Metro has officially opened the door of its first 90-unit Permanent Supportive Housing building in Downtown Nashville. This is a huge milestone that has been years in the making. (Read more about the opening here.)
Permanent supportive housing offers a solution to homelessness, especially for people who experience chronic homelessness*. It usually combines a housing subsidy with voluntary support services to help people maintain their own lease long-term.
The idea of developing a Metro-owned subsidized housing facility started during the Megan Barry Administration. For full disclosure, I was working at Metro at that time, and we had been floating the idea of a Housing First oriented building for a couple of years where people experiencing chronic homelessness could receive intensive support services that were offered on site.
Once the idea took shape, the initial conversations were led by the Mayor’s Office with Bloomberg Associates as advisors. Community providers were brought in early in the brainstorming phase, and feedback was sought from people with lived experience as well. I have always been and still am impressed with the Bloomberg Associates team, which works with cities around the globe to bring innovative approaches to complex, social issues such as homelessness.
The first site that we explored was the historic Morris Memorial Building, at 330 Dr. Martin L. King Jr. Blvd. If you recall, this building was in the news last year with locals trying to save it and urging Metro to purchase it.
The Morris Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was owned for more than a century by the National Baptist Convention. The building was completed in 1926 and was designed by McKissack & McKissack, which was founded by brothers Moses III and Calvin in 1905. As a side note, the history of this firm is fascinating as the building and design tradition of the McKissack family dates back to Moses McKissack I, who was born in West Africa and sold into slavery to William McKissack of North Carolina, where he got his last name.
Back to the Morris Building. After an unsuccessful attempt for Metro to purchase it last year — with a symbolic resolution introduced by Councilwoman Suara Zulfat for Metro to explore all options, the building sold for $6 million in December 2023 (not to Metro) and was purchased shortly after for $10 million by Imagine Hospitality.
Discussions for Metro to purchase and use the Morris Building to address chronic homelessness included a service center on the bottom with permanent housing on top. At one point, we even brainstormed what flexible space could look like to accommodate Metro’s cold weather sheltering because we had struggled for years to have a designated site to open emergency warming shelters during cold spells.
However, it was determined that the rehab would be cost-prohibitive. Mayor David Briley, who had inherited the conversation, understood the urgent need to address chronic and outdoor homelessness, and a proposal emerged for a triangular parking lot adjacent to the Morris Building.
Discussion and planning for the new proposal started in 2018. The key to this development was based on a land swap with real estate entrepreneur Tony Giarratana, who was interested in acquiring Church Street Park, the little park across from the Downtown Library. The deal would have helped finance a large portion of operating costs of a new Service Center and PSH Building at 301 James Robertson Parkway.
This plan was similar to the vision for the Morris Building and started with a focus on creating access to public restrooms, showers, lockers, and possibly mailboxes as well as some meeting spaces and Metro offices on the ground floor. The goal was to build low-income, subsidized housing with support services (about 100 permanent supportive housing units) for people on the upper floors, including communal areas for people to meet and mingle (such as a common kitchen — even though each apartment would have its own cooking area). Eventually, the service center on the ground floor was scaled back compared to the initial vision due to space issues.
Again, there were meetings with provider agencies and people with lived experience and a lot of hope and support. In the end, however, the land swap deal with Church Street Park killed the proposal. Losing a downtown park that would also displace a spot where people experiencing homelessness were gathering resulted in a lot of outcry. The feeling was that the deal would in the end benefit a wealthy developer more than the city. Voices that spoke up against it argued that the city needs to find other funding mechanisms to build the PSH building on James Robertson Parkway. I attended a meeting before the Metro Parks Board that went sideways. After that meeting I was not surprised that the deal did not move forward. I also felt, the people speaking against the land swap did not fully realize that this would kill the PSH building proposal at that site. But, the administration recognized the need to move forward with the concept and was working to identify a new site and potential funding sources to make it happen.
And then we had another Administration change with Mayor John Cooper winning the 2019 election. At that point, the third site for Metro’s PSH building was announced at 505 2nd Avenue North, which was at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Gay Street, across from the Downtown jail. The plans for that site initially also included a service center on the ground floor, but eventually focused on permanent supportive housing only. That was the preferred approach because mixing a service center with permanent supportive housing would require enough space to have clear separation of the programming. That site was so tight (no onsite parking would have been available) that it would have been difficult to accommodate everything that was discussed in the previous years.
The planning process moved forward and eventually the construction contract was awarded to Bell & Associates with a projected completion date in 2022. I recall we had discussions about how many units are possible on that site and the focus was on about 100 units. Sometime during the Cooper Administration — I left Metro during that time, the building site changed to the current location at 110 Jo Johnston Ave. The building was completed a few months ago, and Metro had hoped to open it this spring. However, some hiccups with finding a contractor to provide support services ensued late last year.
In May, Metro Council approved a contract with Depaul USA to provide “property management services for the starting up of the 90-bed permanent supportive housing residence known as the Strobel Center. Depaul USA will also provide support services including case management services, mental health services, alcohol and substance abuse services, independent living skills, vocational services, health and medical services, peer support services, and social activities to tenants of the Strobel Center. The term of the grant agreement begins on May 28, 2024, and extends for four months, or when funds are depleted, whichever occurs first.” While this initial contract was only for four months, Metro has set aside American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to extend it.
Strobel House is named after Father Charles Strobel, the founder of Room In The Inn, a champion for people who found themselves living on the streets. Many of us viewed Father Strobel, who passed away on Aug. 6, 2023, as the conscience of our city when it comes to serving people on the margins of society. He also served on the city’s Homelessness Commission (and the Homelessness Planning Council that replaced it) since inception of that body in 2005 to offer guidance to solutions to homelessness.
Per Metro’s press release, half of the units will be reserved for people experiencing chronic homelessness and the other half will house veterans, young adults, and LGBTQ+ individuals. After doing intensive research about the running of site-based permanent supportive housing buildings and talking to many PSH programs in other cities including some site visits, I know that it will be a challenge to serve all of these different populations under one roof.
Therefore, I predict that Metro will eventually learn and designate all 90 units to chronic homelessness. However, I suspect — and this is an assumption based on my experience and based on messaging from the Office of Homeless Services this past few months — that Metro struggled to find the appropriate subsidies to pay for all 90 units and make them all available for people experiencing chronic homelessness. Consequently, it makes sense to mix voucher programs to ensure that all units are subsidized and ready to be filled.
In any case, it’s been a long time in coming. The original plan and bid called for a $25-million construction cost. But even when we selected the builder in 2020, it was clear to all of us that the final cost would likely increase. The change of the design and location, the years added to the project, which were marked by inflation, raised the final cost by 40 percent to $35 million.
Strobel House is needed. And it’s been a long time in the making.
*The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) uses the term chronic homelessness to describe people who have experienced homelessness for at least one year and have a disabling condition such as a serious mental illness, substance use disorder, or physical disability — or they experienced three episodes of homelessness within the past four years with all episodes totaling one year, plus a disabling condition.