overall level of employment.”
Let’s just savor the moment.
“Uh… seriously? This is like the shortest article I’ve written and you missed the part where it says it prevents homeless discrimination?”
What new specific protections do they have now? I read the bill and maybe I’m missing it but I don’t see anything new except an inclusion as another protected class that is already protected.
“The vast majority of social science studies are not reproducible.”
About the third time I’ve seen this from the same poster. It’s a moot point. Reproducibility is not essential for validity and not important at all for the study of natural phenomena. Multiple studies over a period of time build up a database of statistical evidence.
Even so, do you want to know the difference between a social scientist’s and a physical scientist’s acceptable probability level? 95% versus 99%.
“Reproducibility is not essential for validity and not important at all for the study of natural phenomena.”
Actually, it’s a main principle of the scientific method. A study that is not reproducible has not been established as accurate by scientific standards. Saying it’s not important is very dangerous and out of line with scientific methodology.
“Multiple studies over a period of time build up a database of statistical evidence.”
“Conceptual replication” is not the same thing as direct replication. Reliance upon conceptual replication can lead, and has led, to huge research and statistical problems in practice, especially when researchers attempt to mash independently gathered data sets together into the kinds of databases you describe and draw conconclusions from the data in aggregate. That is not good practice and is subject to all kinds of biases, errors, and misinterpretations.
There was a good discussion of these issues recently on EconTalk:
www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/06/yong_on_science.html
Creationists use your logic to argue against evolution. Evolution can’t be replicated and is therefore an invalid theory. I hope you see how you leave a huge hole in your argument.
How does the geologist know how rocks are formed if the intense heat and pressure of the earth’s core are completely irreproducible by man?
You are trying your hardest to discredit a science that has been steadily growing and evolving for more than a hundred years now. I wish you luck.
You’re misunderstanding the scientific process. Evolution, a naturally occurring phenomenon, can be affirmed through scientific research, such as genetic sampling or testing, or experiments with populations of fauna. That research can be followed and reproduced by other scientists. It’s not the evolution itself that needs to be reproducible. Similarly, there has to be some basis upon which geologists are drawing conclusions about those rocks for it to be a valid scientific theory. That basis could be rock samples, tests, or other forms of experimentation and study. If other scientists can’t perform the same research, or if they can’t follow the same steps and get the same results, then the theory has not been scientifically established as accurate. It’s not that the rocks themselves have to be reproduced in a lab.
So there is a distinction between validating a fact (we know for sure how rocks are formed because we reproduced the rocks) and validating a theory (we keep coming up with this theory after looking at the rocks).
Social science works exactly the same way. Think of the rock as the body of statistical evidence. Reliable and valid theories can be drawn from it. The irreproducibility of a single test doesn’t come anywhere close to invalidating a trend. The irreproducibility of social experiments doesn’t come anywhere near invalidating the body of social research.
“The irreproducibility of a single test doesn’t come anywhere close to invalidating a trend.”
You’re still missing the point. When the vast majority of studies that supposedly constitute a trend cannot be validated through replication and we don’t know how many studies cut against the trend and went unreported, then it has not been scientifically established that a trend exists at all. It’s just an exercise in group think and cherry picking. This is a huge problem in social science, and in medical science where complex systems like the human body are involved.
Social scientists recognize that problem, hence: A trend cannot be formed without some kind of replication. I don’t even know what to say besides that. You’re going from just plain wrong to some kind of science fiction.
I mean, let’s just go ahead and apply your ideas.
This is from the abstract of the ADA study above where they explain what they did.
“By comparing employment level changes in states in which certain ADA provisions were innovations to employment level changes in a group of control states that already had such provisions, Jolls and Prescott are able to separate the effects of the ADA’s two main requirements.”
Are you saying that their results are impossible to replicate?
When I say that the studies are not reproducible, I don’t mean that they are impossible to reproduce by their nature. Of course they could be reproduced if they were true. The problem is that a lot of them aren’t in fact true and are not reproducible for that reason, i.e., other researchers get (or at least would get) different findings. But there is woefully inadequate incentive to actually do that hard work and attempt to reproduce the work of others and publish those results, so a lot of the social studies floating around and being cited are unvetted bunk.
No, by and large, social scientists and health researchers don’t recognize the problem, which is why ideas like “conceptual replication” are pervasive in those fields and often conflated with actual replication. That is how highly dubious studies like the Bargh priming study make it into the psychology textbooks despite the fact that many researchers tried to replicate the study and could not. There is a fundamental problem with the way research in a lot of these fields has been operating in the university model. The incentives are too weighted in favor of publishing flashy and first and there aren’t enough checks on the validity of the studies. A growing number of people within these circles are finally beginning to acknowledge the problem. John Ioannidis’s paper, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” is a good read, if you haven’t read it already.
I have to draw the line at parroted conspiracy theories from the Library of Economics and Liberty (Haha! Seriously?)
You should inform all the Nobel-Prize-winning economists and Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalists who have been interviewed on the program that they shouldn’t appear on such trash. And all the listeners and commenters, many of whom are professional economists, who have voted it the top economics podcast for many years running.
Their economists are top notch. Their attempts to discredit psychology? Two reasons I don’t take it seriously.
1. It’s a social study telling you that social studies are invalid. OK.
2. It’s irrelevant. A social scientist can draw an invalid conclusion from a set of data (their only point), but the data itself (the rock) is still reliable and valuable.
Don’t forget that your favorite economists are also social scientists themselves.
I’m not anti-social science. I think it can be very valuable. Economics in particular has been a great passion of mine. I just think we should be heavily skeptical about any one study until it has been replicated by other researchers and demonstrated to be valid. I’m not a big fan of drawing broad conclusions from “natural experiments” in economics either, even when they support policies I favor. I think the Heritage foundation in particular is one of the worst offenders in promoting junk science to advance a political agenda. Cato does some good work, although I don’t agree with them all the time.
I actually agree, but I’m much less pessimistic about the biases of sociologists. Of course everything should be taken with a critical eye::
Maybe next time you can point out the place in the specific study where you think it goes wrong and I won’t be lead to believe that you have it out for social science (my great passion).
Thumbs up
Now that this first step has passed, when will the step of ending the homelessness be implemented?
Surly among the giant intellects of our incredible leadership here in RI when considering our nasty foreclosure crisis, the successful homestead programs as implemented in other states, organizations,like Habitat for Humanity and others, and the current cost of shelters and auxiliary services, someone can put together the pieces of the puzzle to END HOMELESSNESS?
Didn’t Feinstein say we were going to end homelessness in RI?
I am waiting.