The parking lot at the Catholic Action Center on Industry Road hosted nearly 200 people for a cookout and a rally on April 22. A banner on the building that serves as a shelter and community for people experiencing homelessness said, “It Ain’t No Crime To Be Homeless.”
Participants may well have lost count of the number of times they heard “One, two, three…” and called out “we stand together in love!”
As the Supreme Court was listening to arguments about how local governments can–or even should –regulate homelessness, Lexington clergy and religious leaders, city council members and representatives of housing and homelessness programs expressed their outrage at not only the possibility of a Supreme Court ruling, but at Kentucky HB 5, which was passed by the recently concluded General Assembly.
Called the “Safer Kentucky Act,” the bill addresses a number “crimes,” including camping in a public place.
LFCUG does not support the bill, according to 1st District Council Representative Tayna Fogle. “Local law enforcement will be able to make more arrests; [the people they arrest will] have to go before a judge and we don’t have enough room in the jails,” she said.
“And what will we do with their children?” asked T.C. Johnson, the director of the Fayette County Public Schools McKinney-Vento Program, which serves over 1000 students who are experiencing homelessness.
“I inherited this problem in the 1st District,” Fogle said, “and we need to keep it in the forefront of attention.”
The Kentucky Department of Corrections estimates that over the next 10 years, the cost of enforcing all elements of HB 5 could reach $1 billion.
Father Richard Watson, pastor of St. Paul Church, one of three Catholic churches in downtown Lexington, identifies the criminalization of homelessness a Gospel issue. “We can’t call ourselves Christians if we don’t care for people who are poor, oppressed, abandoned. As Christians we have to take care of everyone. People need shelter, not laws and arrests.” Knowing the importance of making his congregation aware of the problem, Father Watson changed the subject matter of his homily for the previous week just minutes before Mass started. He told the story of Amber Rockwell, a woman without shelter in Grants Pass, Oregon, who said, “There’s not place for us to go, she said. “We’re made to feel like we should not exist.”
Father Watson said, “Shame on us.”
Jared Paull, director of the Central Kentucky Housing and Homeless Initiative, grew up in Metcalf County, Kentucky. “When I tried to put a face on the homeless kids in Fayette County, it occurred to me that it would be as if child in Metcalf County was homeless. Put a face it,” Paull said. “That’s how results will come.”
After each speaker, the crowd was prompted to respond: “We stand together in love!”
In his remarks, Bishop John Stowe said we know that nothing good can come if people don’t care, but “Kentucky has taken a step to make the crisis worse. Hostility to our most vulnerable has been enshrined into law.”
The Street Voice Council, an advisory group of people who are experiencing homelessness co-hosted the rally. The council distributed wristbands marked #AIN’T NO CRIME TO BE HOMELESS” and printed programs with the statement: “Despite Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of HB 5, the Safe Kentucky Act became law and will be enforced in July. It will not make Kentucky safer for those experiencing homelessness but will criminalize them because they are poor.”