With public camping a felony, Tennessee homeless seek refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her home in the course of the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she or he fell behind on bills. Dwelling in a automotive, the 34-year-old worries daily about getting money for food, finding someplace to shower, and saving up enough cash for an house where her three children can dwell with her again.

Now she has a new fear: Tennessee is about to grow to be the primary U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on native public property reminiscent of parks.

“Actually, it’s going to be onerous,” 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 growth, Sen. Paul Bailey famous that no one has been convicted beneath that law and said he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced a lot, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has worked with homeless individuals within the metropolis of Cookeville and supports Bailey’s plan — in part because he hopes it's going to spur individuals who care about the homeless to work with him on long-term options.

The regulation requires that violators obtain at the 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 need to difficulty a felony,” Bailey mentioned. “But it surely’s solely going to return to that if individuals actually don’t want to move.”

After a number of years of steady decline, homelessness in america started rising in 2017. A survey in January 2020 discovered for the primary time that the number of unsheltered homeless people exceeded these in shelters. The problem was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capacity.

Public strain to do one thing concerning the increasing variety of highly seen homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Although camping has usually been regulated by native vagrancy legal guidelines, Texas handed a statewide ban final 12 months. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban danger dropping state funding. A number of different states have launched related payments, but Tennessee is the only one to make camping a felony.

Bailey’s district includes Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 people between Nashville and Knoxville, the place the native newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the rising variety of homeless people. The Herald-Citizen reported last 12 months that complaints about panhandlers nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, the town installed indicators encouraging residents to offer to charities as an alternative of panhandlers. And the Metropolis Council twice thought of panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville obtained his consideration. City council members have instructed him that Nashville ships its homeless here, Bailey mentioned. It’s a rumor many in Cookeville have heard and Bailey appears to consider. 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 on the concept of individuals shipped in from Nashville. She was residing in close by Monterey when she lost her home and needed to send her youngsters to reside with her mother and father. She has obtained some authorities help, but not enough to get her again on her feet, she mentioned. At one level she bought a housing voucher however couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved sufficient to finance a used car and were working as supply drivers till it broke down. Now she’s afraid they are going to lose the automotive and have to move to a tent, although she isn’t sure the place they are going to pitch it.

“It looks as if once one factor goes flawed, it kind of snowballs,” Atnip mentioned. “We had been creating wealth with DoorDash. Our bills have been paid. We were saving. Then the automotive 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 tenting ban. He stated he desires to proceed serving to the homeless, however some people aren’t motivated to improve their scenario. Some are hooked on drugs, he stated, and a few are hiding from regulation enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 people residing exterior kind of completely in Cookeville, and he is aware of all of them.

“Most of them have been here a couple of years, and never as soon as have they asked for housing help,” he stated.

Eldridge knows his position is unpopular with other advocates.

“The large problem with this law is that it does nothing to solve homelessness. In reality, it can make the problem worse,” mentioned Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony in your report makes it laborious to qualify for some kinds of housing, tougher to get a job, more durable to qualify for advantages.”

Not everybody desires to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but people will transfer off the streets given the fitting opportunities, Watts said. Homelessness among U.S. army veterans, for instance, has been minimize almost in half over the previous decade via a mixture of housing subsidies and social services.

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

Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in nearby Sparta, was as soon as homeless together with her kids. Many individuals are only one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she mentioned. Even in her neighborhood of 5,000, affordable housing could be very laborious to come back by.

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

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, said he doesn’t expect many individuals to be prosecuted for sleeping on public property. “I can promise, they’re not going to be out here rounding up homeless individuals,” he said of Cookeville law enforcement. But he doesn’t know what may happen in other parts of the state.

He hopes the brand new regulation will spur a few of its opponents to work with him on long-term options for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them labored collectively it would mean “numerous resources and doable funding sources to assist these in need,” he said.

But different advocates don’t suppose threatening people with a felony is an efficient method to assist them.

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