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Dr. Sanmi Areola is a veteran in public health, having served in leadership positions in Nashville, Johnson County, Kan., and in Prince George’s County, Md., before returning to Nashville in 2025 to lead the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD).
The Metro Human Relations Commission (MHRC) is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
The executive order moves away from a Housing First approach and encourages the institutionalization of people experiencing homelessness.
I do not believe in forced treatment as a solution to homelessness, and see it as the usual Band-Aid approach.
Metro released a comprehensive Unified Housing Strategy (UHS) earlier this year, which outlines seven strategies, 43 action steps, and an accompanying implementation plan.
In early June, we conducted conversations with Rosanne Haggerty, the CEO of Community Solutions, and Dr. Sam Tsemberis, the founder of the Housing First approach. You can read the interview with Haggerty on page 4 and the one with Tsemberis was printed in our last issue.The questions we asked were developed by several members of the Vendor Leadership Team. Shawn Lesley served as their representative and conducted the in-person interviews with assistance from Judy. After talking to both experts, we felt extremely energized. Since then several members of the Vendor Leadership Team asked us about our impressions, and we decided to share those with all our readers.
The fact is that homelessness will not end if we continue to inflict the trauma that led to their foster care placement to begin with.
Which cities are doing well when it comes to reducing homelessness?
Against the outcry of neighborhoods and businesses, cities like Nashville have been desperate to find quick and highly publicized solutions to shut down encampments and reduce homelessness. This allows politicians to look like they are doing something — or at least that has been their theory. By now, we know that focusing solely on large encampment closures at the cost of actually building an effective system that helps people access permanent housing within 90 to 120 days is not working. Let me state that Nashville is not the only city jumping on the bandwagon of politicizing the closure of large encampments. The goal is apparent.
As of this writing, Nashville has recorded close to 2,500 domestic volence (DV) victims in 2025 so far, with more than 660 children present during those incidents. More than 261 victims and 144 children were taken to safe places as a result of a domestic violence incident just this year. Victim advocacy organizations have been fighting for additional funding from the state. Gov. Bill Lee revised his budget request and included $20 million in state dollars for agencies serving victims of IPV and sexual assault.
According to an article by Anita Wadhwani published in the Tennessee Lookout on March 31, 2025, “the governor’s funding — $10 million in grants for each of the next two years — fell short of the request for $25 million in recurring state funding a coalition of state nonprofits say they need to preserve current services. “Sexual assault centers, domestic violence shelters and child abuse counseling agencies — many serving key roles in working with law enforcement to bring perpetrators to justice — have seen their share of federal Victims of Crime Act funding dwindle from a peak of $68 million in 2018 to $16 million last year,” Wadhwani wrote.