LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Advocates and non-profits that support the unhoused sponsored a week-long survey to collect information on how Kentucky residents view the homeless population and its criminalization. Wednesday, people who've experienced homelessness shared the survey’s results with legislators.
One resident Aren Gayhart says, "We wanted to get our voices heard, we wanted to get our voices across."
Legislators are working on House Bill 5 which is a piece of legislation that addresses public safety issues. It would also outlaw camping in public areas, like sidewalks or under bridges. Director and co-founder of the Catholic Action Center, Ginny Ramsey, says it could criminalize homelessness.
Ramsey says, "We hear from other counties all the time. They don't have shelters they don't have anything they can do with the folks. If they are sleeping in their car or if they're camping it’s the safest they can be in that county so the impact of criminalizing it, it's a state of being rather than committing a crime."
This survey had results from nearly 2,000 participants, 81-percent of which said they did not that camping in isolated areas of the community was a threat to public safety.
Ramsey says, "I was expecting it to be not quite as good as it is as far as the number of people saying, 'no, we don't want to do this to folks experiencing homelessness."
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92% of surveyors responded that families sleeping in their cars because of a lack of shelter beds is not a threat to public safety. 89% say requiring public safety officers to cite and arrest the unsheltered will not make Kentucky safer. And 87% say existing laws that could lead to citations and arrest would burden public safety officers and not make the state safer.
Ramsey says, "What we'd love to happen is that there be the light on the situation of homelessness and that there be discussion."
Residents of the CAC that spoke yesterday says he wanted to make sure that the legislators understood what this bill could mean for everyone in the community.
CAC resident Caleb Blevins, says, "People are so beat down, they have no security within themselves they hate themselves and it’s because they're told that they're hated every day."
Gayhart says, "You might have you're private reasons on why you are voting against house bill 5 but there's a whole bunch of them that they just look at us and just shrug and keep on walking you know instead of taking the time to meet us one-on-one as human beings."
