“Lawyers Dwell on Small Details”

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People who are my age remember the controversy former First Lady Nancy Reagan made in the 80s when she introduced the anti-drug policy she called “Just Say No.” Superficially, that’s a good idea: you can’t need to stop if you don’t ever start. However, it doesn’t do a thing for the people who are already having drug addiction issues. In a similar manner, the state of Tennessee has passed a law that I guess could be called “just say no to homelessness” by making homeless encampment on public property a felony. Believe it or not, some advocates, according to the article I read on the WKRN (Nashville) news site, support it. Their reason? They think the notion of criminalizing homeless encampments will force people to take action. No. NOTE: THIS IS MY OPINION. Have you ever wondered why the homeless problem doesn’t go away? There are two reasons, I believe. First, the money we give to “fight homelessness” is going to pay the salary of a bureaucrat, NOT to help homeless. The person sitting at the desk will get his or her $43,000 annual salary before that person in the tent under the overpass will see a dime. Yes, that sounds jaded, but I worked for the government for 14 years. I’ve also been incased in the government bureaucracy via the Department of Veterans Affairs for longer than I’d care to mention. But, to me, there’s a bigger problem than the miles and miles of red tape. As Don Henley sang in “The End of the Innocence,” “Lawyers dwell on small details.” I’ve driven past empty box store buildings and wondered why a church or a homeless advocacy group doesn’t buy it and make it into a shelter. And, almost as soon as my “compassionate” brain asks that, my “rational” brain answers it: LIABILITY. Make a shelter for the homeless and open yourself to all of the billions and billions of laws and regulations (read that in a Carl Sagan voice, please). On the street, there’s no rule or regulation as to what or where or how. Open a shelter, however, and there has to be X amount of square footage per person, zoning laws, building inspections, liability insurance, property insurance, employees and volunteers, and I could go on for hours listing things. To their, ahem, “credit,” Tennessee lawmakers say they don’t expect the law to be enforced (so why did they waste taxpayers’ time and money making the bleeping law in the first place????), similar to a law passed in 2021 about camping on state-owned land (specifically) being a crime being ignored by the “criminals” and the police. I’ve read about places who want to make those “tiny home” communities to help the homeless, but the NIMBY (not in my back yard) attitude and stonewalling laws (“no tiny homes here!”) make it difficult, if not impossible. I wish there were ways to help the homeless without having to circumvent all the minute details on the law books. Until we keep adding law after law after law, however (like these laws), there’s not a lot that can be done. Here’s the Don Henley song I referenced: