With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her dwelling during the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and he or she fell behind on bills. Dwelling in a automotive, the 34-year-old worries day-after-day about getting cash for food, finding somewhere to bathe, and saving up enough cash for an condominium where her three youngsters can reside together with her once more.

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

“Actually, it’s going to be laborious,” 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 beneath that law and mentioned he doesn’t count on this one to be enforced a lot, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has labored with homeless individuals in the city of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — partially because he hopes it can spur people who care in regards to the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The legislation requires that violators receive a minimum of 24 hours discover before an arrest. The felony cost is punishable by as much as six years in prison and the loss of voting rights.

“It’s going to be up to prosecutors ... if they need to challenge a felony,” Bailey stated. “Nevertheless it’s solely going to come back to that if folks really don’t need to transfer.”

After several years of steady decline, homelessness in the US began growing in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the primary time that the variety of unsheltered homeless folks exceeded those in shelters. The issue was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capacity.

Public stress to do something about the growing variety of highly visible homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Though tenting has usually been regulated by native vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas handed a statewide ban final yr. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban risk shedding state funding. Several other states have launched similar payments, however Tennessee is the only one to make camping a felony.

Bailey’s district includes Cookeville, a metropolis of about 35,000 people between Nashville and Knoxville, where the local newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the growing number of homeless people. The Herald-Citizen reported final yr that complaints about panhandlers practically doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, town installed signs encouraging residents to give to charities as an alternative of panhandlers. And the City Council twice thought-about panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville acquired his consideration. Metropolis council members have instructed him that Nashville ships its homeless here, Bailey said. 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 individuals who frequented it disappeared. “Where did they go?” Bailey requested.

Atnip laughed at the concept of people shipped in from Nashville. She was dwelling in nearby Monterey when she lost her residence and needed to send her children to reside together with her mother and father. She has received some government help, however not sufficient to get her again on her ft, she stated. At one point she obtained 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 car and were working as supply drivers until it broke down. Now she’s afraid they will lose the car and have to move to a tent, although she isn’t positive the place they are going to pitch it.

“It looks as if as soon as one factor goes wrong, it type of snowballs,” Atnip mentioned. “We were creating wealth with DoorDash. Our bills have been paid. We had been saving. Then the automotive goes kaput and every little thing goes bad.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an unexpected advocate of the tenting ban. He stated he needs to proceed helping the homeless, however some folks aren’t motivated to improve their state of affairs. Some are addicted to medicine, he mentioned, and a few are hiding from legislation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 folks dwelling outside kind of permanently in Cookeville, and he is aware of them all.

“Most of them have been right here a few years, and never as soon as have they requested for housing assist,” he stated.

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

“The big downside with this regulation is that it does nothing to unravel homelessness. In truth, it can make the issue worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the Nationwide Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your record makes it laborious to qualify for some varieties of housing, more durable to get a job, more durable to qualify for advantages.”

Not everybody wants to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but individuals will move off the streets given the fitting opportunities, Watts said. Homelessness among U.S. army veterans, for example, has been reduce nearly in half over the past decade by a mixture of housing subsidies and social services.

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

Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in close by Sparta, was once homeless together with her kids. Many individuals are just one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her group of 5,000, affordable housing could be very laborious to come back by.

“If in case you have a felony in your file — holy smokes!” she stated.

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, said he doesn’t anticipate many people to be prosecuted for sleeping on public property. “I can promise, they’re not going to be out here rounding up homeless people,” he said of Cookeville legislation enforcement. But he doesn’t know what may happen in other components of the state.

He hopes the brand new regulation will spur a few of its opponents to work with him on long-term options for Cookeville’s homeless. If they all worked collectively it will imply “plenty of assets and potential funding sources to assist those in need,” he said.

But different advocates don’t suppose threatening individuals with a felony is a good means to help them.

“Criminalizing homelessness simply makes people criminals,” Watts stated.