Bum Deal
That was the name of the story that I saw pushed on local TeeVee all during the holiday. They kept saying that other cities were shipping their homeless people to Knoxville, where we are apparently quite generous to the homeless. Bear in mind, the commercials always said that other cities were shipping their homeless here and implied it was some sort of conspiracy to do so. So, I waited anxiously for the story and here it is. The headline:
Communities in surrounding states are busing their homeless to Knoxville
Consistent with the commercials. On to the story:
6 News has discovered that as word gets out about the city’s many homeless shelters, many facilities in surrounding states are providing bus tickets to homeless to come to Knoxville.
OMG, they’re shipping their homeless here. But there’s more:
A crisis intervention center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina called Helping Hand provides bus tickets, but does not ask questions about where the person wants to go.
The center helps pay the fare and just send the riders on their way.
“We’re not moms. We’re not the truth police,” said Adrian Weatherwax, director of Helping Hand. “We go by what they tell us. If they come in here and tell us I have a job in Knoxville, Tennessee, these are adults, these are not children. I’m not going to check and make sure they really do have a job there.”
So, you see, there is no conspiracy to ship the homeless to Knoxville, despite the days long build up implying such. Apparently, folks give out bus tickets to wherever a person says they want to go, provided they have a good reason to go there. Quite misleading, if you ask me.
November 30th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
Of course, the net effect of word getting out that Knoxville is unusually generous to the homeless plus other communities handing out free bus tickets is bound to be that the homeless will use those tickets to come to Knoxville. Maybe they’ll have to lie and say they have a job in Knoxville to get the tickets. OH MY GOD, YOU MEAN BUMS MIGHT LIE?