With public camping a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her residence throughout the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she or he fell behind on bills. Dwelling in a car, the 34-year-old worries day-after-day about getting cash for meals, discovering somewhere to bathe, and saving up sufficient money for an apartment the place her three youngsters can reside together with her again.

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

“Actually, it’s going to be exhausting,” 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 expansion, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that nobody has been convicted under that legislation and mentioned he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced much, either. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a man who has worked with homeless people within the metropolis of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — partly because he hopes it'll spur individuals who care in regards to the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

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

“It’s going to be up to prosecutors ... if they want to subject a felony,” Bailey mentioned. “But it’s solely going to come to that if people really don’t want to move.”

After several years of steady decline, homelessness in the United States started rising in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the primary time that the number of unsheltered homeless individuals exceeded those in shelters. The issue was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capability.

Public stress to do one thing concerning the growing number of highly seen homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Although camping has usually been regulated by local vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas passed a statewide ban last year. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban threat losing state funding. Several different states have launched comparable bills, however Tennessee is the only one to make camping a felony.

Bailey’s district contains Cookeville, a metropolis of about 35,000 individuals between Nashville and Knoxville, the place the local newspaper has chronicled rising concern with the rising number of homeless folks. 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 signs encouraging residents to give to charities as a substitute of panhandlers. And the City Council twice thought-about panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville got his attention. Metropolis council members have told him that Nashville ships its homeless right here, Bailey mentioned. 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 individuals who frequented it disappeared. “The place did they go?” Bailey asked.

Atnip laughed at the thought of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was living in nearby Monterey when she misplaced her home and needed to ship her youngsters to reside along with her parents. She has obtained some authorities help, however not enough to get her back on her feet, she said. At one point she obtained a housing voucher but couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used car and had been working as delivery drivers until it broke down. Now she’s afraid they will lose the automobile and have to move to a tent, though she isn’t certain where they may pitch it.

“It seems like as soon as one factor goes wrong, it form of snowballs,” Atnip mentioned. “We have been getting cash with DoorDash. Our bills had been paid. We had been saving. Then the automobile goes kaput and all the things goes dangerous.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an sudden advocate of the camping ban. He stated he needs to continue serving to the homeless, however some folks aren’t motivated to improve their state of affairs. Some are hooked on medicine, he stated, and some are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 people dwelling outdoors more or less permanently in Cookeville, and he knows all of them.

“Most of them have been here a couple of years, and not once have they asked for housing assist,” he mentioned.

Eldridge knows his position is unpopular with different advocates.

“The massive problem with this law is that it does nothing to solve homelessness. In truth, it is going to make the problem worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the Nationwide Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your document makes it laborious to qualify for some types of housing, harder to get a job, more durable to qualify for advantages.”

Not everybody desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but individuals will transfer off the streets given the proper alternatives, Watts said. Homelessness amongst U.S. army veterans, for instance, has been cut practically in half over the past decade by way of 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 once 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, inexpensive housing could be very hard to come back by.

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

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, mentioned he doesn’t expect many people to be prosecuted for sleeping on public property. “I can promise, they’re not going to be out here rounding up homeless individuals,” he stated of Cookeville regulation enforcement. However he doesn’t know what would possibly 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 they all labored collectively it might imply “plenty of resources and attainable funding sources to assist those in need,” he said.

However different advocates don’t think threatening folks with a felony is a good method to help them.

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