News
Homelessness Year in Review 2025
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The Contributor looks at the events and policy shifts that shaped the year
Features
Unzine Nashville and The Contributor Partner to Create Wrapping Paper
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The pages of wrapping paper inside the Dec. 3 issue of The Contributor were created as part of collaboration between vendors who sell The Contributor newspaper and Unzine Nashville.
Features
Former Tent City Resident Recalls His Early Days at the Encampment
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Wendell Segroves, a skilled craftsman and a former member of the Metro Homelessness Commission and Homelessness Planning Council, moved to Old Tent City in 2004. Wendell and his dogs. Photo by Steve Samra
“There were only five people there and I had to be invited in,” he said. “It was Nashville’s best kept secret.”
In those days, the camps were spread out. “We kept to ourselves,” explained Wendell.
Features
The Land That Held Us: Remembering Nashville’s Original Tent City
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… this land had served as a sanctuary for unhoused residents for over 40 years. It was never just a camp.
Features
Remembering Old Tent City and Darla the Dog
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Darla the dog came to visit us in the fall of 2008. It was when we lived in that little duplex right by the train tracks with car-glass and graffiti in the backyard.
Features
Old Tent City
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What we didn’t expect was to be so touched and ultimately impressed by the stories that were shared.
Features
Remembering Old Tent City
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If you were to drive one mile south of downtown and hang a left on Anthes Drive which snakes down to the Cumberland River, you would find over 20 acres of land that are now fenced off and flanked with barbed wire and “no trespassing” signs. Over the past 40 years, thousands of unhoused Nashvillians have called this land home. Before it was closed by city officials in June of 2025, the area was endearingly, and somewhat notoriously, known as Old Tent City. On my first visit to the camp in September of 2008, thick morning fog held around trees, emanating from the riverbank. I walked the well-worn footpath with other outreach workers past the Music City Star tracks along an old chain-link fence.