With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless search refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her house throughout the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she fell behind on bills. Dwelling in a car, the 34-year-old worries every single day about getting money for food, finding somewhere to shower, and saving up sufficient money for an residence where her three children can dwell together with her again.

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

“Honestly, it’s going to be onerous,” Atnip said of the law, which takes impact 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 growth, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that no one has been convicted below that regulation and said he doesn’t count on this one to be enforced much, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has worked with homeless folks within the metropolis of Cookeville and supports Bailey’s plan — partially because he hopes it will spur individuals who care concerning the homeless to work with him on long-term solutions.

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

“It’s going to be up to prosecutors ... in the event that they want to concern a felony,” Bailey stated. “But it’s solely going to come back to that if folks really don’t need to move.”

After a number of years of regular decline, homelessness in the USA started growing in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the first time that the variety of unsheltered homeless people exceeded those in shelters. The problem was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capability.

Public pressure to do something concerning the growing variety of highly seen homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Though tenting has generally been regulated by native vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas passed a statewide ban last yr. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban threat dropping state funding. Several other states have launched comparable payments, but Tennessee is the only one to make camping a felony.

Bailey’s district contains Cookeville, a metropolis of about 35,000 individuals between Nashville and Knoxville, the place 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, the city put in indicators encouraging residents to offer to charities instead of panhandlers. And the City Council twice thought of panhandling bans.

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

Atnip laughed on the idea of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was dwelling in close by Monterey when she misplaced her residence and needed to ship her children to live together with her parents. She has received some authorities help, however not enough to get her back on her ft, she stated. At one level she acquired a housing voucher however couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved sufficient to finance a used automotive and have been working as supply drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they will lose the automobile and have to maneuver to a tent, though she isn’t sure where they are going to pitch it.

“It looks as if once one thing goes mistaken, it type of snowballs,” Atnip said. “We had been earning profits with DoorDash. Our bills have been paid. We have been saving. Then the automotive goes kaput and everything goes bad.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an unexpected advocate of the camping ban. He mentioned he wants to proceed serving to the homeless, however some folks aren’t motivated to enhance their state of affairs. Some are addicted to medication, he said, and a few are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 folks dwelling outside roughly permanently in Cookeville, and he is aware of all of them.

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

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

“The big downside with this legislation is that it does nothing to solve homelessness. The truth is, it's going to make the problem worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony in your document makes it hard to qualify for some sorts of housing, tougher to get a job, harder to qualify for benefits.”

Not everybody wants to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, however folks will move off the streets given the suitable alternatives, Watts said. Homelessness among U.S. army veterans, for instance, has been minimize practically in half over the previous decade through a mixture of housing subsidies and social services.

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

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

“When you've got a felony in your record — holy smokes!” she mentioned.

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, mentioned 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 people,” he said of Cookeville legislation enforcement. However he doesn’t know what would possibly occur in different elements of the state.

He hopes the brand new legislation will spur a few of its opponents to work with him on long-term solutions for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them labored together it could mean “quite a lot of assets and attainable funding sources to assist those in want,” he stated.

But other advocates don’t think threatening people with a felony is an efficient manner to help them.

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