With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless search 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. Residing in a automobile, the 34-year-old worries each day about getting cash for meals, discovering someplace to shower, and saving up enough money for an house the place her three children can dwell with her once more.

Now she has a new fear: Tennessee is about to become the first U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on native public property such as parks.

“Truthfully, it’s going to be hard,” Atnip said of the regulation, which takes effect 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 expansion, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that no one has been convicted below that legislation and said he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced a lot, either. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has worked with homeless people in the metropolis of Cookeville and supports Bailey’s plan — partly as a result of he hopes it should spur people who care concerning the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The law requires that violators obtain a minimum of 24 hours notice earlier than an arrest. The felony cost is punishable by as much as six years in jail and the loss of voting rights.

“It’s going to be as much as prosecutors ... if they need to situation a felony,” Bailey mentioned. “However it’s solely going to come to that if individuals actually don’t need to move.”

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

Public strain to do one thing concerning the growing number of highly seen homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Though camping 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 related payments, but Tennessee is the only one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district consists of Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 folks between Nashville and Knoxville, the place the local newspaper has chronicled rising concern with the rising number of homeless individuals. The Herald-Citizen reported last 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 as a substitute of panhandlers. And the Metropolis Council twice considered panhandling bans.

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

Atnip laughed on the concept of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was living in close by Monterey when she lost her residence and had to send her youngsters to stay with her parents. She has obtained some government help, but not sufficient to get her again on her ft, she stated. At one level she acquired a housing voucher but couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used car and were working as delivery drivers until it broke down. Now she’s afraid they are going to lose the automobile and have to move to a tent, although she isn’t certain where they'll pitch it.

“It looks like as soon as one thing goes improper, it kind of snowballs,” Atnip mentioned. “We were earning money with DoorDash. Our payments had been paid. We had been saving. Then the automotive goes kaput and the whole lot goes dangerous.”

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

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

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

“The massive problem with this legislation is that it does nothing to unravel homelessness. In truth, it can make the problem worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony in your file makes it hard to qualify for some kinds of housing, tougher to get a job, harder to qualify for benefits.”

Not everyone desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but folks will transfer off the streets given the proper alternatives, Watts stated. Homelessness amongst U.S. military veterans, for example, has been reduce almost in half over the past decade through a mix of housing subsidies and social providers.

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

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

“When you've got a felony on your document — holy smokes!” she stated.

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, mentioned 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 folks,” he said of Cookeville legislation enforcement. But he doesn’t know what would possibly occur in other components of the state.

He hopes the new legislation will spur some of its opponents to work with him on long-term options for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them worked together it might imply “quite a lot of sources and doable funding sources to help those in need,” he said.

However different advocates don’t assume threatening individuals with a felony is an efficient way to help them.

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