Homelessness is a growing problem in Knox County and Knoxville, and affects the whole community, not just the people without stable housing. In April 2023, Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs announced the establishment of the Knoxville-Knox County Office on Housing Stability, appointing Erin Read as its director. The office is charged with leading efforts to prevent and respond to housing instability and homelessness.
WUOT’s Carole Meyer: How do we define homelessness?
Erin Read: Sure, I'll talk about how the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development defines it. Individuals or families are homeless if they lack a fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence. That could mean they're staying in a shelter, or in some place not meant for human habitation a car an abandoned building. Under some programs homeless can also refer to people about to get evicted, or those fleeing domestic violence.
I understand that in our area the number of people classified as homeless is growing. Can you please describe and discuss the recent trends in the number of homeless people?
Every year in January volunteers and Knoxville and Knox County conduct a count of people experiencing homelessness in our community. And that counts both sheltered and unsheltered. Sheltered homeless people are those living in emergency shelter or transitional housing, unsheltered or those living on the street in those places not meant for human habitation that I mentioned. So in 2022, we saw the highest count we've had in the past 10 years by far, we counted 1,178 people experiencing homelessness. And that was up almost 50% from 2021. And it is also important to note that these counts are always an undercount. So the likely real total is higher.
Also homelessness for many people tends to be something they fall into temporarily, and then are able to get out of so there's a real flow happening. It's not just the same group of people. And in the first quarter of this year, for every one person who exited our service system into housing, three remained homeless. This proportion has remained pretty constant over the past few years. And that really shows us two things. One, that we have a mismatch between housing supply and housing demand, and two, that our system is not currently able to serve everyone who needs to be served.
What are the main causes of homelessness?
Well, lack of affordable, attainable housing is really the culprit. If you look at households that were new to homelessness in the first quarter of this year, two thirds 66% said they were homeless because they couldn't find affordable housing. They'd been evicted or they'd lost their job. About one quarter said that they were fleeing either domestic violence or a non violent family conflict. And just 7% said that mental health, substance misuse or legal problems lead to their homelessness. So these statistics show us that housing instability is a big picture issue. So it's about a lot more than just homelessness.
As housing costs continue to rise across the community, many residents find themselves between a rock and a hard place in 2022, rental costs in Knox County grew at more than twice the national rate. So that's really trouble for those who are on a fixed income, who might be unemployed or whose wages haven't kept pace with those costs. The Knox Area Association of Realtors reports that 40% of renters in Knox County are cost burdened. And what that means specifically is they're spending 30% or more of their income on housing, which is a lot. And there's kind of a useful analogy to be made here with musical chairs, as chairs are getting taken away from the circle. It's the bigger kids, the stronger kids, the faster kids who are able to get one of those remaining chairs. If there's a person who's vulnerable in some way, let's say a kid has a sprained ankle, they're probably going to be one of the first to lose their spot. And what I like about this analogy is that it helps us understand how things like mental illness and substance misuse do help drive homelessness. What this analogy doesn't do, however, is help us understand how mental illness and substance misuse are also symptoms of homelessness.
People who are homeless are exposed to infectious diseases, violence, malnutrition, harmful weather conditions and serious sleep deprivation. And these conditions can make wealthy people sick. The trauma of living homeless affects a person's mental and physical health really deeply. And we see that in life expectancy. The life expectancy for a person experiencing homelessness is 12 years shorter than the general US population.
Can you explain the notion of being sheltered but still homeless?
Most people experiencing homelessness in our community are sheltered in the 2022 count in January, two thirds were sheltered, but that left over 400 people sleeping on the street. And again, sheltered means that they're either in an emergency shelter or in transitional housing that's meant to help them move into a more permanent housing placement.
Really, the only medical options available to many people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness is emergency medical care. And that's something that's really one of the if you're looking at the economic costs of homelessness in a community, that is really one of the biggest ones, is this emergency healthcare usage, emergency psychiatric hospitalization. I mean, these are some of the costs of homelessness that we all bear for sure.
What else should the public know about the homelessness situation?
I get a lot of questions about a recent law, a law that was passed last year criminalizing homeless camps on public property. There was a lot of fear when this law was passed last year that it was going to generate large numbers of felony convictions for camping, you know, increase our jail population beyond the unmanageable level it is currently at, and there was a lot of discussion about how useful that would be, or how not useful that would be in deterring people from sleeping outside. And I think that the majority of people sleeping outside homeless would really rather be somewhere else. Their choices are limited by a range of factors, which we've discussed some of and in many cases arrest would mean that they're being punished for sleeping in the only place that's available to them, which is problematic.
I want to say that both the Knoxville Police Department and the Knox County Sheriff's Office have been thoughtful in how they've approached this issue. Officers have broad authority to decide whether to arrest someone caught camping illegally. And both the Knoxville Police Department and the Sheriff's Office have shared with me that they really tried to connect people with services before they even start talking about arresting them. We’ve got a really diverse population of people experiencing homelessness here. Some of them are living in their cars, taking their kids to school and going to work every morning. It's a lot more common than you think. Others have been homeless for years. And they really need some intensive services to be able to get housed and stay housed. And this new office is going to work to build a system that can serve all these groups quickly and well.
Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
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