This is my point of view on how the homeless are treated by Nashville, Tennessee. The homeless are told that we can’t sleep anywhere and that we can’t sit anywhere. We can’t even sit in a restaurant and have a cup of coffee without being told to leave.
Nashville doesn’t care about their homeless people or they’d open more housing. Just so everyone knows, 174 homeless people died last year. And they’ll probably be more this year because pretty much everybody in Nashville doesn’t care about the homeless. Yeah, you’ll get a straggler here or there that gives you some food or a couple of dollars, but there’s one thing that Nashville will never do for their homeless people: Give them enough housing. See, there are abandoned buildings all around Nashville that could be refurbished and turned into apartments for the homeless.
Do you think that will happen? No. Because Nashville wants the homeless to die off. And technically, people who are homeless like me don’t choose this. It happened. Nobody chooses homelessness. Nobody chooses not to have a place to live. Nobody chooses not to have a place to eat, or go to the bathroom or have a bed to lay in.
And you think being homeless is not stressful? You’re absolutely wrong on that one. Stress is the major cause of heart attacks. The way Nashville treats our homeless people is very, very bad. You know, Texas and Florida built homes for their homeless people. But can Nashville do that? No. Because Nashville does not consider their homeless as people. They don’t consider the homeless as human.
And another thing, the police like to harass the homeless. They tell us where we can sleep, or where we can’t sleep. Where we can lay our heads, or where we can’t lay our heads. Well, you know what? Find us a place to live, and maybe we won’t be f homeless.
And, FYI all homeless people are not drug addicts or drunks. And not all of the people who sell the paper are homeless. And there’s more homeless people in Nashville than you can see. You will never, ever in a million trillion years get rid of the homeless. The homeless are here to stay, so get used to it.
Just so Nashville knows, we are not dirt. We are not something that you walk on. We are not something that you throw away. We are human beings. People just like you. And we expect to be treated that way. I’m challenging the city of Nashville to spend two weeks trying to be homeless. Two weeks without your little mechanical devices, your money, your cell phones or computers. You can’t call somebody to come pick you up. You can’t say, “I can’t deal with this.” Why don’t you try to experience that? We experience that every freaking day. You experience figuring out how to haul your stuff around everywhere with you because you don’t want it to get stolen. Or, you try sleeping while somebody walks up and tries to take your stuff or watch people pass by you and look at you like you’re dirt. Maybe Nashville needs to experience that.
You can’t get a job without an address, and you can’t get a place to live without income, which means you have to get a job to get a place. So, you wonder why there’s homeless in Nashville? Because Nashville doesn’t provide a permanent place for homeless people to be.
Y’all who aren’t homeless in Nashville, we’re worried this could be you. That you could lose everything you have and be sitting on a corner trying to earn money or be destitute. Think about this: I have a brain tumor and I have seizures. I have PTSD. I’ve got all kinds of medical problems, but I’m out sitting on the damn street corner. I’m homeless and nobody will give me a place to live.
So, what is Nashville going to do about this? God says to treat people the way you want to be treated. Well, obviously Nashville doesn’t want to be treated that well since they don’t treat the homeless real good. Why not stop building bars and places where everyone can get alcohol and start doing something for the homeless and give them a permanent place to live. Maybe there would be less homeless people. Maybe Nashville should stop skating around the problem and find a solution to the problem.