With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip misplaced her dwelling in the course of the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and he or she fell behind on payments. Dwelling in a automotive, the 34-year-old worries day by day about getting money for food, finding someplace to shower, and saving up enough cash for an apartment where her three children can stay with her once more.

Now she has a brand new fear: Tennessee is about to become the primary U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on local public property akin to parks.

“Truthfully, it’s going to be exhausting,” Atnip said of the law, which takes impact July 1. “I don’t know the place else to go.”

Tennessee already made it a felony in 2020 to camp on most state-owned property. In pushing the expansion, Sen. Paul Bailey famous that nobody has been convicted beneath that legislation and said he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced much, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has labored with homeless individuals in the metropolis of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — in part as a result of he hopes it would spur individuals who care concerning the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The legislation requires that violators receive not less than 24 hours discover earlier than an arrest. The felony charge is punishable by up to six years in jail and the loss of voting rights.

“It’s going to be as much as prosecutors ... in the event that they wish to situation a felony,” Bailey said. “But it surely’s only going to return to that if people really don’t wish to transfer.”

After a number of years of steady decline, homelessness in america began increasing in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the first time that the variety of unsheltered homeless folks exceeded those in shelters. The problem was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capacity.

Public pressure to do one thing in regards to the rising number of extremely visible homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Though camping has generally been regulated by native vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas handed a statewide ban last yr. Municipalities that fail to enforce the ban risk dropping state funding. A number of different states have introduced related bills, however Tennessee is the only one to make camping a felony.

Bailey’s district consists of Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 people between Nashville and Knoxville, the place the native newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the rising variety of homeless individuals. The Herald-Citizen reported final year that complaints about panhandlers nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, the city put in signs encouraging residents to provide to charities as a substitute of panhandlers. And the City Council twice thought-about panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville got his attention. Metropolis council members have advised him that Nashville ships its homeless right here, Bailey mentioned. It’s a rumor many in Cookeville have heard and Bailey appears to imagine. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation recently, the homeless people who frequented it disappeared. “The place did they go?” Bailey requested.

Atnip laughed at the thought of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was living in close by Monterey when she lost her house and had to send her children to live together with her parents. She has acquired some authorities assist, but not sufficient to get her again on her feet, she said. At one point she got a housing voucher but couldn’t discover a landlord who would settle for it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used automotive and were working as delivery drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they will lose the automotive and have to move to a tent, though she isn’t sure the place they are going to pitch it.

“It seems like once one factor goes improper, it type of snowballs,” Atnip stated. “We were earning money with DoorDash. Our payments had been paid. We were saving. Then the automobile goes kaput and all the things goes dangerous.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an surprising advocate of the camping ban. He said he desires to proceed serving to the homeless, but some people aren’t motivated to improve their situation. Some are hooked on medicine, he stated, and some are hiding from regulation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 folks residing outside more or less completely in Cookeville, and he knows all of them.

“Most of them have been here a few years, and never once have they requested for housing help,” he stated.

Eldridge is aware of his position is unpopular with other advocates.

“The massive drawback with this legislation is that it does nothing to solve homelessness. Actually, it would make the problem worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony in your record makes it hard to qualify for some kinds of housing, more durable to get a job, more durable to qualify for advantages.”

Not everybody desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, however individuals will move off the streets given the best alternatives, Watts said. Homelessness among U.S. army veterans, for example, has been lower practically in half over the past decade through a mix of housing subsidies and social providers.

“It’s not magic,” he said. “What works for that population, works for every population.”

Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in nearby Sparta, was as soon as homeless with her children. Many people are just one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she stated. Even in her community of 5,000, inexpensive housing could be very hard to come back by.

“You probably have a felony in your document — holy smokes!” she stated.

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, stated he doesn’t expect many individuals to be prosecuted for sleeping on public property. “I can promise, they’re not going to be out here rounding up homeless individuals,” he said of Cookeville law enforcement. But he doesn’t know what would possibly occur in different elements of the state.

He hopes the brand new legislation will spur some of its opponents to work with him on long-term solutions for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them labored collectively it might imply “a variety of assets and possible funding sources to help these in need,” he mentioned.

But different advocates don’t think threatening people with a felony is an effective means to assist them.

“Criminalizing homelessness just makes folks criminals,” Watts mentioned.