“I was concerned because I’ve never been in trouble in my life,” Kayla Phillips told National Public Radio. “And if we would have stayed out there another 30 days, I could have got a felony.”
Phillips and her boyfriend Juan Brito are just some of the many formerly homeless people in Tennessee who are moving into apartments after the state outlawed camping on public property. Many cities have had similar laws for years, but Tennessee became the seventh state to do so this year. The law went into effect July 1.
“We support bills that make it illegal for people to stay on the street,” Cicero Institute policy director Judge Glock told NPR. “The goal, of course, is not to just arrest homeless people. What we try to do is make sure people get off the street and into shelter and services as quickly as possible.”
Homeless people do need help getting off the streets. That often includes housing vouchers as well as counseling and job training. But a lot of times, there are plenty of spaces in homeless shelters, but the homeless just refuse to go there, often because of rules (such as no drugs or alcohol) that the homeless simply don’t want to follow.
The services provided to the homeless, but without any accompanying push to get them off the street, have led to a surge in the unsheltered homeless population. In 2020, for the first time ever, the number of unsheltered homeless passed the number of sheltered homeless.
Homeless people need substance abuse and mental health services. But far too often, they refuse to do the hard work of following through on these services because they are allowed to keep camping on public property.
No one wants to lock up the homeless for life. But it may be that the threat of jail is just what cities need to clean up their streets.
