Nashville, Tenn. – One man tried in vain to sleep on a park bench. Two others swallowed their pride as they went into restaurants, broke but hungry. With no bathroom available, another one used the woods.
All four men agreed to be homeless for a night before returning Wednesday to their real lives – as candidates for Nashville mayor.
From the Denver Post
The candidates promised advocates for the homeless that they would spend one night on the streets before the Aug. 2 election.
The Nashville Homeless Power Project hopes the experience makes them more sensitive to the hundreds of people in the city with no place to live.
“I was struck by the number of people I saw sleeping in downtown Nashville,” said candidate Karl Dean, the city’s former law director. “There’s no simple answer, but we’ve got to do something.”
The National Coalition for the Homeless has been organizing similar experiences for college students and others for the past 25 years. But the group’s executive director, Michael Stoops, said it was the first time political candidates took part.
The participants, chaperoned by current and former homeless people, were supposed to find a legal place to stay the night, spend at least 20 minutes sleeping on a park bench and ask strangers for spare change.
Much of that was more than the candidates could handle. Dean and David Briley, a City Council member, didn’t panhandle, and all four men wandered the streets until morning rather than attempt to find a shelter.
“I never really got a chance to rest,” said Buck Dozier, another council member.
Homeless people got a chance to ask the candidates questions about the experience Wednesday. The first question caught them a bit off guard: Where did you use the bathroom? Briley said he never got the urge. Dean and Dozier said they used the same restaurants where they asked for water and food.
Howard Gentry, the city’s vice mayor, had a more typical experience: “I went one time in the grass and one time in the woods.”
Tags: Advocacy, Anti-poverty strategies, Homelessness, Poverty Analysis
