Over the past few weeks, there have been some relevant homelessness updates in Nashville:
- Metro Council passed the Metro Budget for Fiscal Year 2027, significantly increasing the budget of the Office of Homelessness Services (OHS);
- OHS released the 2026 State of Homelessness Community Report;
- The Metro Human Relations Committee completed an initial investigation about a Title VI complaint against the OHS that found probable cause for discrimination; and
- OHS finally released the long-awaited Consumer Advisory Board Request for Proposal (RFP) to pay people with lived experience for their contributions.
- I will take these issues one-by-one.
OHS Sees Increase in Metro FY27 Budget
The Office of Homeless Services’ (OHS’) current FY27 budget, which runs from July 1, 2026 — June 30, 2027, is about $18.5 million.
Of that total, $17,233,600 is from the General Services District (GSD) budget, which supports government operations and is generated mostly from property and sales taxes. The remaining $1,277,600 was budgeted under the Special Purpose Fund (SPF), which stems from grants or donations for a specific purpose.
The Mayor’s recommended budget originally included $15,683,600 in GSD funding, which Metro Council ended up increasing by $1.55 million. Added expenses include a $1.25 million grant to the Hospitality Hub to continue running a temporary housing program out of a motel in South Nashville and $300,000 to Launch Pad, a youth/young adult service provider. (You can read up on OHS’ original budget request in our June 3, 2026 issue.)
The final budget allocation to OHS is 48 percent, or $5.6 million, more than the FY26 budget. I appreciate the increase in the budget, though I remain critical of Metro’s leadership on homelessness and feel strongly that changes in the Mayor’s Office and at OHS are needed to use those dollars to benefit people experiencing homelessness more effectively to benefit more people in need.
OHS’ State of Homelessness Report Raises Questions
In June, shortly after Metro Council increased its budget from $11.6 million last year to $17.2 million in the current fiscal year, OHS held the 2026 State of Homelessness Symposium. At that event, OHS released a community report chock full of data points.
In some of my recent columns, I strongly criticized OHS’ use and presentation of data, stating that data reports published by the Office of Homeless Services are contradictory, confusing or plain false in some cases.
Metro’s State of Homelessness Report reinforced my opinion. The report raises more questions than it answers and is a hugely missed opportunity to start open and transparent conversations. The report leaves me with quite a few questions.
Why does OHS keep presenting output numbers as impact data?
For example, on Page 5, OHS presents a 2025 HMIS Data Report and includes “System Impact Indicators” at the bottom, which in fact present population snapshots and do not show any structural changes or shifts over time.
Then, on Page 11, OHS outlined the “ARPA Impact,” which specifically focuses on the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, which, according to the presented data, totaled about $52.5 million. After adding up each of the allocations, I found that their total amount of $52,467,033 listed on Page 12 was off by $2.62. You may say that that’s just a couple of dollars, but these simple math mistakes make me wonder about their editing process. In actuality, their total may have been off by another $2.8 million because OHS omitted the fact that the developer of Shelby House 1, LP, returned their entire allocation after working with OHS to house 14 individuals in some of those units.
There is also no mention in the report of what happened to those $2.8 million and why they were still included in the $52.5 million “impact” report. I have asked Metro what happened to the money, and OHS responded that “the $2.8 million returned by Shelby House was reallocated through Metro’s approved process to three priorities: Eviction Right to Counsel as a homelessness-prevention and diversion strategy, permanent funding for critical positions previously supported by ARPA within the Office of Homeless Services, and permanent funding for critical ARPA-supported positions within the Office of Family Safety.” I have voiced my concerns to OHS three times now, first in early April, following up in May and most recently in preparation for this column. I specifically asked why corrections were not made. OHS said that “Shelby House received an allocation from APRA funding but should not have been included on this page.”
They did not respond to my question about why output numbers are presented as impact throughout this report.
When a report lists how many services were provided (outputs), we won’t know whether that truly reduced homelessness over time (impact). This information does not tell us anything about the kind of services that were provided, how effective they were, where we see gaps in our local homelessness response, etc.
Here are some of the many questions I have:
- Of the 1,599 individuals OHS says moved into permanent housing under the ARPA grants, how many are still housed?
- Of the 888 individuals connected to interim housing, how many moved on to permanent housing, and how many are they still there?
- And why would OHS say that 735 housing units were developed, including 168 units for people experiencing homelessness? Why not just list the 168 units as the main output that this money generated? And were the 14 units from Shelby House 1, LP deducted from the 168 number?
OHS had an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and review these output numbers but chose to repeat this misleading information to Metro Council in their budget presentation in May and also include it in the 2026 State of Homelessness Report.
OHS states in the report that, “In three years, Nashville has successfully relocated over 500 people from eight outdoor encampments into permanent housing, interim housing or family reunification.”
This directly contradicts two previously published reports and statements from OHS. Based on February data reported to Metro Council, 341 people resided in seven encampments that were closed. And in a December sworn affidavit to a federal judge, OHS Director April Calvin wrote, “… seven encampments across Davidson County have closed over the course of the last four years. Those encampments had a total population of approximately five hundred residents,…”
I asked OHS whether there was an encampment closure of 100-150 people since February 2026 that I may have missed. OHS answered that “The eight encampments referenced in the report include the Jefferson Street encampment. The cumulative total covers a three-year period and does not indicate that an encampment of 100 to 150 people was closed between February and June 2026.”
The fact is that the Jefferson Street encampment could have been included in those previous reports since it was closed in early 2022 and certainly had far fewer than 100 people living there at the time of closure.
Unfortunately, these are not even close to all of the examples of contradictory, misleading and incorrect information I found in Metro’s 2026 State of Homelessness Community Report.
Everyone makes mistakes. But to me, the consistency and continuity of the mistakes, even after being pointed out, strongly indicates that Metro homelessness leaders are more about elevating their own image than truly analyzing available data in an honest and transparent way that would allow us, as a community, to examine where we need to invest the millions of dollars that Metro continues to have at its disposal.
Metro Human Relations Commission Report Finds Probable Cause that OHS may have Discriminated Against Minorities
At the end of June, the Metro Human Relations Commission (MHRC) released an investigative report that examined a Title VI complaint against the Office of Homeless Services (OHS). Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs.
The MHRC report was extremely detailed and outlined the full accusation and essentially concluded that there is probable cause that OHS discriminated against people who belong to a minority population.
In his letter to OHS, his board, and others, MHRC Executive Director Davie Tucker wrote, “Based upon the Staff Investigative Report and my independent review, I hereby determine that there is probable cause to believe that the administration of federally funded housing assistance and housing stabilization programs by the Office of Homeless Services resulted in inconsistent application of policies and practices that had a disproportionate adverse effect on Black women and women of color, in a manner that warrants further proceedings under Rule 2.7 of the MHRC Rules and Procedures. Accordingly, this complaint is upheld, and will advance to a formal conciliation process.”
Tucker’s letter also outlines a timeline that shows how unresponsive OHS was to requests from MHRC during this initial investigation.
The next step is conciliation, meaning that there will be a remediation attempt to eliminate the alleged discriminatory practice. Tucker is also clear in his letter that “probable cause is not a finding of guilt, it is a higher standard than reasonable suspicion and demands a higher degree of certainty and fair probability that evidence of discrimination will be found. Nothing in this Determination constitutes a final finding of discrimination or liability.”
Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) Payments RFP Now Open After Delay
When people in the human services field talk about paying people with lived experience for their participation, it is about acknowledging the value and expertise of these individuals. Furthermore, people with lived experience and expertise often do not get paid for their time when we invite them to the table to solicit their input — while others are paid through their day jobs.
I asked OHS to help us understand why they stopped paying the Continuum of Care (Coc) Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) with the federal planning dollars, a direct grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), that OHS receives on behalf of the community and that could be used for paying CAB members.
Here is the response, “When the Office of Homeless Services became the Collaborative Applicant for the Nashville Continuum of Care, Metro Charter provisions governing Metro Boards and Commissions applied to the Homelessness Planning Council and its committees. As a result, OHS could no longer directly compensate individuals serving on those committees. To establish a compensation process consistent with Metro requirements, OHS issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to identify an independent organization to administer compensation for members of the Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) and Youth Action Board (YAB).”
After months of delays, that RFP is finally posted at https://www.nashville.gov/departments/office-homeless-services/continuum-care/current-rfp and open until July 31.
There is a lot of homelessness-specific terminology in the OHS statement that I won’t break down this time. But as a former long-term Metro employee, I can confirm that Metro makes it very difficult to pay people with lived experience who sit on a board or on a committee. In general, Metro, by law, cannot pay board/commission members.
The problem, however, is that in this instance:
- CAB members who asked for remediation of this situation for over a year did not request any payments for people sitting on the Homelessness Planning Council (HPC), which is the decision-making body of the Continuum of Care (CoC). The CoC is composed of community stakeholders working together to build a homeless crisis response system.
- The HPC functions as the CoC Board and therefore, is a community board that happens to sit within Metro after it was combined with the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission in 2018. But, the HPC is not your typical Metro board because the HPC has absolutely no power over Metro resources (neither the OHS budget, nor the final hiring or firing decision of HPC staff). Their primary purpose is “to secure and manage federal funding, oversee the local homeless response system, and ensure compliance with HUD regulations.
- The only dollars over which the HPC has direct oversight are the Planning dollars managed by OHS as the Collaborative Applicant (a term the essential refers to the selected Lead Agency of the CoC).
- CoC committees, including the CAB and YAB, are not decision-making bodies as they only make recommendations to the HPC (see point 1).
My main question therefore is: how is it that Metro, including OHS, can hire multiple consultants through single-source contracts, but they cannot figure out what needs to be done to hire CAB and YAB members as independent contractors with the task to advise the HPC and the CoC?
Why All of This Matters
Taking a critical view of Metro’s approach to homelessness is necessary because the city is overseeing the largest funding pot ($18.5 million) to help some of our most vulnerable neighbors. OHS touts to be data-driven. But their data tells me they are output-driven and focus more on propaganda than using data for actual needs analysis.
I also believe that OHS has the potential because OHS has the resources at their disposal. But OHS does not have the trust of the community or, seemingly, the will to build that trust. We, as a city, can and should do better than what we have seen over the past few years.
Source documents, including the 2026 State of Homelessness Community Report and the two MHRC reports, will be linked to in our online version of this article.
Judith Tackett is a longtime homelessness expert and advocate for housing-focused, person-centered solutions. Opinions in this column are her own.