LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — A Jessamine County advocate is spending five days living in a shack to raise awareness about housing insecurity and homelessness in Kentucky.
Johnny Templin with the Jessamine County Homeless Coalition has been conducting this demonstration since 2020. But this year presents unique challenges as all five days are expected to reach freezing temperatures.
"Chronically homeless people stay out of the limelight," Templin said. "They're not always walking down Main Street, they try to be invisible because of the stigma that goes with that situation."
The shack Templin will call home for the week is built of 80- to 90-year-old wood and has no insulation. The pieces don't fit together as modern materials would. His only sources of warmth are hand warmers and a space heater.
Templin's demonstration aims to flip the script on how communities view homelessness by making the issue visible and sparking conversations.
"Since we started this in our community, you would hear from local officials, local business people, you would hear we didn't have a homeless problem," Templin said.
Over the years, Templin has expanded his advocacy beyond homelessness to include affordable housing and unsafe living conditions throughout the community.
"It's a whole spectrum. We as an organization and as a community should strive to catch, remove the stigma so that we can catch people before they need the services of a shelter, because there's a lot of easy things that we can do to fix some situations," Templin said.
Thanks to his persistence, Templin says the dialogue in Jessamine County has changed significantly. The police department now employs a social worker and case manager to help address homelessness and domestic violence situations. Organizations throughout the community, from the health department to the jail, now have case managers and social workers involved in addressing these issues.
"We're all working together to try to find ways to help alleviate this problem. And yeah, so it's changed, in my opinion, it's changed the dialog," Templin said.
For Templin, the annual demonstration remains his most effective advocacy tool.
"It's probably the best tool in my tool belt about getting people to talk about it," Templin said.
