Kennetha Patterson is a local advocate and activist and a leader in the homelessness sector. Patterson has lived expertise and identifies herself on LinkedIn as THE Homeless CEO.
She was recognized as a 40 under 40 honoree by the Nashville Business Journal in 2022, which annually lists young professionals that shape our community and forge a path for the next generation. Patterson is an active member of the Nashville Voices of Resilience Homeless Choir by Morning Coffee Artist. The choir performed at the 2025 Homeless Memorial in Nashville and the holiday party of The Contributor.
More recently, you may have come across Patterson through her work in tenant rights or as the chair of the Nashville-Davidson County Homelessness Planning Council, the Nashville-Davidson County community board of 25 members that serves as the Continuum of Care Governance Board. The Homelessness Planning Council is a quasi-Metro body as described in BL2018-1199. It is empowered to act on behalf of the CoC as outlined in the CoC Governance Charter.
The Continuum of Care (CoC) is a regional or local planning body that coordinates housing and services funding for individuals, families, and unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness. In Nashville, the Office of Homeless Services currently serves as the CoC’s Collaborative Applicant. Per the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), “The Collaborative Applicant is the eligible applicant designated by the Continuum of Care (CoC) to collect and submit the CoC Registration, CoC Consolidated Application (which includes the CoC Application and CoC Priority Listing), and apply for CoC planning funds on behalf of the CoC during the CoC Program Competition.”
As part of Patterson’s advocacy work, she currently leads the local Lived Expertise Leadership Committee, serves as a member of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)’s fourth Collective Cohort, and is engaged at the global level advocacy work to lend her experience of lived expertise.
On your LinkedIn profile, you call yourself THE Homeless CEO. What does that title signify?
It’s the storyteller of poverty and homelessness. What I do with that is build up other leaders. I call it the Homeless CEO Society. It’s really a brand.
When I first came out with the concept, my husband was like, “We’re going to be [seen as] homeless forever with you calling yourself that.” But it’s not about that. It’s about proclaiming that while you’re homeless, you can still build yourself up. Because that’s what I did back in 2020. That’s when I started to work on the brand around lived experience.
On March 12, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) will present you with the 2026 Loraine Brown Resident Leader Award, which honors a person living in subsidized housing who has shown dedication to helping tenants, people experiencing homelessness and their community. What does this award mean to you?
It’s actually very sacred. I’ve been with the National Low Income Housing Coalition for some years now, and I’ve watched the inaugural winner. I got to listen to him speak, Mr. Rob Robinson of New York. And so, being honored in that capacity with a legend like that [Patterson struggled here for words to describe her feelings]. And also, I get to do a plenary with Brian Goldstone as well. He is the author of “There Is No Place for Us.”
So it’s just a high honor to be able to participate at that level as a tenant that still is on [an] emergency housing voucher. Normally our work seems so invisible, but this just makes you feel seen and accepted in the work.
You have served as the first chair with lived expertise on the Homelessness Planning Council, Nashville’s community board overseeing the Continuum of Care process. What is one achievement you would like to highlight that happened under your leadership?
I would say breaking the monotony of just listening to only providers. That’s my number one thing. When I came in, my message was “transparency and no harm.” And that’s what I want to see happen for the people just in healing the system.
And then another big accomplishment, I think, was the strategic plan that I led. Also, I created the All-Chairs meeting where all the [committee] chairs meet every other month. The All-Chairs meeting is something they continued. It’s kind of like having an executive committee, but all the chairs are meeting, and I feel like that’s what can guide the work with everybody, being in one space.
What are some missed opportunities from that time?
A missed opportunity was really engaging the Lived Expertise Committee as the strategic plan called for.
Also, I was trying to do emergency preparedness then. So now looking at things like the [recent ice] storm and potentially another pandemic and going on, that’s something I was trying [for the HPC] to pay attention to then. I just feel like it was a fail because it was such a power struggle with our Collaborative Applicant, not the CoC itself. I really am grateful for the CoC.
What is a change that you would like to see happen locally to improve service delivery to people experiencing homelessness?
We have a Nashville Resident Consumer Advisory Board that we started a little while ago. We were trying to transition that to being the wheelhouse for the Continuum of Care. It helps when people with lived expertise are the leaders to the capacity we’re supposed to [be according to] the CoC’s strategic plan.
Within that, we have [discussed] triage systems. For example, we want to connect with every council person in all 40 districts. That way, when it’s something like we just saw with the winter storm, we could have been on the ground helping people, especially the people that are outside. Because I witnessed [the need] myself. I was just trying to walk to the store in the ice storm and saw people trying to get to warming stations.
It is those types of things that we know about that we can really help alleviate so much if we’re in the system as peer ambassadors to the city. So, just being able to be accepted by Metro Nashville-Davidson County [in] the position we’re supposed to be doing.
The reality is that even with all the recognition you have achieved over the years, your work as an advocate with lived expertise has been largely underfunded. What inspires and motivates you to keep going where others would have given up?
I really do think on this a lot because sometimes I do want to quit. I’ve had moments where I’m like, “Just forget it!” But at the same time, I think about the people and other families I don’t want to see this happen to, and that’s what’s kept me in this. Because if I move from the position I’m in, I feel like the house of cards falls.
I feel like I’m built on a solid foundation, and the money will come when it releases. But the only reason it has not, is [because of] people blocking opportunities. They should be working with us because it would help us alleviate the homelessness problem here in Nashville.
You answered the prior question from the perspective of the CoC Consumer Advisory Board. But even on a bigger scale, people with lived expertise like you are doing so much work in a volunteer capacity.
Yes, and I always say one of them is involuntarily unpaid. That’s the one that’s in a consultant-type of manner, too. We have Section 3 with MDHA. It’s very hard to access that program to become our own consultant. [Editor’s note: Section 3 is meant to ensure that economic opportunities, most importantly employment, generated by certain HUD financial assistance shall be directed to low- and very low-income persons, particularly those who are recipients of government assistance for housing or residents of the communities in which Federal Assistance is spent. (from: https://www.nashville-mdha.org].
So we just have been figuring out different ways to become self-sustainable. Like with the Nashville Voices of Resilience Homeless Choir, we’re looking at a method of thinking about how the freedom singers funded their movement. I didn’t know [that they funded their own movement] until I learned it directly from a freedom singer I met at a resort with the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Albany, Georgia, last year. So, it’s just thinking of different ways that we can get past that federal bar of paying us because that money never makes it down to us as the little people.
Why is it so important to listen and truly integrate voices of lived experience and expertise?
Because their voices are powerful, and they’re actually jewels to be uncovered.
I think about that with not only the people, but the things that are considered trash here in Nashville. I’ll look at it as kind of reverse gentrification if we could beautify those places that are adjudicated properties. That would be huge if we could flip these models as lived expertise into what we can envision. [We could] create temporary housing [where] we want to get people into permanent homes.
I just feel there is so much value within lived expertise that is just kind of — I don’t want to say buried because we’ve been working on the awareness of it — but it’s just undiscovered jewels, dealing with every person that’s been unhoused.
If a funder came to you and asked how you would invest $1 million, what would you say?
I’d say start with the lived expertise, and then going into, we would love to purchase land and adjudicated properties where we can [build] non-traditional housing like geodesic domes. We are about to crowdsource for a 3D printer. We have an architectural engineer on our team that wants to do tiny homes. I’ve been deeply researching shipping containers. So just having a different variety of homestays that will go across Nashville-Davidson County and also connect people back into community from the different counties they’ve been pushed out to.
So, I would use that money as a catalyst to create housing.
When you refer to your team, who is that?
They are lived expertise leaders. And we have Mr. Nelson Guillen with The Mandala Project. And then we have a grant writer behind the scenes on our team. They helped us get the Metro Arts Thrive Grant for “Voices Unheard – Art for Change.” And so we’re working with Metro Arts and doing some tours and things with our Nashville Voices of Resilience Homeless Choir.
It’s just really the people and community we’re in partnership with. We’ve been building those partnerships. We’re connected to over six organizations that can help build us out. We just got an offer from The Village that was formed in Mayor [John] Cooper’s administration, and they want to give us a platform for our work as well. Anybody that hears about our work is ready to plug in now, where we were invisible before. I call it a Cinderella system.
To clarify, the group is called the Lived Expertise Leadership Committee, which was formerly known as the CoC’s Consumer Advisory Board?
Correct. Actually, as soon as we stopped trying to ask permission from the Collaborative Applicant, and we went out and did it ourselves, now we’re visible.
You know, when we just went out and started showing our talents and becoming ourselves. Now we’re here.
What else would you like to add?
We appreciate our city, the ones that did look out for us and wanted to see us be honored with the dignity of being paid for our advice and our direction. What we really do offer is an enhanced asset. So we are just grateful for the ones that are embracing us in our own city.