The homeless population in Knoxville has consistently been oppressed against in a variety of ways, not just in terms of having less access to services that make it easier to attain financial mobility, but also by the police trying to get them off of the streets and providing no real solution for where they can go. This can be seen in the hostile architecture across Knoxville that attempts to remove homeless people from sleeping on benches or being in other places because they believe that it makes the city look better to not show these people who really have no other place to go. By doing this, the City of Knoxville makes it seem like the homeless epidemic in Knoxville is under control, but what they’re really doing is leaving this people with no place to sleep and forcing them to gather in other parts of the city, such as the street across from KARM, a homeless shelter here in Knoxville.
Homeless people line the street across from KARM, where many of them have not been able to receive access to their services due to overcrowding.
Walking along the streets of downtown Knoxville and the Old City, it was not difficult to find subjects to interview. Many even seemed eager to tell their stories without the fear of judgment. One woman I interviewed named Shannon, who preferred not to reveal her last name, explained that there’s really no way to prepare for homelessness. In her situation, she was evicted from her apartment after she was unable to pay rent due to unemployment. She tells me that, since then, she has just been going from place to place, and has hopes to eventually move to California. Among all of the people I interviewed, there seems to be a consensus that the City of Knoxville and particularly the police, have not had homeless people’s best interests at heart.
Frank, a homeless man who was photographed on the streets of the Old City, tells me that he has always wanted to be an artist, and he used his artistic talents to create his sign.
Things have been ever more difficult for homeless people during the pandemic, as many shelters such as KARM have now implemented strict rules for which people are allowed to stay there. One woman, Donna, who had just been denied service from KARM, explained that they require each person to have their temperature taken with “thermometers that don’t actually work.” When I asked her what a homeless person who is sick and in need of services is supposed to do, she shrugged and said, “look around,” referring to the homeless people on the other side of the street, sitting out in the cold.
What these people all had in common was that they were not in this situation by choice, and they knew that things needed to change on a systematic level in order for homeless people to get the access to resources they need. This is a situation that anyone could easily fall into, but is extremely difficult to get out of.
Cullen McCurry - News Stories 