With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her house throughout the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and he or she fell behind on bills. Residing in a car, the 34-year-old worries each day about getting money for food, finding someplace to bathe, and saving up enough cash for an apartment where her three children can stay along with her once more.

Now she has a new fear: Tennessee is about to turn out to be the primary U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on native public property equivalent to parks.

“Honestly, it’s going to be arduous,” Atnip mentioned of the regulation, 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 expansion, Sen. Paul Bailey famous that no one has been convicted under that legislation and stated he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced a lot, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has labored with homeless folks within the city of Cookeville and supports Bailey’s plan — partly as a result of he hopes it would spur people who care about the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The law requires that violators obtain at the very least 24 hours discover earlier than an arrest. The felony cost is punishable by as much as six years in jail and the lack of voting rights.

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

After several years of steady decline, homelessness in the USA began rising 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 stress to do something concerning the rising variety of extremely visible homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Though camping has generally been regulated by native vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas handed a statewide ban final year. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban danger shedding state funding. Several different states have introduced related bills, but Tennessee is the one one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district consists of Cookeville, a metropolis of about 35,000 folks between Nashville and Knoxville, the place the native newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the rising number of homeless folks. 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 provide to charities as a substitute of panhandlers. And the Metropolis Council twice thought of panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville bought his attention. City council members have informed him that Nashville ships its homeless here, Bailey mentioned. It’s a rumor many in Cookeville have heard and Bailey seems to consider. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation not too long ago, the homeless people who frequented it disappeared. “Where did they go?” Bailey requested.

Atnip laughed at the concept of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was dwelling in nearby Monterey when she misplaced her residence and needed to ship her kids to dwell with her parents. She has acquired some government help, however not sufficient to get her back on her toes, she said. At one level she received a housing voucher but couldn’t find a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used automobile and have been working as supply drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they'll lose the automotive and have to move to a tent, though she isn’t certain where they may pitch it.

“It looks as if as soon as one thing goes fallacious, it kind of snowballs,” Atnip stated. “We had been making money with DoorDash. Our payments had been paid. We have been saving. Then the automobile goes kaput and every part goes dangerous.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an unexpected advocate of the camping ban. He mentioned he wants to continue helping the homeless, however some folks aren’t motivated to enhance their state of affairs. Some are addicted to medicine, he stated, and a few are hiding from regulation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 people residing outside roughly completely in Cookeville, and he is aware of them all.

“Most of them have been right here a number of years, and not as soon as have they asked for housing help,” he stated.

Eldridge knows his position is unpopular with other advocates.

“The big downside with this regulation is that it does nothing to solve homelessness. In reality, it's going to make the problem worse,” stated Bobby Watts, CEO of the Nationwide Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony in your report makes it exhausting to qualify for some varieties of housing, more durable to get a job, harder to qualify for benefits.”

Not everybody desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but individuals will transfer off the streets given the fitting opportunities, Watts said. Homelessness among U.S. military veterans, for example, has been lower practically in half over the past decade via a combination of housing subsidies and social services.

“It’s not magic,” he stated. “What works for that population, works for each 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 just one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her community of 5,000, inexpensive housing is very onerous to come back by.

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

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, mentioned he doesn’t count on many individuals 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 mentioned of Cookeville regulation enforcement. However he doesn’t know what might occur in different elements of the state.

He hopes the new legislation will spur a few of its opponents to work with him on long-term options for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them labored collectively it could imply “lots of assets and doable funding sources to help those in want,” he stated.

But different advocates don’t suppose threatening individuals with a felony is an efficient approach to assist them.

“Criminalizing homelessness just makes individuals criminals,” Watts mentioned.