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11 Responses to “Is Knoxville Becoming the Homeless Capital of America?”

1. wade 
   November 13th, 2009 at 8:24 am

   

   If not the Cap­i­tal then Disneyland.

2. Jody Collins 
   November 13th, 2009 at 8:27 am

   

   Curi­ous to see what’ll be said here. Its always been a run­ning joke that we, Knoxville, imports/buses-in the homeless.

   Its a sad state of affairs, espe­cially with the way things are right now. Read a stat yes­ter­day that there are 55,000 peo­ple job­less in the 865 right now. In bet­ter times I’d say the idea of a shel­ter is a good idea, as long as they’re help­ing the home­less indi­vid­u­als go back to school or with job place­ment. Nowa­days? Not sure there is any one true answer to what’s right and what’s wrong.

3. jretinger 
   November 13th, 2009 at 8:28 am

   

   @knoxify slowly but surely…

4. Knox Animal 
   November 13th, 2009 at 9:04 am

   

   @Jody Collins: hear­ing those stats really puts in per­spec­tive how lucky some of us are to have jobs. I can’t even imag­ine what it must be like to be one of those 55,000 people.

5. CK 
   November 13th, 2009 at 10:29 am

   

   CP– I think it would be a mis­take to cat­e­go­rize the 10-Year Plan shel­ters as just ANOTHER shel­ter. They are designed to sys­tem­i­cally end the home­less prob­lem. I think every­one has a bad taste in their mouth from the cur­rent min­istry shel­ters, which mostly per­pet­u­ate the prob­lem. Let’s give the Plan a chance to work before dis­miss­ing it.

   Jody– Pub­lic build­ing projects are exactly what we need in the worst of times. Local con­trac­tors, archi­tects, car­pen­ters, plumbers, ect. would be involved– pro­vid­ing some of the jobs we need. The “sad state of affairs” is that the fed­eral gov’t isn’t spend­ing more stim­u­lus money on WPA style projects and less on prop­ping up a finan­cial sys­tem that won’t lend money.

   A large part of the home­less pop­u­la­tion here is men­tally ill. They’ll always be a bur­den on soci­ety. The gov’t took care of them until the 1970s when they shut down the asy­lum sys­tem. Now we’re reap­ing the bit­ter fruits of that deci­sion. If we want to cut back gov’t spend­ing, why is no one look­ing at the wel­fare sys­tem? Let’s kick the physically/mentally-able out of the gov’t sys­tem before we cut off the homeless.

   Liv­ing in the neigh­bor­hood near­est to the “home­less dis­trict” on 5th Ave., I can say that no area in Knoxville is going to be happy when a shel­ter is built in it. The pro­posed site in the above arti­cle seems poorly cho­sen, though. But even­tu­ally West Knox is gonna have to swal­low hard and endure hav­ing a shel­ter some­where in it as part of the 10 year plan, just like the rest of us.

6. The Modern Gal 
   November 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am

   

   There have been some peo­ple around my neigh­bor­hood advo­cat­ing clos­ing the mis­sions around Broad­way. My ques­tion to them is always where are these peo­ple going to go?

   CK makes a good point about the major­ity of the home­less being men­tally ill and unable to hold jobs with no one to care of them. There are cer­tain things we can do to dis­cour­age the peo­ple who make a “pro­fes­sion” out of being home­less by not giv­ing in to pan­han­dling, but the least we can do for the peo­ple who don’t choose to be home­less is give them a place to lay their head at night.

7. tclick 
   November 13th, 2009 at 10:54 am

   

   @knoxify Knoxville, Ten­nessee: “We put the ‘Home’ in ‘Homeless.’”

8. Jody Collins 
   November 13th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

   

   CK: Like I said before, not wholly opposed to the idea of a shel­ter. Just wish it would be run for the bet­ter­ment of folks. Like with Habi­tat. The peo­ple ben­e­fit­ing from Habi­tat have to work to receive that oppor­tu­nity. Which is a great idea, and I applaud them for that.

   You’re right about it open­ing up jobs in build­ing and main­tain­ing the shel­ter. Though, I’ve done work for some of the oth­ers. What they some­times squan­der money on is astonishing.

   For what its worth, those in the ‘finan­cial sys­tem’ should be run out on a rail.

9. CHuskey 
   November 13th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

   

   I have some per­sonal expe­ri­ence with the Minvilla Manor Project and with feed­ing some of K-Town’s home­less. Let me just say, regard­less of the inten­tions, the Minvilla Manor project has been a huge screwed up mess from the get-go. From the clear­ing out and fenc­ing up of the 5th Ave Hotel, to the actual design and con­struc­tion, noth­ing went the way it was sup­posed too. If they are plan­ning some­thing sim­i­lar in West Knoxville, I hope they learn from their mis­takes. As for the min­istries that try to help the home­less, I can only speak of the one I have some first hand knowl­edge off, but St. Demetri­ous the tiny lit­tle church in Mechan­icsville (in front of Food City on Mid­dle­brook) tries to hand out sack lunches or hot food at least 3 days a week. They have only a few work­ers, but they do what they can. Some nights peo­ple are already lined around the build­ing by the time the work­ers get there to open up. I have taken a group of teenagers over, to serve soup a cou­ple times. As was men­tioned above allot of the folks do have some hand­i­caps whether mental/physical or in as in allot of cases, both. Most of the folks we fed were friendly and very thank­ful for some­one tak­ing the time to help. I learned one thing from hear­ing some of their stories…most of us are only one bad month, or even a cou­ple bad weeks from being in the same spot. One man, told us the story of how he was a car­pen­ter, had a good job, lov­ing fam­ily. His daugh­ters where killed in an acci­dent. He turned to drink­ing to ease the pain, and within months he lost his job, wife and home. It’s a scary thought, espe­cially with today’s econ­omy. Are these 10 years plans the answer? Maybe, but more than likely, prob­a­bly not. What is the answer? I wish I knew, but until some­one fig­ures it out all I can say is, God Bless those with a heart to help. And by that, I mean the ones who really feel the need, to help their fel­low man, not just the ones who want to puff out their chest and say, “look at me! I’m helpin!!” The ones who help in silence, never ask­ing to be rec­og­nized or praised, they just do it because it’s what should be done, but most of us (myself included) don’t have the patience or the will power to deal with some­thing, that in all hon­esty, we’d rather just not think about. Of course it’s those type of folks that makes this such a great town in the first place, which maybe why so many home­less end up here, it’s kind of a vicious cycle I sup­pose, but what do I know, I’m just a dude, playin a dude, dis­guised as another dude…

10. Robert Finley 
    November 16th, 2009 at 9:27 am

    

    The pro­posed devel­op­ment at Debusk in West Knox County is not a shel­ter at all. It’s an apart­ment com­plex that will be used to pro­vide per­ma­nent sup­port­ive hous­ing. Its res­i­dents will be peo­ple who had been chron­i­cally home­less: dis­abled indi­vid­u­als who have been home­less for at least a year, or who have had at least 4 peri­ods of home­less­ness over the past 3 years.

    Again: not a shel­ter. Res­i­dents must have income (usu­ally dis­abil­ity, since they are dis­abled, but some­times from employ­ment), they must sign and abide by the terms of a lease, and they must pay rent. They can live in this hous­ing as long as they do those things and want to stay, same as any­one in any apart­ment complex.

    Just to be super clear, once again, per­ma­nent sup­port­ive hous­ing is not any­thing like a shelter.

    Per­ma­nent sup­port­ive hous­ing breaks the cycle of home­less­ness for these folks. It’s a cycle that’s worth break­ing. The aver­age indi­vid­ual in Knox who’s chron­i­cally home­less costs us around $40,000 per year on the street. It’s much less expen­sive, and more humane, to work with them to end their home­less­ness than it is to help them make their home­less­ness a lit­tle eas­ier to endure.

    The Ten-Year Plan is not a magic bul­let. It’s a plan that was pub­lished in 2005 and adopted by the City and the County in 2006. Among other things, it seeks to bring about bet­ter coor­di­na­tion and greater effi­ciency among agen­cies that pro­vide ser­vices con­sumed by all home­less people.

    But the cor­ner­stone is hous­ing. Per­ma­nent sup­port­ive hous­ing. With­out per­ma­nent hous­ing, you don’t end homelessness.

    It is not true that Knoxville is some­how the new cap­i­tal of home­less­ness. You will find that this myth is alive and well in any mid-sized city in the US. It’s just a com­mon, oft-repeated but unsub­stan­ti­ated urban myth.

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