With public tenting a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip misplaced her residence through the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she fell behind on bills. Living in a car, the 34-year-old worries every day about getting cash for meals, finding somewhere to shower, and saving up sufficient money for an apartment the place her three children can live along with her again.

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

“Actually, it’s going to be arduous,” Atnip said 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 no one has been convicted under that legislation and mentioned he doesn’t count on this one to be enforced much, either. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a man who has worked with homeless individuals within the metropolis of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — partially because he hopes it'll spur individuals who care concerning the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The law requires that violators receive a minimum of 24 hours discover earlier than an arrest. The felony cost is punishable by as much as six years in prison and the loss of voting rights.

“It’s going to be up to prosecutors ... in the event that they want to situation a felony,” Bailey said. “But it surely’s only going to return to that if individuals actually don’t wish to move.”

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

Public pressure to do one thing about the rising variety of highly visible homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Though camping has typically been regulated by local vagrancy laws, Texas handed a statewide ban final yr. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban threat losing state funding. Several other states have introduced related payments, however Tennessee is the one one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district consists of Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 folks between Nashville and Knoxville, where the local newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the rising 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 city installed indicators encouraging residents to provide to charities instead of panhandlers. And the Metropolis Council twice considered panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville acquired 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 imagine. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation recently, the homeless individuals who frequented it disappeared. “Where did they go?” Bailey requested.

Atnip laughed at the idea of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was living in close by Monterey when she misplaced her residence and had to ship her kids to live together with her parents. She has obtained some government help, however not enough to get her again on her ft, she mentioned. At one level she received a housing voucher but couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used automotive and were working as delivery drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they will lose the automotive and have to move to a tent, although she isn’t certain the place they are going to pitch it.

“It seems like as soon as one factor goes incorrect, it type of snowballs,” Atnip stated. “We have been earning money with DoorDash. Our bills have been paid. We have been saving. Then the automotive goes kaput and all the things goes unhealthy.”

Eldridge, who has labored with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an surprising advocate of the camping ban. He mentioned he needs to proceed helping the homeless, but some individuals aren’t motivated to improve their situation. Some are hooked on medication, he stated, and some are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 individuals residing outdoors kind of completely in Cookeville, and he is aware of them all.

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

Eldridge knows his place is unpopular with different advocates.

“The massive drawback with this law is that it does nothing to unravel homelessness. In fact, it should make the problem worse,” said Bobby Watts, CEO of the Nationwide Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony in your report makes it exhausting to qualify for some types of housing, tougher to get a job, harder to qualify for benefits.”

Not everybody needs to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but people will move off the streets given the suitable alternatives, Watts said. Homelessness amongst U.S. army veterans, for example, has been lower almost in half over the previous decade by way of a mixture of housing subsidies and social providers.

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

Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in nearby Sparta, was once homeless with her kids. Many individuals are just one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her group of 5,000, inexpensive housing is very exhausting to come back by.

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

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, said he doesn’t anticipate 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 folks,” he said of Cookeville regulation enforcement. But he doesn’t know what may happen in other elements of the state.

He hopes the brand new legislation will spur some of its opponents to work with him on long-term solutions for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them worked collectively it could mean “a variety of resources and attainable funding sources to help these in need,” he said.

But different advocates don’t assume threatening individuals with a felony is a good manner to help them.

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