When Ronald Reagan was elected president, I was a 17-year-old freshman at UT. During my time in Knoxville, I watched the human fallout of his policies in real time.
By the end of those four years, the homeless population had exploded around campus—a direct result of the GOP’s new zeal to take a sledgehammer to social services, including mental health care.
My senior year, a friend and I lived in a dilapidated old house in the Fort, and many times we’d step out our front door to find a weathered stranger resting on our front porch. I’ll never forget walking to class and seeing an exhausted-looking woman not much older than I was standing in a dumpster, foraging for food. She was heavily pregnant.
If you’ve been in Knoxville lately, you know that the homeless population has skyrocketed. The same thing has happened in Chattanooga.
Homelessness is a multifaceted problem that requires a complex solution. True to form, our state lawmakers decided to solve it with a sledgehammer, by making it a felony to sleep in a public place.
In Tennessee, the party of Reagan just keeps getting crueler.
Allison
[email protected]
0 Comments