With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless search refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip misplaced her dwelling during the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and he or she fell behind on bills. Residing in a automobile, the 34-year-old worries each day about getting money for food, discovering someplace to shower, and saving up sufficient cash for an residence the place her three youngsters can live together with her once more.

Now she has a brand new worry: Tennessee is about to change into the first U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on local public property equivalent to parks.

“Truthfully, it’s going to be hard,” Atnip mentioned 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 enlargement, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that nobody has been convicted under that legislation and said he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced a lot, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a man who has labored with homeless folks within the metropolis of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — in part because he hopes it can spur individuals who care concerning the homeless to work with him on long-term solutions.

The legislation requires that violators receive at the least 24 hours notice before an arrest. The felony charge is punishable by up to six years in prison and the lack of voting rights.

“It’s going to be as much as prosecutors ... if they wish to challenge a felony,” Bailey said. “But it surely’s only going to come back to that if folks really don’t need to move.”

After several years of regular decline, homelessness in the US started increasing in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the primary time that the variety of unsheltered homeless people exceeded these in shelters. The issue was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capability.

Public pressure to do something concerning the increasing variety of highly visible homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Although camping has generally been regulated by native vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas handed a statewide ban final yr. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban danger losing state funding. A number of 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, where the local newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the increasing variety of homeless people. The Herald-Citizen reported last yr that complaints about panhandlers almost doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, the town installed signs encouraging residents to give to charities as a substitute of panhandlers. And the City Council twice thought of panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville bought his attention. Metropolis council members have instructed 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 recently, the homeless people who frequented it disappeared. “The place did they go?” Bailey requested.

Atnip laughed on the concept of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was living in close by Monterey when she lost her residence and needed to send her youngsters to reside along with her mother and father. She has acquired some government help, but not enough to get her back on her toes, she mentioned. At one point she got a housing voucher however couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved sufficient to finance a used automobile and were working as delivery drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they may lose the automotive and have to maneuver to a tent, although she isn’t positive the place they are going to pitch it.

“It looks as if as soon as one thing goes mistaken, it kind of snowballs,” Atnip mentioned. “We have been making a living with DoorDash. Our payments had been paid. We were saving. Then the automotive 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 tenting ban. He stated he needs to proceed serving to the homeless, but some individuals aren’t motivated to improve their state of affairs. Some are addicted to drugs, he mentioned, and some are hiding from legislation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 people living exterior kind of completely in Cookeville, and he knows them all.

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

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

“The large downside with this legislation is that it does nothing to resolve homelessness. In truth, it will make the issue worse,” stated Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your document makes it laborious to qualify for some kinds of housing, tougher to get a job, harder to qualify for benefits.”

Not everyone needs to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but folks will move off the streets given the fitting alternatives, Watts stated. Homelessness amongst 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 mentioned. “What works for that population, works for each population.”

Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in nearby Sparta, was once homeless along with her youngsters. Many individuals are only one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her neighborhood of 5,000, reasonably priced housing may be very hard to return by.

“In case you have a felony in your file — 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 here rounding up homeless people,” he mentioned of Cookeville legislation enforcement. But he doesn’t know what might occur in other elements of the state.

He hopes the new legislation will spur some of its opponents to work with him on long-term solutions for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them labored collectively it would mean “lots of assets and possible funding sources to help these in need,” he said.

However different advocates don’t suppose threatening people with a felony is an effective manner to help them.

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