Homelessness has become a highly politicized issue. With the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June and the consequent executive order California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued in late July, closing encampments continues to be the focus nationwide.
In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, SCOTUS determine that it was “not cruel and unusual to ticket, fine, or otherwise punish unsheltered people for sleeping outside, even if there are no shelter beds available,” as reported by Barbara DiPietro (see The Contributor, Volume 18, Number 15, July 17-23, 2024). But they essentially also stated that local jurisdictions have the flexibility of how to address homelessness. In other words, while it seemingly became easier to criminalize homelessness, it is still up to local authorities whether they choose to do so.
Gov. Newsom, who used to be the mayor of San Francisco and was long seen as a staunch supporter of homelessness solutions, has issued an executive order that directs his state agencies to start clearing encampments on California state property.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness quickly responded, saying that, “this Executive Order uplifts the deeply flawed approach used by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). This model requires only 48 hours of notice to providers and encampment residents, and sometimes less. It also allows for encampment evictions to occur regardless of whether there is an adequate supply of available and accessible shelter and housing resources.”
While this executive order has clearly no direct impact on Nashville, it serves as a warning and a reminder to our local politicians that Tennessee has already implemented a law that makes camping on public property a felony. Furthermore, language in the executive order and also the Supreme Court decision make it look like we’re doing people a favor if we shut down their encampment, even if there is no shelter or housing available for them.
Nashville is not immune to this trend of touting success in utilizing encampment closures — but while the city has claimed a 90 percent success rate, the data shows fewer than half of the people the city moved out of encampments over the past 18 months or so are in permanent housing.
In many neighborhoods, including in Nashville, local politicians receive the most complaints from neighbors and businesses impacted by outdoor homelessness and call for quick fixes. And government agencies find themselves under pressure and have a hard time explaining how complex systems work while demonstrating progress, which seems too slow.
The resulting frustration feeds a never-ending cycle that focuses on reducing visible homelessness as fast as possible. The way to do it fast, it seems, is by reducing encampments.
However, I argue that rather than caving in to the political pressure, public officials, nonprofits, churches and neighborhoods need to find the courage to stand behind the fact that we simply need more accessible low-income housing before we can even begin to truly tackle homelessness in a sustainable manner. It will take time, and there are no shortcuts to making permanent housing available to all people. Research supports this argument.
Simply put, closing encampments without building a pipeline with direct access to a variety of permanent housing options coupled with individualized support services, is not effective — no matter how much local, state, and federal departments want to convince politicians that this is a viable solution.
District 16 Councilmember Ginny Welsch shared with me a recent statement made by the executive director of the Office of Homeless Services. That statement read, “In the last 12 months, we closed 4 camps, successfully housing people in permanent housing, temp housing, recovery options or family reunification. This was achieved with a successful 90 percent retention rate, demonstrating the effectiveness of our encampment strategy.”
The 90 percent retention rate would mean that the strategy was successful, but we need to go a level deeper to examine the Office of Homelessness’ report to Metro Council about the encampment closures on which this statement was based. In that report, only 41 percent of people who lived in these encampments were in permanent places 18 months after the closures started. If we are a Housing First city, then permanent placements are what we need to consider when we look at success or retention rates. Temporary placements do not count as part of the solution.
While a Housing First-oriented system should offer temporary housing options to people on their path to permanent housing with the right support services, it should remain an option for people, not a mandate that they go into shelter first before they are offered permanent housing. The reason is that transitioning between different programs to permanency is always disruptive to people. That’s why Housing First principles call for the most direct access to permanent housing as possible. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, there are different paths to housing and people should have a choice. I have met plenty of folks who felt they wanted to be in a transitional housing program first to receive more intensive services — especially those who wanted to address their addictions before signing their own lease to an apartment.
The data OHS presented to the Metro Council in its monthly report for the month of June is below; this data was chosen because it was closest to the date OHS stated their 90 percent retention rate.
In the top chart you see the four encampments that were closed in this order starting in December 2022: Brookmeade in West Nashville; Wentworth Caldwell Park on Edmondson Pike near the intersection of Nolensville Pike and Harding Place; the former encampment behind the TA Truck stop on First Street near Downtown; and the Hermitage encampment behind the Exxon station off Old Hickory Boulevard.
There were a total of 188 people who were registered as living in those encampments and eligible for housing placements through the community’s Coordinated Entry process. However, when you go to the lower chart, which lists the destination of where people were in June of 2024, the total only adds up to 176 people. Thus, 12 people are missing, which may mean they either chose to move on their own or theoretically, they could have also moved into permanent housing. That’s not totally clear within the data.
When we take the 176 people that ended up in temporary places and deduct the 17 people who are listed as “returned to homelessness,” we will get to the 90 percent retention rate.
Housing First means permanent housing is the definition for success. This does not include temporary housing such as shelters, gap housing or any places where people cannot stay independently and indefinitely if they choose to do so — basically permanency most often means that people hold their own lease. The family reunification they listed in the report says (temporary), thus, those would not count as permanent housing.
Based on the OHS’ report: 71 out of 188 were permanently housed, which is 38 percent.
If we add people who are deceased to the permanent solution: 77 out of 188, which is 41 percent.
A recent report by Rand Corp. found that, “homeless encampment cleanups including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program that moves people into motels and hotels have no long-term effect on the number of people living on the streets,” as written in an article by Doug Smith for the Los Angeles Times. While this longitudinal study is limited and not necessarily applicable to other cities, it still captured my attention because based on statements made by a former consultant who helped develop the local encampment closure strategy, Nashville was watching the Inside Safe program and its outcomes.
While I may not agree with the statement that the city accomplished a 90-percent success rate, there is positive news in that I expect people to be able to finally move out of temporary housing to permanent supportive housing (PSH) with the right support. More than 350 new PSH units are coming on board this year, including Metro’s 90-unit Strobel House. If we continue on this trajectory, we are heading in the right direction.
As for the current Metro encampment closure plan, I’m not totally on board with where we are right now. For years, our encampment and outdoor plans centered on access to permanent housing, and I encourage Metro to build on that.
There is a difference between an encampment closure plan (which actually is 100 percent successful right now considering that all four camps are gone) and an outdoor housing plan that actually ends people’s homelessness status. Once the overall outdoor population shrinks, encampment numbers naturally will go down. That’s when Metro needs to move in with transparent and collaborative efforts to close and clean up encampments.
With the focus shifting to the development of Wharf Park near Downtown Nashville — a property that houses the largest encampment in Nashville, OHS will be pressured to lead a transparent and collaborative approach.
Councilmember Welsch said she would continue to push for more transparency.
“When we are only receiving messaging that shows us how great everything is going here in Nashville, we are unable to truly evaluate the need and identify opportunities for improvement,” Welsch said. “I sometimes question whether we are implementing solutions that work for [the] government rather than the people who are unhoused and need our attention and help.”