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After one arrest, a municipal judge issued an order of protection against him, in effect kicking him out of a certain neighborhood. He got caught there again, and he was arrested, put in jail and lost in the system. An attorney, Maureen Hanlon of ArchCity Defenders, took up his case and got him released and into temporary housing.

Two years ago, I wrote about Maufas as an example of how the criminal justice system sometimes makes homelessness worse. If a new law passed by the Missouri Legislature stays in effect, the problem is going to become much worse.

The law, pushed by Sen. Holly Rehder, R-Sikeston, and Rep. Bruce DeGroot, R-Chesterfield, was pitched earlier this year as a way to better spend federal money to reduce homelessness in Missouri. How does it do this?

First, the new law makes it a misdemeanor for unhoused people to sleep on state-owned property. 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.

Second, the new law penalizes cities that don’t enforce it, allowing the attorney general to seek to file civil action against non-compliant cities.

Finally, the law upends the “housing first� model that nearly every agency that battles homelessness in Missouri has adopted. Rehder and DeGroot seek to take money that helps people find shelter and redirect it to areas such as mental health services.

The bill was copied from ; it wasn’t developed with the help of any of the agencies that battle homelessness in Missouri.

Those agencies, and the various advocates who work for them, universally criticized the bill, calling it “insane,� among other pejoratives. They begged lawmakers not to pass it. Allison Miles, who lives in Rehder’s district, was one of them.

“I was livid,� Miles says about the bill, which was signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson. “You’re punishing someone simply for their status. Criminalizing people for being homeless, you’re essentially saying you don’t have the right to exist.�

Miles, who operates a nonprofit called Street Level Cape Girardeau, is one of the plaintiffs in the second of two lawsuits filed in the past month seeking to overturn the new law. The first one was filed by attorneys in Springfield, and the second by the St. Louis-based nonprofit and the , based in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit focuses more on process than the plight of homelessness, but that tells a story in and of itself. All too often, when lawmakers can’t get a bill through the Legislature on its own merits, it gets attached to unrelated legislation that has elements important to a majority of lawmakers. The end-around often leads to some elected officials holding their noses and voting for something they might not otherwise approve.

, however, has limits on that strategy. “No bill shall contain more than one subject,� reads Article III. That subject must be “clearly expressed in its title,� it says.

The same section goes on to say that a bill can’t be changed during the legislative process from its original purpose. House Bill 1606, which contains the new homelessness statutes, started out as a bill about county financial statements. It morphed into a Christmas-tree bill that dealt with coroners, park rangers and other items related to different political subdivisions.

The Missouri Supreme Court has regularly declared bills unconstitutional for violating the one-subject rule over the years. Miles hopes that is what happens in her lawsuit. But more importantly, she hopes lawmakers do a better job of finding out what it is truly like to be homeless, and what it takes to help the folks who are on the street.

She was there once herself, off and on between 2015 and 2018, as she battled drug addiction. “I know what it’s like to be forgotten,� Miles says. “I know what it’s like to be in a position where you just don’t see a way out.�

In Cape Girardeau, where she lives, the homelessness problem has gotten worse since the pandemic, without much support from government leaders to help folks find housing.

“There’s no shelter here. There’s literally nowhere for them to go. It’s a constantly revolving door situation. They get caught in a park sleeping at night. They go to jail. They miss a court date and now they have a warrant. It’s a never-ending cycle,� Miles says. “I just kept seeing more and more people out on the streets here.�

As Miles prepares for a court battle against a law that would turn the people she serves into criminals, she works every day to feed them and direct them to what little housing services can be found.

“It’s getting worse,� Miles says. “Every single Sunday there’s new faces that show up.�

Sending those new faces to jail because of where they choose to sleep is only going to make the problem worse.