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ST. LOUIS — The camouflage collar around Rebel’s neck tells a story.

The Bullmastiff’s owner is a veteran. Ronald Benson is his name. He was an Army Ranger. And although he is disabled, he still has a certain command presence about him. Benson is homeless, though to use that word is almost disrespectful to the work and care the veteran has put into the place where he has lived for almost five years.

Benson lives in a corner of the old Cotton Belt Freight Depot, along the riverfront north of downtown. He has a roof, a fence, wood-burning heat and a propane stove. He keeps a padlock on the front gate. A couple lives on the north side of the building. They have cats. Rebel isn’t a fan of cats. But he likes visitors.

I was at Benson’s place last week, tagging along with attorney Stephanie Lummus. She was updating her various clients — all of them homeless — about the federal lawsuit she filed with Washington, D.C.-based attorney Phil Telfeyan, the executive director of nonprofit .

The suit, filed in December, is one of several seeking to overturn a law the Missouri Legislature passed last year. It criminalizes the very act of being homeless by making it a crime to camp on state property or right-of-ways. That could have wide-ranging effects in urban areas, where homeless people often congregate in state right-of-ways, such as under highway overpasses. And in rural areas, homeless people often camp in state parks.

The law also seeks to upend the “housing first� philosophy followed by virtually all cities, and most nonprofits, that try to serve homeless populations in the U.S. A federal judge denied a temporary restraining order to stop the law before it took effect on the first day of 2023.

Nobody wanted this law except for the right-wing organization that wrote it and Missouri Republicans who pushed it even as advocates and professionals across the state told them it was a bad idea.

Benson thinks it’s a bad idea, too.

“I think it’s a bunch of crap,� he says. “Why won’t they leave homeless people alone?�

Dawn Johnson, another of the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, shares Benson’s view. She’s the “mom� of the Riverfront Community, an encampment along the Mississippi River and under the shelter that used to house the entrance to the long-defunct President’s Casino. During the recent cold snap, Johnson gathered all the members of the community into one large tent to stay warm.

“She saved lives,� says another man who lives there, who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. The man, who asked that I not use his name, uses a cane to walk because of a leg injury. But he hobbles three days a week to the downtown MetroLink, which he takes to a stop, where he catches a bus for a one-hour trip to the Taco Bell where he works.

He’s trying to earn enough money to get another place to live after being evicted last year. “It’s not right,� that the Legislature would try to charge people like him with a crime for trying to survive, he says.

Lummus, of course, agrees. “You can’t just put people in a cage for being poor,� she says.

It’s not her first battle with the state over its tendency to make life more difficult for people living in poverty. A few years back, she and Telfayan filed a federal civil rights lawsuit trying to stop the state from suspending driver’s licenses of people who fall behind on child support. Many of those people, like her client Camese Bedford, are also homeless. Bedford, who served in the Navy, lives on disability payments.

That lawsuit is making its way through the system, but it has for now put a hold on the state’s previous suspension practices for driver’s licenses.

In the meantime, the Legislature has found another way to try to make it harder for people who end up on the streets. Rather than helping them, lawmakers passed a bill that could put them in jail.

It was a written by political operatives who fail to understand the diversity of the folks who live on the streets in places like St. Louis, or are tucked into corners of state parks in rural Missouri. Some live there by choice. Others are facing hard times. Putting them in jail is not a path toward progress.

“Criminalization is not compassion,� reads the lawsuit that bears Benson’s name. “It is cruelty.�