The best lawmakers are thieves. Faced with a complex problem, they search for solutions that have worked in other places. Rather than continuing to put good money toward a bad solution, or creating an all-new solution, they look at other places that did it right and steal their ideas.

So when I read a New York Times article about how Houston got 25,000 homeless people off the streets, I got excited. I live in TN House District 26, where Chattanooga’s tourists and homeless coexist. Every day for nearly 10 years, I’ve walked my dogs past the people who live on our downtown sidewalks and sleep between buildings and on and under bridges. I’ve talked to a lot of them. I’ve given them food and socks and handwarmers and lots of money, a few dollars at a time. I’ve tried to coax them toward city services. I’ve worried about them when they disappeared. I’m well aware that the average age of death of a homeless man is 56. For a homeless woman, it’s 52.

Mostly I’m reminded that every story of homelessness begins with a crisis most people have witnessed or experienced firsthand: Mental illness. Substance abuse. Physical disability. A lost job. How the story ends depends on whether there’s someone else there to keep that struggling person afloat.

Surely Tennessee’s lawmakers have heard what the experts say. I know Hamilton County has—its FUSE program uses the housing-first model.

Yet so much of the time, our state leaders can’t bring themselves to do what’s humane even if it’s evidence based and makes economic sense. They feel obliged to be punitive. In keeping with that mindset, they just made Tennessee the first state to criminalize homelessness. Now we’ll be imprisoning the poorest of the poor and branding them as felons, which will likely keep them poor for life.

It’s stupid. It’s cruel. It’s infuriating. And it’s not going to stop until we get more people in the State House willing to hold the bullies accountable.

Allison
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