With public camping a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her dwelling through the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she or he fell behind on bills. Dwelling in a automotive, the 34-year-old worries daily about getting money for meals, discovering someplace to bathe, and saving up enough cash for an house where her three kids can dwell along with her once more.

Now she has a new worry: Tennessee is about to change into the primary U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on local public property resembling parks.

“Actually, it’s going to be hard,” Atnip said of the legislation, which takes effect July 1. “I don’t know where else to go.”

Tennessee already made it a felony in 2020 to camp on most state-owned property. In pushing the enlargement, Sen. Paul Bailey famous that no one has been convicted underneath that regulation and stated he doesn’t expect this one to be enforced a lot, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has worked with homeless individuals within the metropolis of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — partly because he hopes it will spur people who care about the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The legislation requires that violators obtain at least 24 hours notice earlier than an arrest. The felony cost is punishable by up to six years in jail and the loss of voting rights.

“It’s going to be as much as prosecutors ... if they want to subject a felony,” Bailey mentioned. “But it surely’s solely going to come to that if folks really don’t wish to move.”

After several years of regular decline, homelessness in the USA began rising in 2017. A survey in January 2020 discovered for the primary time that the number of unsheltered homeless people exceeded these in shelters. The issue was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capability.

Public pressure to do one thing concerning the growing number of highly seen homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Though camping has usually been regulated by local vagrancy laws, Texas handed a statewide ban final yr. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban threat losing state funding. A number of different states have introduced related payments, but Tennessee is the only one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district includes Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 people between Nashville and Knoxville, where the local newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the rising variety of homeless people. The Herald-Citizen reported last 12 months that complaints about panhandlers almost doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, town put in signs encouraging residents to give to charities instead of panhandlers. And the City Council twice thought of panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville got his consideration. City council members have informed him that Nashville ships its homeless right here, Bailey mentioned. It’s a rumor many in Cookeville have heard and Bailey seems to imagine. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation not too long ago, the homeless individuals who frequented it disappeared. “The place did they go?” Bailey asked.

Atnip laughed at the concept of people shipped in from Nashville. She was living in close by Monterey when she lost her dwelling and had to send her children to stay along with her parents. She has acquired some authorities help, but not enough to get her again on her ft, she stated. At one point she acquired a housing voucher but couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved sufficient to finance a used car and were working as supply drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they are going to lose the car and have to move to a tent, although she isn’t certain the place they will pitch it.

“It looks like as soon as one factor goes wrong, it kind of snowballs,” Atnip said. “We have been creating wealth with DoorDash. Our payments were paid. We had been saving. Then the car goes kaput and everything goes bad.”

Eldridge, who has labored with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an unexpected advocate of the tenting ban. He mentioned he desires to proceed serving to the homeless, however some people aren’t motivated to improve their scenario. Some are addicted to medicine, he stated, and some are hiding from regulation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 individuals dwelling outdoors kind of permanently in Cookeville, and he is aware of all of them.

“Most of them have been right here a number of years, and not as soon as have they requested for housing assist,” he said.

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

“The massive drawback with this legislation is that it does nothing to unravel homelessness. Actually, it is going to make the issue worse,” stated Bobby Watts, CEO of the Nationwide Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your document makes it laborious to qualify for some sorts of housing, harder to get a job, harder to qualify for benefits.”

Not everybody needs to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, however folks will move off the streets given the correct alternatives, Watts said. Homelessness amongst U.S. navy veterans, for example, has been reduce almost in half over the previous decade by means of a mixture of housing subsidies and social services.

“It’s not magic,” he mentioned. “What works for that population, works for each population.”

Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in close by Sparta, was as soon as homeless with her children. Many individuals are only one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her community of 5,000, reasonably priced housing could be very hard to return by.

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

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, stated he doesn’t expect many people to be prosecuted for sleeping on public property. “I can promise, they’re not going to be out right here rounding up homeless folks,” he stated of Cookeville law enforcement. But he doesn’t know what might occur in other 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 together it could imply “a lot of assets and doable funding sources to assist these in want,” he mentioned.

However other advocates don’t assume threatening individuals with a felony is an effective way to assist them.

“Criminalizing homelessness simply makes folks criminals,” Watts said.