With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless search refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her house in the course of the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she or he fell behind on payments. Living in a car, the 34-year-old worries each day about getting money for food, finding somewhere to bathe, and saving up enough cash for an apartment the place her three youngsters can dwell together with her once more.

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

“Honestly, it’s going to be hard,” 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 growth, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that no one has been convicted underneath that legislation and mentioned he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced much, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a man who has labored with homeless folks in the metropolis of Cookeville and supports Bailey’s plan — partly because he hopes it'll spur individuals who care concerning the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The law requires that violators obtain at least 24 hours discover earlier than an arrest. The felony charge is punishable by up to six years in prison and the lack of voting rights.

“It’s going to be up to prosecutors ... in the event that they wish to concern a felony,” Bailey said. “Nevertheless it’s only going to return to that if individuals really don’t need to transfer.”

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

Public strain to do one thing concerning the growing variety of highly seen homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Although camping has usually been regulated by native vagrancy laws, Texas passed a statewide ban last year. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban threat losing state funding. A number of different states have launched related bills, but Tennessee is the only one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district consists of Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 individuals between Nashville and Knoxville, where the native newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the rising variety 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 present to charities as a substitute of panhandlers. And the City Council twice thought of panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville acquired his attention. Metropolis council members have informed him that Nashville ships its homeless right here, Bailey said. It’s a rumor many in Cookeville have heard and Bailey seems to consider. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation recently, the homeless individuals who frequented it disappeared. “The place did they go?” Bailey asked.

Atnip laughed at the idea of people shipped in from Nashville. She was residing in close by Monterey when she lost her dwelling and needed to send her youngsters to stay along with her mother and father. She has acquired some authorities help, but not sufficient to get her back on her ft, she stated. At one level she obtained a housing voucher however couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used car and have been working as supply drivers until it broke down. Now she’s afraid they are going to lose the automobile and have to move to a tent, though she isn’t certain the place they are going to pitch it.

“It seems like as soon as one thing goes wrong, it type of snowballs,” Atnip said. “We have been creating wealth with DoorDash. Our payments were paid. We have been saving. Then the automotive goes kaput and all the things goes bad.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an sudden advocate of the tenting ban. He said he needs to proceed serving to the homeless, but some individuals aren’t motivated to improve their state of affairs. Some are hooked on medicine, he stated, and a few are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 folks living outdoors roughly completely in Cookeville, and he is aware of all of them.

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

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

“The big drawback with this legislation is that it does nothing to solve homelessness. In actual fact, it is going to make the problem worse,” stated Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your document makes it arduous to qualify for some forms of housing, tougher to get a job, harder to qualify for advantages.”

Not everybody desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, however folks will move off the streets given the proper opportunities, Watts mentioned. Homelessness among U.S. army veterans, for instance, has been minimize nearly in half over the previous decade by a mixture of housing subsidies and social companies.

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

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

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

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 people,” he said of Cookeville regulation enforcement. However he doesn’t know what might happen in other parts of the state.

He hopes the new law will spur a few of its opponents to work with him on long-term solutions for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them worked collectively it would mean “lots of assets and potential funding sources to help these in want,” he mentioned.

However other advocates don’t think threatening people with a felony is an efficient way to assist them.

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