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Homelessness Soars Thanks to Hamilton County (TN) DA
Hotel Occupants Safe from Sex Offenders, but Now Homeless (and Not Safe from Sex Offenders)
If the Budgetel Hotel in Chattanooga burned down, displacing 700 occupants, including a hundred or so babies, toddlers and school-age kids, I’d like to think area agencies and local governments would rise to the occasion and make sure everyone had housing, food and access to medicine, clothing and other essentials, at least for the short term.
[Chattanooga, TN] Since the newly-elected Hamilton County DA, Coty Wamp, “lit the match” and evicted all 700 motel dwellers with just a few hours notice on November 16, it seems just a handful of agencies and individuals “shiv-a-git” as my mother would say.
Countless (because we’ve never been good at counting people experiencing homelessness) kids and adults still lack a place to stay going on 3 weeks since being kicked out. Case in point: the school district reported 75 school-age kids stayed at the hotel. The DA office estimated three dozen children total.
The dreadful reality: hundreds of people are cold, miserable, hungry, sick, tired, hopeless, and desperate. All because Coty Wamp wanted to protect kids from the 4 convicted sex offenders living at this two-bit hotel.
