With public camping a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip misplaced her home 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 day-after-day about getting money for food, discovering somewhere to shower, and saving up sufficient cash for an condo where her three youngsters can stay together with her again.

Now she has a brand new worry: Tennessee is about to grow to be the first U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on local public property such as parks.

“Actually, it’s going to be hard,” Atnip stated of the regulation, 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 expansion, Sen. Paul Bailey famous that nobody has been convicted below that regulation 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 — in part because he hopes it is going to spur individuals who care in regards to the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

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

“It’s going to be up to prosecutors ... in the event that they need to subject a felony,” Bailey mentioned. “Nevertheless it’s solely going to come to that if individuals really don’t wish to move.”

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

Public pressure to do one thing about the growing variety of highly seen homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Though tenting has usually been regulated by native vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas handed a statewide ban last yr. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban danger losing state funding. Several different states have introduced comparable bills, however Tennessee is the one one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district consists of Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 individuals between Nashville and Knoxville, the place the native newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the rising number of homeless people. The Herald-Citizen reported final 12 months that complaints about panhandlers nearly 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 City Council twice thought-about panhandling bans.

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

Atnip laughed at the idea of people shipped in from Nashville. She was dwelling in nearby Monterey when she lost her house and needed to ship her kids to reside with her mother and father. She has acquired some authorities help, but not enough to get her back on her feet, she mentioned. At one level she obtained a housing voucher but couldn’t find a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used automotive and had been working as supply drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they are going to lose the car and have to maneuver to a tent, though she isn’t positive where they may pitch it.

“It looks like as soon as one thing goes mistaken, it type of snowballs,” Atnip mentioned. “We have been being profitable with DoorDash. Our payments were paid. We had been saving. Then the car goes kaput and the whole lot goes unhealthy.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an surprising advocate of the camping ban. He said he needs to continue serving to the homeless, but some individuals aren’t motivated to enhance their situation. Some are addicted to medication, he said, and some are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 folks living exterior roughly completely in Cookeville, and he knows all of them.

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

Eldridge knows his place is unpopular with other advocates.

“The big problem with this regulation is that it does nothing to unravel homelessness. In reality, it's going to make the issue worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the Nationwide Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony in your document makes it hard to qualify for some kinds of housing, harder to get a job, tougher to qualify for advantages.”

Not everybody desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but people will move off the streets given the suitable opportunities, Watts mentioned. Homelessness amongst U.S. military veterans, for example, has been cut practically in half over the previous decade via a mix of housing subsidies and social services.

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

Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in close by Sparta, was as soon as homeless together with her children. Many individuals are only one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her group of 5,000, affordable housing is very hard to come back by.

“You probably have a felony on your report — holy smokes!” she stated.

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 individuals,” he mentioned of Cookeville law enforcement. But he doesn’t know what would possibly happen in other parts 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 they all labored collectively it could imply “loads of resources and possible funding sources to assist those in need,” he stated.

But different advocates don’t suppose threatening folks with a felony is a good method to assist them.

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