Outrage over planned $600k 'homeless village' in Jackson, Mississippi

Householders in Jackson, Mississippi, are angry about plans to build a $600,000 'village' for homeless people, saying they're worried about the scheme worsening crime and nuisances in their neighborhood. Residents are urging local leaders to scrap plans for 60 tiny homes and a communal kitchen for unhoused people on a derelict 18-acre site in West Jackson, saying it will attract more vagrants to the run-down area. Fears about the project echo nationwide concerns about homelessness, and come as Republican front-runner Donald Trump promises to shift vagrant camps to the edges of cities and as the Supreme Court is set to weigh in on the crisis.

West Jackson resident Sheka Epps says she supports helping homeless people, but that the earmarked site on Caspers Avenue should be abandoned in favor of one away from schools and residences. 'It's going to overwhelm the area with more homelessness, more blight, and more businesses leaving our area,' she told WLBT3. 'We have a lot of land. We have a lot of country land here in Jackson and in Hinds County as a whole. They can build a homeless camp anywhere on the outskirts.'

Vernon Hartley, the city council member for the ward set to house the tiny homes, said he was fielding calls from residents worried about its impact on the community. 'We have folks saying, 'Don't let it go through. Don't let it go through,' he told WLBT3. 'We need to do something about the homeless problem in Jackson, [but] building additional facilities without managing the overall homeless picture won't do any good.' The tiny homes each cost $4,500, which rises to $9,500 once they're hooked up to plumbing and electricity, organizers say.

They are often brightly colored and attractive. While small, and kitchen and bathroom facilities are shared, they offer their residents the privacy that is seldom found at state-run shelters, advocates say. Hartley says there are better uses for community grants in an area with above-average poverty rates. His residents have long complained that the area's homeless cause a range of social problems, including setting fires to keep warm in derelict buildings that lead to properties burning down. Hartley said he wanted to 'take care of West Jackson before we invite additional people into our community.'

'Right now, we need community grant money for restoring houses, cleaning up the streets, cleaning up properties, and helping with our roads,' he told the outlet. The councilman has pushed for tougher rules against panhandling and squatting in his area, which is close to Jackson's historic downtown, and wants more surveillance cameras keeping watch on the neighborhood. Spending the money on a homeless camp, which has yet to be greenlighted by the city council, would encourage more homeless people to move nearby and gobble up Jackson's resources. 'If we build it, they will come,' he said. 'Right now, we have a lot of homeless folks in our city because there are some resources.' Mississippi has one of the lowest rates of homelessness in the country, with 982 unhoused people counted in the latest federal government survey.

Still, the state has a higher-than- average number of long-term homeless people without any form of temporary shelter, and many of them are in the state capital. Local officials say there are some 3,000 homeless people in Jackson alone. That's why Jackson needs the homeless village, says Putalamus White, CEO of the Jackson Resource Center, which is leading the scheme, called 'Space Place, Safe Space.' 'Building this would get us, as a city, going in the right direction,' White told a recent council meeting. 'It would definitely pull a lot of our homeless in West Jackson off the streets.'

The scheme would be the first tiny house village for homeless people in Jackson. Advocates say they've worked in Los Angeles and Portland and have helped unhoused people get off the streets for good and rebuild their lives. Concerns in Mississippi are part of a broader worry about a homelessness crisis that has gripped the country. Homelessness spiked 12 percent in America to reach a record 650,000 people last year, a federal government survey showed, as rents rose and Covid-era protections ended. Like Jackson, communities across the US have grappled with how to handle the unhoused. City leaders in San Jose, California, are this week discussing new rules to stop vagrants setting up camps near schools.

In Oregon, the state-funded Project Turnkey is spending millions renovating abandoned buildings that can be used as shelters. The Biden administration this week allocated $3.16 billion to fund more than 7,000 such projects across the US. Officials in Portland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and other cities have in recent months responded to public ire over homelessness by dismantling makeshift shelters and moving people on. The Supreme Court this month agreed to weigh in on these heavy-handed measures. The top judicial body has taken up a request from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, as well as other Democratic and Republican elected officials, over how hard they can clamp down on people sleeping rough.

Scenes of homeless drug addicts stumbling on sidewalks and fears of violence and petty crime have become a national political issue, with former President Donald Trump making it part of his campaign platform in the 2024 race. In a video on homelessness released by his campaign, Trump said that 'hardworking, law-abiding citizens' were being sidelined and made to 'suffer for the whims of a deeply unwell few.' He vowed to 'ban urban camping' and create 'tent cities' on 'inexpensive land' for homeless people that will be staffed with doctors and social workers to get people off the streets for good. This resonates with voters, in Jackson and beyond.

More than two thirds of US adults say homelessness is out of control and that officials need to move those sleeping rough into tented encampments outside towns and cities, our survey showed. The DailyMail.com/TIPP Poll revealed that 67 percent of Americans are fed up with the country's fast-rising number of homeless people and want mayors to take drastic steps to tackle the scourge . Still, homeless people and their advocates say sweeps and relocation policies are cruel and a waste of taxpayer money. The answer, they say, is more affordable housing, not crackdowns. Read the full story:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13023699/Fury-600-000-homeless-Jackson-Mississippi-crime-homes-vagrant-camps.html?ito=msngallery

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