In the summer of 1999, a homeless man was murdered by three teenagers in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood.

“He was beaten to death by them for no other reason other than he was a homeless man,” said Scott White, House representative and part-time lecturer for the Evans School of Public Affairs. “I think Seattle did a lot of soul-searching during that summer, wondering why three teenagers could commit such a senseless act, and so it made me pause, and I started to learn more about the problem [and] the plight of the homeless.”

This event inspired White’s sponsorship of House Bill 2497, which proposes adding homeless persons to the list of protected classes under the hate crimes statute and provide sentencing enhancement for crimes against the homeless.

Between 1999 and 2008, there have been 880 documented attacks on homeless Americans, including 244 lethal attacks, according to an August 2009 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless.

“With homelessness, just as with people’s gender, just as with people’s sexual identity, just as with people’s skin color, there are prejudices and fears that motivate hateful behavior and violent crime,” said Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition for the Homeless, an independent volunteer coalition. “One of the things that is very hard for people who have never been homeless to really absorb is just how terrifying an experience it is not to have a safe place to rest.”

In King County, it is estimated that about 25,000 individuals will experience homelessness in the course of a year, Eisinger said.

Similar to the proposals in HB 2497, homeless persons were added to the list of protected groups under Seattle’s malicious-harassment law in 2007 by a unanimous Seattle City Council vote.

If HB 2497 is passed, Washington will be the second state in the country to protect homeless persons under the hate-crimes statute, following Maryland.

However, it may be difficult to pass this bill in the current legislative session given the budget crisis.

“It’s hard for anything not related to the budget to get the attention of the legislature in the various groups in Olympia,” said Matt A. Barreto, assistant professor of political science. “The first priority is going to have to be dealing with the budget; that’s going to take almost all of their time. It doesn’t mean that other bills and issues can’t get addressed and raised, and they certainly will, but they may not be given a full hearing and debate that they deserve.”

White said that there will be a fiscal note attached to this bill, meaning that there will be costs associated with implementing the legislation. Those costs would be incurred from additional superior-court trials, prosecution and defender costs, and increased jail expenditure, as well as local judicial costs, according to an analysis submitted to the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee.

The associated expenditures of this bill could be met with opposition from the legislature.

“We may have a tough road to convince legislators, particularly on the Public Safety Committee, to allocate the necessary funds to implement,” White said in an e-mail.

Despite the challenges that HB 2497 may face in getting passed during the current session, White remains optimistic about the progress of the bill.

“I have had several legislators who have signed on as co-sponsors, and I’m optimistic that we will see some movement on it,” he said.

Reach reporter Joanna Nolasco at news@dailyuw.com.