Shelter Court Is Helping with Recidivism for People Living on the Streets. Is it Helping Them Get Into Housing?
A few months ago, I was walking with one of my Contributor friends around a corner of the Downtown Presbyterian Church when we saw a woman change clothes behind a dumpster. She was fully exposed and hurried to get back into her clothes.
My friend kept apologizing to me, but all I could think of was about the fact that if she had been in housing she would not have ever reached the point of dressing in a place where she was not completely obscured from public view. And secondly, I was concerned that if the wrong people ever see her changing in public, she may get arrested.
About half of the 49 homeless arrestees held by the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office between Dec. 25, 2025, and Jan. 5, 2026, were booked for non-violent offenses that were very likely related to their unhoused status. The following offenses were listed for 50 percent of the people jailed during that time period: disorderly conduct, public intoxication, trespass, failure to appear, failure to be booked, obstructing a passageway or sidewalk, resisting stop/frisk/halt/etc. In other words, their non-violent offenses were very likely related to their unhoused status.
That’s why specialty courts that divert such offenses can help get people back on track. We’re talking about people who, if convicted, would have increased barriers to housing and employment merely by the fact that they have no other place to exist than in public spaces and were arrested for it.
That’s what criminalizing homelessness means.
Nashville has a specialty court called the Nashville Shelter Court, which tries to help alleviate this issue and stop piling up additional housing and employment barriers through the court system.
In 2025, the Shelter Court in Nashville heard 87 cases for folks, and of those 11 were arrested again. These are great outcomes so far.
Metro’s Office of Homeless Services (OHS) has yet to share how many of the 87 Shelter Court participants have obtained housing so far. The Shelter Court Steering Committee, of which I am a member, requested that number in November. The Contributor reached out to OHS to ask if they had housing placement data for shelter court participants and did not receive a response before deadline.
Shelter Court is the term Judge Lynda Jones prefers for Nashville’s homeless court, which is a diversionary court that meets every second Friday afternoon of the month at Strobel House on Jo Johnston Avenue to hear misdemeanor cases of people who struggle with homelessness.
Jones (see our interview here) launched Nashville’s Shelter Court in 2020. Initially it started at Room In The Inn, but the initiative fizzled out a little in the aftermath of the pandemic. It fully relaunched last January with a move to Strobel House, the city’s first permanent supportive housing building.
“We determined that more people could show up if court were held twice a month close to the courthouse,” Jones said.
Nashville’s Shelter Court is based on a similar program that the law firm Baker Donelson helped start in New Orleans 15 years ago. Baker Donelson had been holding free legal clinics across town in locations like Room In The Inn for many years and decided in 2019 to explore the creation of a specialty court in Nashville that was based on their experience in New Orleans. Consequently, lawyers from Baker Donelson reached out to Judge Jones and asked her for her assistance to put it together and preside over it. Jones was in support of it and brought together several stakeholders, most notably the Office of the District Attorney and the Metro Public Defender’s Office.
Court sentences pose a barrier to housing and employment for people experiencing homelessness. In fact, a 2020 report published by the Urban Institute noted that people living in unsheltered situations that were surveyed between 2015 and 2017 in California were “[nine] times more likely than people in shelters to report having spent a least one night in jail in the past six months.”
The authors concluded that “such frequent interactions with the justice system can trap people in a homelessness-jail cycle, rotating them in and out of jails and emergency public services like shelters, emergency rooms and detox facilities. This cycle does nothing to help people access the housing and services they need, such as mental health or substance use treatment.”
By dismissing misdemeanor charges and linking people with needed services, the Shelter Court’s goal is to help speed up the housing process and reduce homelessness in Nashville. The Nashville Shelter Court is a collaboration of agencies including District Attorneys, Public Defenders, the Criminal Court Clerk, Sheriff’s Department, Office of Homeless Services, Park Center, The Contributor and other nonprofits that are linking people to services and work with individuals as part of their condition for court diversion.
Referrals to shelter court are originated by the Public Defender’s Office or an appointed defense attorney, but the District Attorney’s Office must agree before a defendant is placed on the Shelter Court docket. Currently, defendants with the following offenses are eligible to come before Shelter Court:
- Criminal Trespass
- Trespass – Motor Vehicles
- Obstruction of a Passageway
- Disorderly Conduct
- Public Intoxication
- Open Container Violation
- Criminal Littering
- Unlawful Possession of Drug Paraphernalia
- Possession of a Legend Drug without Prescriptions
- Aggressive Panhandling (first and second offense)
- Soliciting rides or employment, loitering, or conducting commercial activity near a state highway median
Homeless courts started in 1989 in San Diego, according to a report by the now defunct U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. These were based on an annual three-day homeless veteran event called Stand Down. Nashville’s Operation Stand Down events were held for years and launched the start of legal clinics for people experiencing homelessness as well as the expansion of the nonprofit called Operation Stand Down Tennessee.
Since its inception in San Diego, homeless courts have evolved and are now spread across dozens of communities across the nation. The American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Homelessness & Poverty has developed educational resources and provided technical assistance to help communities establish homeless court programs.
“To counter the effect of criminal cases pushing homeless defendants further outside society, homeless courts across the country combine a progressive plea bargain system, alternative sentencing structure, assurance of “no custody,” and proof of program activities to address a full range of misdemeanor offenses,” the ABA writes on its website.
In 2006, the ABA adopted the following principles for Homeless Court programs (copied and pasted from the ABA website):
- Prosecutors, defense counsel, and the court should agree on which offenses may be resolved in the Homeless Court Program, and approve the criteria for individual participation, recognizing that defendant participation in Homeless Court Programs shall be voluntary.
- Community-based service providers should establish criteria for individual participation in the Homeless Court Program and screen individuals pursuant to these criteria.
- The Homeless Court Program shall not require defendants to waive any protections afforded by due process of law.
- All Homeless Court Program participants shall have time for meaningful review of the cases and issues prior to disposition.
- The Homeless Court Program process and any disposition therein should recognize homeless participants’ voluntary efforts to improve their lives and move from the streets toward self-sufficiency, including participation in community-based treatment or services.
- Participation in community-based treatment or services shall replace traditional sanctions such as fines, public work service and custody.
- Defendants who have completed appropriate treatment or services prior to appearing before the Homeless Court shall have minor charges dismissed, and, where appropriate, may have more serious misdemeanor charges before the court reduced or dismissed. Where charges are dismissed, public access to the record should be limited.
Homeless Courts work differently in communities based on the local needs and available resources. Shelter Court Nashville is focused on building relationships with even more nonprofits to ensure defendants are given the right changes and opportunities to turn their lives around.
The 2025 numbers speak for themselves. At 12.6 percent, the recidivism rate of Shelter Court is still far below the state and local average recidivism rate of close to 30 percent. More data, like the permanent housing placement rate, can help evaluate the success of the program and help determine where our local Shelter Court sees an opportunity to improve as it continues to build its program.
Judith Tackett is a longtime homelessness expert and advocate for housing-focused, person-centered solutions. Opinions in this column are her own.