With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip misplaced her residence throughout the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she fell behind on bills. Dwelling in a automobile, the 34-year-old worries day by day about getting money for meals, discovering someplace to shower, and saving up enough money for an condominium where her three children can dwell along with her again.

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

“Actually, it’s going to be onerous,” Atnip stated 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 noted that nobody has been convicted underneath that legislation 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 folks in the city of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — in part because he hopes it should spur people who care in regards to the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The legislation requires that violators receive no less than 24 hours notice before an arrest. The felony cost is punishable by as much as six years in prison and the lack of voting rights.

“It’s going to be up to prosecutors ... in the event that they need to problem a felony,” Bailey said. “But it’s only going to come to that if people really don’t need to transfer.”

After several years of regular decline, homelessness in the United States started increasing in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the primary time that the variety of unsheltered homeless people exceeded these in shelters. The issue was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capacity.

Public stress to do something in regards to the rising number of highly visible homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Although camping has generally been regulated by native vagrancy laws, Texas handed a statewide ban last year. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban danger dropping state funding. Several other states have introduced related bills, but Tennessee is the one one to make camping a felony.

Bailey’s district includes Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 folks between Nashville and Knoxville, where the local newspaper has chronicled rising 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, the city put in indicators encouraging residents to present to charities instead of panhandlers. And the Metropolis Council twice thought-about panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville received his attention. 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 consider. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation just lately, the homeless individuals who frequented it disappeared. “Where did they go?” Bailey asked.

Atnip laughed at the thought of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was living in nearby Monterey when she lost her dwelling and had to send her kids to reside along with her dad and mom. She has received some government help, but not sufficient to get her back on her feet, she mentioned. At one level she obtained a housing voucher but couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used automobile and were working as delivery drivers until it broke down. Now she’s afraid they may lose the car and have to maneuver to a tent, though she isn’t sure where they are going to pitch it.

“It looks like as soon as one thing goes flawed, it type of snowballs,” Atnip said. “We were earning money with DoorDash. Our bills had been paid. We were saving. Then the car goes kaput and every little thing goes unhealthy.”

Eldridge, who has labored with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an surprising advocate of the camping ban. He mentioned he needs to proceed helping the homeless, however some people aren’t motivated to enhance their scenario. Some are addicted to drugs, he said, and a few are hiding from regulation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 folks dwelling outdoors more or less permanently in Cookeville, and he knows all of them.

“Most of them have been here a couple of years, and not once have they requested for housing assist,” he mentioned.

Eldridge knows his position is unpopular with other advocates.

“The massive problem with this legislation is that it does nothing to resolve homelessness. In actual fact, it's going to make the problem worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your report makes it exhausting to qualify for some varieties of housing, harder to get a job, harder to qualify for advantages.”

Not everybody wants to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but folks will move off the streets given the right alternatives, Watts said. Homelessness among U.S. military veterans, for example, has been lower nearly in half over the previous decade by way of 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 nearby Sparta, was as soon as homeless together with her youngsters. Many individuals are only one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she mentioned. Even in her group of 5,000, reasonably priced housing is very laborious to come by.

“You probably have a felony in your file — holy smokes!” she mentioned.

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, mentioned 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 folks,” he said of Cookeville law enforcement. But he doesn’t know what may occur in other parts of the state.

He hopes the new legislation will spur some of its opponents to work with him on long-term solutions for Cookeville’s homeless. If they all labored together it would imply “a number of sources and potential funding sources to assist these in want,” he stated.

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

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