Across Tennessee, pitching a tent on public land outside of designated campsites is a felony offense. Tennessee is the first state in the country to criminalize homelessness in an effort to reduce the number of unhoused people sleeping on the streets, at bus stops, and in city parks. Despite a lack of affordable housing and shelter space, many cities have chosen to criminally punish people living on the street for doing what any human being must do to survive.
This year on Dec. 16, Nashvillians joined downtown by the riverfront to honor the more than 180 people who died in 2023 while living on the streets. The number seems to grow each year, with a common refrain that housing advocates cannot stop until a memorial of such magnitude is no longer necessary.
Heat and cold has always made being unhoused harder, but climate change and Tennessee’s legislation worsens this reality. When the temperature climbs to new extremes in the summer, the reality is that nationwide tens of thousands of homeless folks are more susceptible to cardiac arrest, heat stroke and dehydration on top of the regular woes of the frigid temperatures in the winter. Throughout the nation, extreme heat kills more people each year than wildfires, hurricanes and floods. It doesn’t garner the same recognition because those deaths are stretched across the city, happening in tents, bedrooms and workplaces one by one, and often they are not accounted for as experiencing homelessness at all, making it difficult to calculate the full scope.
Navigating the social morass of homeless mortality data collection means healing the wounds the unhoused community has carried for too long. The experience of homelessness has well-documented, long-lasting implications on well-being and health. However, due to a lack of national review or standardized data collection for homeless mortality, it is difficult to quantify the extent to which homelessness is killing people. Tracking and evaluating homeless mortality data locally and nationally is vital to developing health and housing strategies to save lives.
Howard Allen, co-founder of the Nashville Homeless Underground, explains that, “when homeless folks pass away it’s no longer a headache for the government. Why make policy changes when we have already buried my friends? The problem is then no longer a problem; no worries about housing or healthcare insurance; the dirt has covered them.”
Allen continues that, “death often serves as an equalizer. Homeless folks are disrespected and disregarded, but everyone gets a death certificate and thus an equal playing field — except those that are completely overlooked by health officials and coroners and therefore the mortality count. It is essential that we restore dignity to those without housing and ensure their health needs are met and accounted for.”
Over the last five years, Open Table Nashville has collaborated with various service providers, including Nashville Rescue Mission, the Office of Homeless Services, Metro Social Services Indigent Burial Program, the Medical Examiner’s Office, Room In The Inn and People Loving Nashville, to document the deaths of homeless individuals in Nashville. This collaborative effort aims to create a comprehensive list and rectify any gaps in the system. The Contributor publishes this full list every year.
India Pungarcher, an advocate and street outreach worker at Open Table Nashville, spearheads assembling the list each year, and for 2023’s report she recorded medical examiner’s data. By joining forces with outreach workers in the data collection process, word-of-mouth can intercept people who an automated system might neglect.
No one should die for lack of housing, but as they are, it is our collective responsibility to end this epidemic. In the midst of rising temperatures and the lack of affordable housing, homeless mortality is constellated in a sea of social, economic and political relations — oftentimes invisible from the words etched in newspapers and spoken on news outlets.
On July 15, 2023, at the Downtown Public Library, Renters Union Nashville and Open Table Nashville hosted the Housing for all Mayoral Forum, addressing how candidates plan to face Music City’s fractures, tangled and tethered by injustices deeply entrenched in Nashville’s history, and shift towards radical progress. The forum explored candidates’ positions on tenant protections, evictions, and criminalizations.
Audience members voiced that healing doesn’t happen through transactions alone like birth certificates, bus passes and blankets: healing happens through nurturing trust and actively investing in the health and well-being of homeless communities. With the recent election of Mayor Freddie O’ Connell, who attends the memorial each year, I hope he will now bring transparency, equity, and intentional collaboration to data collection processes to strengthen healthcare access for our unhoused neighbors.
Mortality is never without the weight of its politics. By improving homeless mortality data collection processes, Nashville can take a significant step towards addressing the systemic issues that contribute to homelessness and ensuring the well-being and dignity of all its residents.
Let’s refuse to allow injustice to have the final say and improve homeless mortality data collection processes.