With public camping a felony, Tennessee homeless search refuge

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Miranda Atnip lost her dwelling throughout the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she or he fell behind on bills. Dwelling in a automobile, the 34-year-old worries every single day about getting cash for food, finding someplace to bathe, and saving up sufficient cash for an condominium the place her three kids can live with her again.

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

“Honestly, 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 enlargement, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that nobody has been convicted underneath that regulation and stated he doesn’t anticipate this one to be enforced a lot, both. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a person who has worked with homeless folks within the metropolis of Cookeville and helps Bailey’s plan — in part as a result of he hopes it would spur individuals who care concerning the homeless to work with him on long-term solutions.

The law requires that violators obtain not less than 24 hours notice earlier than an arrest. The felony charge is punishable by as much as six years in jail and the lack of voting rights.

“It’s going to be as much as prosecutors ... in the event that they need to challenge a felony,” Bailey mentioned. “However it’s solely going to return to that if individuals actually don’t want to move.”

After a number of years of regular decline, homelessness in the USA started rising in 2017. A survey in January 2020 discovered for the primary time that the variety of unsheltered homeless individuals exceeded those in shelters. The issue was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capacity.

Public pressure to do something about the increasing variety of extremely visible homeless encampments has pushed even many historically liberal cities to clear them. Although camping has typically been regulated by local vagrancy laws, Texas handed a statewide ban final 12 months. Municipalities that fail to implement the ban threat losing state funding. Several other states have introduced related bills, but Tennessee is the one one to make tenting a felony.

Bailey’s district includes Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 folks between Nashville and Knoxville, where the native newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the increasing number of homeless individuals. The Herald-Citizen reported final year that complaints about panhandlers practically doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, the city put in signs encouraging residents to offer to charities instead of panhandlers. And the Metropolis Council twice considered panhandling bans.

The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville bought his consideration. City council members have informed him that Nashville ships its homeless here, Bailey stated. It’s a rumor many in Cookeville have heard and Bailey seems to believe. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation not too long ago, the homeless people who frequented it disappeared. “Where did they go?” Bailey requested.

Atnip laughed on the idea of people shipped in from Nashville. She was living in nearby Monterey when she lost her house and had to ship her children to reside with her parents. She has obtained some government help, but not enough to get her back on her ft, she mentioned. At one level she received a housing voucher however couldn’t discover a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used car and have been working as supply drivers until it broke down. Now she’s afraid they are going to lose the automobile and have to maneuver to a tent, though she isn’t positive the place they may pitch it.

“It looks as if once one thing goes incorrect, it type of snowballs,” Atnip stated. “We had been earning profits with DoorDash. Our payments had been paid. We have been saving. Then the automobile goes kaput and all the things goes bad.”

Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an sudden advocate of the tenting ban. He said he desires to proceed helping the homeless, but some individuals aren’t motivated to enhance their scenario. Some are addicted to medication, he stated, and some are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 people residing outside kind of permanently in Cookeville, and he is aware of all of them.

“Most of them have been right here just a few years, and never once have they requested for housing help,” he said.

Eldridge knows his position is unpopular with other advocates.

“The massive downside with this legislation is that it does nothing to resolve homelessness. In actual fact, it's going to make the issue worse,” said Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your document makes it laborious to qualify for some forms of housing, tougher to get a job, harder to qualify for advantages.”

Not everyone wants to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but individuals will transfer off the streets given the precise alternatives, Watts said. Homelessness amongst U.S. army veterans, for example, has been lower nearly in half over the previous decade through a mix of housing subsidies and social services.

“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 close by Sparta, was once homeless along with her kids. Many individuals are just one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her community of 5,000, reasonably priced housing could be very arduous to come by.

“When you have a felony on your record — holy smokes!” she mentioned.

Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, stated he doesn’t anticipate 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 folks,” he said of Cookeville law enforcement. But he doesn’t know what would possibly happen in other parts of the state.

He hopes the new regulation will spur some of its opponents to work with him on long-term options for Cookeville’s homeless. If all of them labored collectively it could mean “a whole lot of assets and potential funding sources to assist those in need,” he said.

But other advocates don’t suppose threatening people with a felony is a good means to help them.

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