With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip misplaced her home during the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and he or she fell behind on payments. Residing in a car, the 34-year-old worries day-after-day about getting cash for food, finding someplace to bathe, and saving up sufficient money for an condominium the place her three kids can dwell 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 equivalent to parks.

“Honestly, it’s going to be arduous,” Atnip stated of the legislation, 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 growth, Sen. Paul Bailey famous that no one has been convicted beneath that regulation and said he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced a lot, either. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a man who has labored with homeless individuals within the metropolis of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — in part as a result of he hopes it would spur people who care in regards to the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The regulation requires that violators receive not less than 24 hours notice before an arrest. The felony cost is punishable by up to six years in prison and the lack of voting rights.

“It’s going to be as much as prosecutors ... in the event that they need to problem a felony,” Bailey said. “However it’s solely going to come to that if people really don’t want to move.”

After a number of years of steady decline, homelessness in the US began growing in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the first time that the number of unsheltered homeless folks exceeded these in shelters. The issue was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capability.

Public stress to do something concerning the rising variety of highly visible homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Though tenting has usually been regulated by local vagrancy laws, Texas handed a statewide ban last yr. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban danger dropping state funding. A number of different states have launched comparable bills, however Tennessee is the one one to make camping a felony.

Bailey’s district consists of Cookeville, a metropolis of about 35,000 individuals between Nashville and Knoxville, the place the local newspaper has chronicled rising concern with the increasing variety of homeless folks. The Herald-Citizen reported final 12 months that complaints about panhandlers almost doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, the town installed indicators encouraging residents to provide to charities instead of panhandlers. And the Metropolis Council twice thought-about panhandling bans.

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

Atnip laughed on the thought of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was residing in nearby Monterey when she misplaced her dwelling and had to ship her youngsters to dwell along with her dad and mom. She has received some authorities help, but not enough to get her again on her toes, she said. At one point she got a housing voucher but couldn’t discover a landlord who would settle for it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used car and had been working as supply drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they will lose the automobile and have to move to a tent, though she isn’t sure the place they'll pitch it.

“It looks as if as soon as one factor goes improper, it form of snowballs,” Atnip mentioned. “We had been creating wealth with DoorDash. Our payments have been paid. We had been saving. Then the automobile goes kaput and all the things goes unhealthy.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an sudden advocate of the tenting ban. He stated he desires to continue helping the homeless, however some people aren’t motivated to enhance their state of affairs. Some are addicted to medication, he mentioned, and a few are hiding from regulation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 individuals residing outdoors roughly permanently in Cookeville, and he knows them all.

“Most of them have been right here just a few years, and never once have they asked for housing assist,” he mentioned.

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

“The massive problem with this law is that it does nothing to resolve homelessness. In fact, it should make the problem worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the Nationwide Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your report makes it hard to qualify for some sorts of housing, harder to get a job, harder to qualify for advantages.”

Not everyone desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, however individuals will move off the streets given the best opportunities, Watts said. Homelessness amongst U.S. military veterans, for instance, has been cut almost in half over the previous decade by means of a mixture of housing subsidies and social providers.

“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 close by Sparta, was as soon as homeless 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, affordable housing is very exhausting to come back by.

“In case you have a felony in your report — holy smokes!” she stated.

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, stated he doesn’t expect 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 individuals,” he stated of Cookeville regulation enforcement. However he doesn’t know what might happen in other components of the state.

He hopes the new regulation 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 could imply “a lot of sources and attainable funding sources to help those in need,” he stated.

However other advocates don’t suppose threatening individuals with a felony is a good approach to help them.

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