With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her home through the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she or he fell behind on payments. Residing in a automotive, the 34-year-old worries daily about getting money for food, finding someplace to bathe, and saving up sufficient money for an condominium the place her three kids can reside with her once more.

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

“Honestly, it’s going to be exhausting,” Atnip mentioned of the law, 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 nobody has been convicted beneath that regulation and mentioned he doesn’t count on this one to be enforced a lot, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has worked with homeless people in the city of Cookeville and supports Bailey’s plan — in part because he hopes it would spur people who care about the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The legislation requires that violators receive at least 24 hours notice earlier than an arrest. The felony charge is punishable by as much as six years in prison and the loss of voting rights.

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

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

Public strain to do one thing in regards to the increasing number of extremely seen homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Although tenting has typically been regulated by local vagrancy laws, Texas passed a statewide ban last yr. Municipalities that fail to enforce the ban danger losing state funding. A number of different states have launched similar payments, but Tennessee is the only one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district contains Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 people between Nashville and Knoxville, where the native newspaper has chronicled rising concern with the rising number of homeless people. The Herald-Citizen reported last yr that complaints about panhandlers nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, town put in indicators encouraging residents to offer to charities as an alternative of panhandlers. And the City Council twice considered panhandling bans.

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

Atnip laughed at the idea of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was living in close by Monterey when she lost her house and needed to send her youngsters to live with her dad and mom. She has acquired some authorities help, but not enough to get her again on her ft, she stated. At one level she bought a housing voucher however couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used automobile and had been working as supply drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they may lose the car and have to move to a tent, although she isn’t positive the place they will pitch it.

“It seems like as soon as one factor goes improper, it type of snowballs,” Atnip stated. “We have been getting cash with DoorDash. Our payments were paid. We had been saving. Then the automotive goes kaput and all the things goes bad.”

Eldridge, who has labored with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an sudden advocate of the tenting ban. He said he needs to continue helping the homeless, but some people aren’t motivated to enhance their situation. Some are addicted to drugs, he mentioned, and some are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 folks living outside kind of permanently in Cookeville, and he knows them all.

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

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

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

Not everyone desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but individuals will transfer off the streets given the right alternatives, Watts stated. Homelessness among U.S. army veterans, for instance, has been reduce practically in half over the past decade by a mixture of housing subsidies and social companies.

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

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

“You probably have a felony in your record — holy smokes!” she said.

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 right here rounding up homeless people,” he stated of Cookeville legislation enforcement. But he doesn’t know what would possibly happen in other elements of the state.

He hopes the brand new law will spur a few of its opponents to work with him on long-term options for Cookeville’s homeless. If they all labored together it would imply “a variety of resources and potential funding sources to help those in need,” he said.

But other advocates don’t suppose threatening people with a felony is a good way to help them.

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