Public Camping will be a Felony in Tennessee starting June first

https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-politics-nashville-cookeville-tennessee-fc4c7eb121929856d3a466030f2502e4

62 67 4 years ago

p09ss• 4 years ago

This is essentially a problem to be pushed onto accomodating states since there is no political will (no one wants the optics of being the bad guy putting people in mental institutions) to solve this at the national level.

This is how it ends: The US becomes more like Brazil/India and more gated palaces next to miles of slums.

swearwolf• 4 years ago

I’ve come to the conclusion that this kind of policy, and others like it are a significant part of why the major cities of the West Coast have such big homeless encampments. Essentially every US state is in a zero sum game with every other state regarding who will actually take some responsibility for the cannot or will not take care of themselves. It’s a nationwide game of musical chairs where conservative leaning states can pretend to “solve” their homelessness problem by shifting the population elsewhere. Just one more embarrassing, infuriating thing about politics in this country.

moistly2• 4 years ago

That’s how has worked in Canada. Prairie provinces literally bought one-way bus tickets to Vancouver, BC, for the homeless and addicted.

edmcnulty1015• 4 years ago

Reposting a dead comment because it's good, see below.

Alot of these people are homeless because they're mentally ill. So this is essentially criminalizing being mentally ill.

This third world country setup already happening in L.A. and in the Bay. Massive homeless encampments a few blocks from 7 figure houses.

Also, America has made it next to impossible to escape homelessness once one has become homeless.

A shower, some medicine, some job interview clothes could go a long way to help some of these people, but that's next to impossible for someone under a bridge. Mental health could go a long way as well. Instead we just push them out sight.

Meanwhile we just gave how many billions to Ukraine?

It really baffles me why there's so little political will to help our own people in this country.

Homeless people, College students, older people, the sick, the poor, etc.

"""This is essentially a problem to be pushed onto accomodating states since there is no political will (no one wants the optics of being the bad guy putting people in mental institutions) to solve this at the national level. This is how it ends: The US becomes more like Brazil/India and more gated palaces next to miles of slums."""

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

Excellent comment, thanks for saving it from the abyss.

BitwiseFool• 4 years ago

"So this is essentially criminalizing being mentally ill."

Institutionalizing the kinds of severely mentally ill people who would benefit most from this kind of care is practically impossible, thanks to efforts from civil rights activists decades ago. Resources to help homeless with mental illness exist, but sadly these programs are all voluntary and have no real way to make someone follow through with treatment.

FollowingTheDao16• 4 years ago

It was not the fault of the civil rights activists. The institution were closed because they were gulags and torture centers. I should have a choice of entering a health care facility if that health care facility is mistreating patients. The civil rights activists helped us. It was the states and U.S. Government that failed us by not providing alternative care.

I was literally tortured in a privately run psychiatric hospital three years ago that I was forced to stay in for 10 days because of a misunderstanding. 10 days is the maximum Disability will pay for inpatient. Suddenly after 10 days I was better even thought I was fine on the first. I spoke to a doctor twice for a total of 10 minutes they whole stay.

We are not stupid, the system and society treats us like garbage. And when we just want to be left alone and be simple and free they pass laws and raise prices on everything.

meetups323• 4 years ago

See "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and give proper thanks to the civil rights activists.

At no point in history have we ever had a mental illness treatment doctrine that we can look back on and say "that was a good thing we did, go us". I happen to believe that the present day will be viewed upon no more favorably, what with our pills by the pocket-full and unregulated medical advertisements on social media. (Instagram sponsored content would seem to have the whole world believing they are in desperate need of antidepressants and Adderall, paid for by... the shillers of antidepressants and Adderall, how interesting.)

FollowingTheDao16• 4 years ago

(OP Here) Yes. I am homeless and have a Mental Illness (Neuropsychiatric Lupus) and on Permanent Disability. Just had COVID as well that triggered a psychosis. That was fun. I think about killing myself every other day but only alive because I do not know what dead is like and if it is any better.

The small town I live no longer is accepting Medicare for Mental Health treatment. They can not pay people enough to afford to live here, Too bad, so sad.

I know at times I need to be in an institution. I remember when my mother used to go in the 70s. It was a nice place. This is not true anymore. But yes, people want me to be upset about some Ukrainian child and then they wonder why people vote for people like Trump.

I am not asking for much, just a small, safe studio apartment when I can have some stability and work part time. But the MBAs all want to build "luxury" studios because ROI.

I know I can do it, I know what is wrong with me and how to treat myself. The delusion is that people think the homeless are lazy/do not want to work. Having a job is easy. Being homeless is work.

Then they make laws like this? We need national laws regarding the rights of the homeless.

TrapLord_Rhodo• 4 years ago

Thank you for this comment, it's changed my perspective. I too had a spat of homelessness in my early 20's when i lost my mom & job at the same time.

You seem to have a gift of gab, have you ever tried copywriting on upwork/fiver? Might be a promising direction to get you some stability and a small safe studio.

Work from library's until you can afford a cheap room on craigslist.

kelseyfrog• 4 years ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. It is exactly what humanizes what should already be humanized, de-homogenizes what should already be de-homogenized, and opens doors of empathy that should already be open.

edmcnulty1015• 4 years ago

Homelessness is not an complex problem.

house, showers, some food, health care, and education/job help.

I have no idea how to provide housing at scale but everything else is already in existence and just needs govt funding.

and the govt funding exists it's just going to other priorities some of which aren't even in America.

they lost billions in the Iraq war is another example.

the services just simply need to be connected with the funding.

really frustrating.

bequanna3• 4 years ago

So, in your closing example Tennessee would be a “gated palace”?

I don’t buy it and I sympathize with the people that are saying “enough”. Enough human shit on the sidewalks, enough destruction of our shared public spaces, enough not being able to go into certain areas after dark, enough open hard drug use, enough car break ins and armed robbery.

The people in these makeshift homeless camps are not homogenous in their background, needs, etc. But I think one thing we can all agree on is that these sites DO attract an outsized group of extremely antisocial people that decrease the quality of life for everyone. Many of them not mentally ill, just opportunistic criminals.

If some other states (or you) want to support and foster this, I say fine. Let these people go there. The differences in our states and free movement is part of what makes the US great. But don’t tell others what they have to tolerate where they live.

FollowingTheDao16• 4 years ago

these sites DO attract an outsized group of extremely antisocial people

We are treated as less than human. Why would we not be anti-social? American society is anti-social. Imagine if someone told you you could not use the bathroom in your house, where would you shit?

We have nothing and have to steal to survive, we have crippling stress so we take drugs to escape because we cannot get the psychedelics that are cool drugs?

You think we just appear out of the ether, that there is no greater social issue happening. I would love to be able to compartmentalize as you do, it might help me sleep at night. I invite you all to watch some of our stories son this YouTube channel Invisible People.

https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople/videos

giraffe_lady2• 4 years ago

these sites DO attract an outsized group of extremely antisocial people that decrease the quality of life for everyone.

The anti-social people decreasing everyone's quality of life are the people creating and supporting policies like this one that criminalize mere access to shared public resources.

Barring extreme mental illness that is nowhere near as prevalent as people seem to think, no one wants to be shitting on the ground in public. No one is willingly destroying their own property, personal or shared. If they're vandalizing parks it's because you've successfully made it no longer theirs. Why would they value it when you respect the property more than their lives?

But don’t tell others what they have to tolerate where they live.

No. Wherever you live you have to tolerate people. You have to tolerate the consequences of our own policies. We have chosen to make a world where people can have nothing and be treated as less than human because of it. You must tolerate that or change it. Punishing people for experiencing the consequences you have imposed on them is monstrous. You can't dodge that moral burden by appealing to this limited concept of freedom.

reactjavascript• 4 years ago

Sounds like a “burbclave” as predicted in the 90’s in Snow Crash

juanani• 4 years ago

Cus sending money to Ukraine benefits our politicians (wether thru holding 'defense' stocks or investments in rebuilding Ukr). Helping out the poor is un-American, anti capitalistic.

gamblor9563• 4 years ago

There was an article in the LAT last week on this point.

It turns out, most of the homeless prefer to have access to drugs over shelter. It's so bad that a rehab diversion program had fewer than 1% of eligible users take advantage of it last year.

It's why so many of them are homeless in the first place: by choice. Because being housed means giving up drugs, or alcohol, or having to take medications. And most of them don't want to do that.

A minority of homeless are involuntarily and temporarily unhoused and would benefit from a bed, shower, and clothes. Unfortunately, we waste most of our money trying to house the voluntary homeless/drug addicts instead of the ones who actually need it.

FollowingTheDao16• 4 years ago

most of the homeless prefer to have access to drugs over shelter.

Watch these videos.

https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople/videos

As someone who has known many homeless people, the majority neither want to use drugs nor be homeless. I do not know many people who choose to be addicts. And to lay all this addiction on the addicts and not the pharmaceutical companies is brave of you. I also meet so many women whose decent into homelessness was caused by sexual abuse.

And go to a shelter for a night and tell me if you would choose that over a bottle of vodka...

Maggots, sexual abuse, filthy bathrooms: Orange County homeless shelters’ grim conditions detailed in ACLU report https://www.ocregister.com/2019/03/14/aclu-report-alleges-ab...

giraffe_lady2• 4 years ago

What got me out of homelessness was someone giving me a chunk of money and a place to sleep without judgement. I could afford beer instead of hard liquor and wasn't getting constantly arrested for drinking it. I got a computer and a part time job on it that eventually led to me learning to code.

It was another five or six years before I seriously tried to quit drinking for real, but from that point I was on my way out in a way I never had been before.

It's technically correct to describe me at that time as "prefer having access to drugs over shelter" but it doesn't tell the full story of my situation or motivations. This society and these laws had taken everything else from me, and now expected me to also give up the drink? With no support and nothing else, nothing at all to replace it? Nah I'll take my chances.

I needed a lot of other help that we have decided people are not entitled to, that we aren't obligated to give. But it's us that decided that, not them. If people aren't able to accept the very limited help we're willing to give on the extremely harsh terms we're willing to give it, that's our fault not theirs.

edmcnulty1015• 4 years ago

there's a small amount of exploitation from every government service in existence.

just like there's theft from department stores.

department stores just bake that into the cost of doing business.

which is what government support systems should also do.

hn_version_0023• 4 years ago

It really baffles me why there's so little political will to help our own people in this country.

In my experience, the cruelty is the point. Its not a lack of political will. Its a direct punishment for not being a member of the 1%. It’s your motivation to become one of the 1%.

Its the logical result of pushing individualism over any form of collectivism. Selfishness rules and cruel punishments are the norm.

moistly2• 4 years ago

It’s a direct punishment for not being blessed by God, c.f. the ever-popular and uniquely American prosperity gospel.

ashwagary• 4 years ago

I think creating a class of people that are more easily exploitable is the goal. Any relief would obstruct that objective.

FollowingTheDao16• 4 years ago

I never thought of it this way, but wow. I am imagining these laws as some weird Jungian subconscious thing.

BirAdam• 4 years ago

Many homeless people are homeless due to housing costs and not mental health. Constant low interest rates on money push money into land, stocks, and precious metal. These sky rocket in price and push people who have jobs and are mentally sound into tents. This has been true in Hawaii for some time, but it is now spreading across the nation with tent cities popping up everywhere.

Rents are often over $1400 for a one bedroom apartment, and mortgages are higher still. Even where mortgages are lower than rents, there is a barrier to entry in houses of needing a down payment.

Until politicians gain the will to allow for a real correction and a real price on money, this will not stop.

FollowingTheDao16• 4 years ago

Yes, the middle class is pushing the homeless problem out of their minds because they have been profiting because their assets have all been increasing; stocks, houses, etc.

Then they make more money by renting an ADU on AirBnB for 3x the rental cost to another person in the middle class who wants a vacation paid for by their increasing assets.

I have met more and more new homeless who are now struggling with mental health issues since they became homeless as well. The stress will do that to a person. I try to be the person that pushes them towards the spiritual rather than the medicinal to ease the stress.

vinyl72• 4 years ago

$2100/mo for a tiny studio, $2400+ for 1 bed room apartment, or even $3k for a two bedroom where I am in Southern California. If the 30% rule is to be followed, a person would have to be pulling in $7,200/mo for 1 bedroom...that would be a salary of $130k/yr.

We really need a recession/crash to reset the housing market, otherwise we're going to end up with a bunch of oligarchs owning all the properties while the millennial populace will be on the streets

_Parfait_• 4 years ago

Why is the solution to have a housing crash that evicts people from their homes? Housing is the most simple supply/demand issue imaginable. Remove red tape, stop with the restrictive zoning and build more housing. The issue is we've told generations of people to buy a house quickly so they can profit off of restrictive zoning because the price of their homes will go up. This cycle has create in immovable NIMBY class. The solution isn't crashing the American economy.

mywittyname2• 4 years ago

We really need a recession/crash to reset the housing market,

If this happens, then the people who currently can't afford housing will be turbofucked, while the people with the expensive housing will be, at worse, just fine, or at best, will profit greatly from it.

The GFC was not that long ago. And it minted so many millionaires that everyone is keeping an eye out for prices to drop because they want to replicate that same success. Lightning will not strike like that again because everyone is standing around that spot with metal rods held high in the air. There's no end of people waiting for "the next housing crash" to buy.

If you want cheaper housing, then you want more housing to be built. And you want the housing to be high density. Which means you're going to stepping on a lot of innocent people, and enriching a lot bad people to get them built. We're probably talking about using eminent domain to seize single family homes, and handing the land over to some developers (at a discount) to raze them and build large condos in their place. Because, fact is, nobody wants to give up their single family home that's been appreciating at double digit rates for the past 20 years with no end in sight. You're going to have to pry it from them.

phendrenad2• 4 years ago

The homeless who are camping on the side of a highway aren't homeless due to rising rents. They're the ones that are homeless due to mental health issues. At least that's the case on the mainland, it may be different in Hawaii.

tinalumfoil• 4 years ago

In pushing the expansion, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that no one has been convicted under that law and said he doesn’t expect this one to be enforced much, either.

Something worth noting about the US Justice system, is it's become a dance with tough-on-crime legislators pushing insane penalties that and prosecutors who force defendants to plea crimes down, at the threat of imposing those penalties.

That is, it just makes it easier for prosecutors to punish campers since instead of charging them with a petty crime they say, "hey, plead guilty to a reasonable sentence or we'll take you to trial and if we win you'll no longer be a free citizen." It's a clever workaround to the 5th amendment, which gives defendants lots rights and imposes really expensive standards like "beyond a reasonable doubt" on prosecutors.

softcactus3• 4 years ago

Meanwhile trespassing is only a misdemeanor. Hopefully nobody decides to sleep on the lawns of the legislators.

https://www.findlaw.com/state/tennessee-law/tennessee-crimin...

randyrand• 4 years ago

Why should a state decide what is a felony?

Shouldn't the restriction of federal rights be limited to federal law? i.e. the right to bear arms, the right to vote.

bdcravens2• 4 years ago

One of those rights is Amendment 10, which basically says the state has authority in things not explicitly laid out in the Constitution.

Felony just refers to the severity of crime: murder, robbery, theft (over a certain level), sexual assault, repeat DWIs, etc are all felonies.

GekkePrutser3• 4 years ago

Can a state make something a felony?? I thought that only applied to federal laws.

I've never visited the US but I thought a felony meant breaking federal laws.

bdcravens2• 4 years ago

That's not correct. Felony just refers to the the severity of a crime (with lesser crimes being misdemeanor). Federal vs. state felonies are just a matter of jurisdiction.

GekkePrutser3• 4 years ago

Thanks for the explanation. Good to be more aware.

UncleEntity• 4 years ago

Homelessness among U.S. military veterans, for example, has been cut nearly in half over the past decade through a combination of housing subsidies and social services.

Yep, about a decade ago I was technically homeless but the VA found me a veteran’s shelter so I could get back on my feet. You only have to ask and they will help you.

Though… three or four years ago the woman who my landlord hired got tired of my late rent shenanigans and forced me out (I say forced because the owner honestly didn’t care and had no idea what she was doing). The VA has programs to keep you from becoming homeless but it is impossible to access them. Homeless? They will help. Going to be homeless? Come back when you haven’t had a roof over your head for at least one night.

olliej• 4 years ago

What are homeless people actually meant to do? If the expectation is “leave TN” then do other states get to bill TN for their failure to adequately run their state?

FollowingTheDao16• 4 years ago

What are homeless people actually meant to do?

In neoliberalism; "Hurry up and die."

pontifier• 4 years ago

Red tape is killing the country. NIMBYs should have to vote with their feet and find a new place rather than stopping things where they are.

rdubs333• 4 years ago

Beef Supreme is gonna have to lay the law down

Public Camping will be a Felony in Tennessee starting June first

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