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Learn More About How Metro Spends $50 million to Reduce Homelessness

Judith Tackett By |
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The 2023 national report on the state of homelessness showed an increase of 12 percent over the previous year, with 40 percent living in unsheltered situations. In Nashville, 2,129 people were counted as experiencing homelessness on one night in January of 2023, an increase of 11 percent. Of those, 28 percent were unsheltered.

The data source for the national report is the Point In Time Count, which is a one-time snapshot applied with different methodologies across the nation and mainly counts people in shelters, some temporary housing, and outdoors.

When I am reading headlines across the nation, there are two things that stand out. First, we still see positive news. And second, NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) is winning and the loudest voices direct how homelessness should be handled, distracting us from solid implementation of proven solutions.

Let’s start with a couple of positive headlines out of Denver and Minneapolis-Hennepin County. Denver has reached its goal of moving 1,000 people indoors in 2023 and closing encampments under its House1000 project. Minneapolis reduced chronic homelessness by 35 percent. Naturally our inclination is to repeat what is happening in these cities.

But before we do so, I caution us to first take a closer look at how Nashville has invested its $50 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, and what the outcomes after the first year are.

The importance of reviewing data is critical and can lead to adjustments so that communities are able to assist more people with needed services. For example, when we take a closer look at Denver, a more complete picture shows that their overall homelessness population increased by 46 percent last year. Minneapolis saw an increase of 24 percent in overall homelessness and an 80 percent increase in family homelessness.

Let’s take a closer look at Nashville’s investment of $50 million in ARPA funding.

In October 2022, Metro Council approved $50 million in one-time federal ARPA funds to address homelessness — $25 million was allocated to gap financing for permanent supportive housing, and another $25 million was dedicated to programs that help identify more units, speed up the housing placement process and provide the needed wraparound support to help people transition to and maintain housing successfully.

The following chart reflects the dedication of the $25 million, a timeline that Metro presented to Metro Council at the time of approval of the allocation, and an actual timeline of implementation.

When asking for approval of the $50 million, the prior administration outlined the following timeline to Metro Council. Temporary housing allocations would be done immediately through sole sourcing. Support service contracts would be competitive and the contracts in place by the end of January 2023, in time to serve the people from the first encampment closures as they move from temporary locations to permanent housing. By the way, permanent housing generally indicates that a person entered a formal relationship with their landlord (usually through a lease agreement).

However, the support service contracts were delayed and most of them approved by mid-June. Referrals would occur through the coordinated entry process, which is managed by the Office of Homeless Services. The data above shows how many referrals have been made so far.

After realizing the delay in the contracting timeline, Metro announced the competition for the $4 million in competitive grants would be released in spring. They were sent out in late summer with a deadline for mid-October and an expectation to have service delivery start by Dec. 1, 2023. As of this writing, contracts are currently in the approval stage.

The reason these timelines matter is because plan implementation affects how we serve people. Specifically, in order to implement Housing First, the elements of permanent housing and support services have to be in place prior to encampment closures. Offering only access to temporary housing beds where people then get stuck for months slows down the process.

I wholeheartedly supported the temporary housing programs in their initial set up. However, they only perform well when a path to permanent housing exists. And the data released by the Office of Homeless Services (which oversees the implementation, monitoring, and public information of the plan) does not support Metro’s message that our community’s current Housing Surge works. The will is there. The plan is there. The experience of how to actually do it will come with time.

Metro’s data dashboards indicate that all people who moved to permanent housing went through gap housing. I cannot find information of direct permanent housing placements resulting from the $50-million in ARPA investment. This does not mean that did not occur. But the data does not show me clearly how. Also, there are other funding sources under which people continue to be housed in our community. Some of them I assume have received assistance through the support services funded by the ARPA dollars.

Metro’s most recent dashboard data is from Dec. 1 (as of this writing) and show the following highlights:

  • 271 total people have been served in temporary housing (the overall three-year goal is 900 people).
  • The Salvation Army served 101 people (goal: 400).
  • Community Care Fellowship served 170 people (goal: 500 people).
  • A total of 177 people exited the programs to different destinations.
  • 38 people exited from The Salvation Army program, of those, 76 percent or 29 people exited to permanent housing.
  • 139 people exited from Community Care Fellowship’s program, 45 percent or 63 people exited to permanent housing.

When I examined the destination of the people who were not permanently housed, the data was not giving clear, comparable information for both temporary housing programs. In fact, some of the data raised questions. Specifically, The Salvation Army did not list anyone as returning to the streets, which seems unrealistic to me. Thus, I encourage the Office of Homeless Services to revisit how the exit data is presented and dig a little deeper into the data quality of the report.
Another important data point to watch is the demographics, especially race breakdown. We know that nationwide minorities are overrepresented among people experiencing homelessness, which is also reflected in Nashville. Based on the 2023 PIT Count, 45 percent of people experiencing homelessness in Nashville identified as African American or Black. This compares to about 27 percent of the general Nashville population.

Therefore, we need to pay attention to how we prioritize housing. Based on the dashboard data, Metro served 9 percent African Americans through The Salvation Army program and 26 percent of African Americans through the program run by Community Care Fellowship.

Nashville is clearly underserving people of color, which is likely a consequence a consequence of Metro’s focus on encampment closures rather than implementing a housing plan that solves homelessness for people as quickly as possible.

So, let’s talk about an alternative approach that could have allowed for a smoother implementation with likely different results.

First, rather than starting with the shutdown of encampments, Metro leaders should have reviewed Metro-internal encampment protocols which have been in place for years and were put together based on recommendations from a task force. This would have allowed them to reduce numbers of people living outdoors and in encampments on an ongoing basis while the housing and support services pieces are put in place.

Second, the city did the right thing by investing quickly in temporary housing locations but should have doubled down with their Low Barrier Housing Collective (LBHC), investing in staff and their training immediately (currently the most senior staff in that program has been there for less than a year). This would have helped implement stronger community coordination to identify housing units while Metro was working on the gap financing program and the development of new permanent supportive housing, which takes time.

But there is good news. I estimate that in 2024, at least 300+ new PSH units should become available between Metro and private developers, which will ease the bottleneck in the temporary housing Metro has created through its encampment plan implementation.

All this would have helped prepare people living in targeted encampments and the providers serving them to outline a more direct path to permanent housing. It also would have helped educate the Metro Council, especially with about half of them being new, on what Housing First truly means. Nashville councilmembers clearly care and want results that are best for all of their constituents (housed and unhoused).

Instead, by implementing a speedy encampment closure plan, the city has missed opportunities to serve more people with housing. How many more, we’ll likely never know. What we know, however, is that based on Metro’s data reports, at least 44 of the 177 total people who exited the temporary housing programs returned back to the streets. In comparison, the data reports show that the ARPA investments during year one have assisted 92 people with permanent housing. When Metro folks speak of a housing surge, I cringe.

Messaging matters as it creates trust. Even in the two other cities I mentioned at the beginning, while the headlines are great, we also need to consider the investments they made to achieve those results. Denver, which by the way has not permanently housed all of the 1,000 people yet, invested $46.8 million into the Housing1000 program. According to the Denver Post, their city expects to spend another $40 million on it this year. In comparison, as of Nov. 30, 2023, Metro has spent $8.23 million of the $50 million ARPA allocation.

In the end, Nashville politicians need to decide whether they want to focus on quick fixes to make homelessness less visible or whether they support the Office of Homeless Services and start talking about long-term investments to implement Housing First according to best practices.

Links to the Metro data reports used for this article:

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