In June 2022, Metro Council approved a bill sponsored by then-Councilmember Freddie O’Connell to create the Office of Homeless Services, which launched officially on July 1, 2023. This is a significant opportunity to finally consolidate homelessness coordination among the community considering that the Nashville-Davidson County Continuum of Care (CoC) has undergone some significant changes and restructuring since 2016.
The Metro Budget document for the 2024 fiscal year shows that the new Office of Homeless Services has a budget of $5,524,900, which includes funding for 29 full time positions. In addition, there currently seem to be three grant-funded positions. The office was mostly created by transferring Metro Social Services’ Homeless Impact Division to the new office and adding some staff positions and service funds.
Today, I would like to provide some history of the past 20 years that lead up to the creation of an Office of Homeless Services in Metro government. For full disclosure, I first began covering homelessness as one of the first reporters for The City Paper more than 20 years ago. In 2004, I started covering a new task force created by Mayor Bill Purcell, which produced The Strategic Plan to End Chronic Homelessness in Nashville 2005-2015. I ended up in Metro government, first at the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and left Metro in 2021. All that to say, over the years I have kept track of the dates and facts as I present them here.
Let’s start with a timeline:
2004 – Mayor Bill Purcell created a task force that resulted in the 10 Year Strategic Plan to End Chronic Homelessness 2005-2015.
2005 – The 10 year Plan was published and the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission was formed under the Metro Social Services (MSS) Commission. A staff coordinator was hired as part of MSS’ Planning and Coordination unit. The Metropolitan Homelessness Commission was housed within MSS and functioned similarly to a committee because the plan was to sunset it by 2015.
2007 – The Metropolitan Homelessness Commission was moved to the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA). The 10 Year Plan was amended to end all homelessness (not just chronic homelessness). The Homelessness Commission hired an executive director and staff. It took on the task to implement a Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), which had been started and worked on for about four to five years by Metro IT and then the Metro Health Department (or vice versa, my documents are unclear on that point).
2008 – The Key Alliance was formed as the nonprofit arm of the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission with the goal to raise significant private funds (same staff).
2009 – Congress signed into law the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act of 2009, which amends and reauthorizes the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. The HEARTH Act required the creation of a Continuum of Care (CoC) Governance Board, which was done under MDHA. This resulted in two separate boards/commissions tasked to build a comprehensive homelessness response system in Nashville: the CoC Governance Board and the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission. Nashville decided to appoint the chair of the Homelessness Commission as the chair of the CoC Governance Board to link the two governance entities.
2012 – The Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and its staff moved back under Metro Social Services with the exception of the management of HMIS, which remained at MDHA. MDHA had been serving as Nashville’s collaborative applicant/CoC lead and the CoC appointed it as the HMIS lead agency as well. At this time, The Key Alliance dissolved its board and functions as Metro determined that Metro staff cannot fundraise for and work on behalf of a nonprofit. (The Key Alliance officially dissolved as a nonprofit in 2016).
2014 – Metro Council passed 2014-BL777, which removed plans to sunset the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission.
2015 – A national consultant called Focus Strategies was hired for $25,000 and produced a report that, among other things, recommended that Nashville unify its homeless governance structure. (That report essentially said the same thing but provided more guidance than the most recent Homelessness Report the prior administration produced in 2022 under a $500,000 contract.)
2016 – MDHA as the CoC’s collaborative applicant requested technical assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The request was granted and HUD deployed a consultant group called Cloudburst to work with the CoC and the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission. The result was a recommendation to unify the local homeless governance structure.
2017 – Metro Social Services pulled out from being considered as the CoC collaborative applicant, which did not permit the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission to move forward and resulted in MDHA remaining in that role (which it still holds at present). However, with support from MDHA, the CoC voted to make the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission the HMIS Lead Agency.
2018 – The CoC adopted a new charter and Metro Council approved BL2018-1199, which eliminated the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and established the Nashville-Davidson County Continuum of Care Homelessness Planning Council. The staff of the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission were renamed as the Homeless Impact Division of Metro Social Services.
2019 – The HPC adopted a three-year Continuum of Care Strategic plan, which was reviewed and an update delivered to Metro Social Services and the Mayor’s Office in 2020.
2021 – Metro Homeless Impact Division director (full disclosure that was me) resigned citing a lack of support from Metro due to the leadership structure in place, which buried the division under Metro Social Services and kept leadership from Metro decision-making tables related to homelessness. This prompted a renewed attempt by Councilmember Freddie O’Connell to create an Office of Homeless Services.
2022 – Metro Council approved the creation of the Office of Homeless Services.
July 2023 – The Office of Homeless Services started its work and all staff from the Homeless Impact Division was transferred to the new office.
I would like to add that Mayor O’Connell has served on the Homelessness Planning Council for years, and as a prior chair of the HMIS Committee, he was instrumental in helping improve HMIS and make it a useful data tool for Nashville.
With a new mayor, who intimately understands this history, and a new Office of Homeless Services in place, Nashville is poised to focus on systems building and provide solid leadership around this critical issue. The only thing missing, and Nashville-Davidson County CoC is on its way to remedy this, is for the collaborative applicant to shift from MDHA to the new office without losing the support of MDHA as the public housing authority.