When are you closing camps? How are camp closures prioritized?
We do not discuss when a camp is identified prior to notifying the people in the camp. The prioritization team discusses and identifies camps for closure based on the vulnerability of the people, location, and environment.
As the funder of this work to end homelessness, our office works diligently to connect our unhoused neighbors to community partners who provide the direct support. While utilizing our encampment strategy, we also host monthly resource fairs connecting individuals to community providers.
Our outreach team enters our unhoused neighbors into the HMIS database and referrals are made. In a high-growth city like Nashville, the only immediate housing options are emergency shelters.
Committed to the work of ending homelessness, we continue to support community partners through increased collaboration, training, and funding opportunities.
What do the PIT Count numbers mean and how are they used.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires Continuum of Care (CoC) organizations across the country to conduct a Count each year during the last 10 days of January. As the CoC Collaborative Applicant in Nashville, The Office of Homeless Services conducts the Count in collaboration with Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Mental Health Cooperative, and a host of other partners.
The Count is an essential tool for understanding the scope of homelessness. While it provides valuable insights, it is important to recognize its limitations. The numbers represent a point-in-time snapshot and do not reflect the true extent of homelessness over an entire year.
The number of chronic homeless individuals in our community went from 62% in 2023 to 59% in 2024 according to our PIT count. The overall number of homeless individuals who were housed in 2022 was 1811, in 2023 ,1946 were housed and in 2024, 2094 people experiencing homelessness were housed. Nashville has had year-over-year decline in chronic homelessness based on our PIT count.
For an average of 5 years, our unhoused neighbors have been unsheltered and not accurately represented in our data collection. Phase 2 of OHS is committed to focusing on robust data collection to establish baseline data to reflect a true increase or decrease from year to year but until then, we use our PIT count numbers to tell the story. As mentioned, we have not reached the baseline and most agencies struggle to enter real time level of data. Therefore, the PIT count is the subset of data that we use.
How was the $50 million used?
June 2024 American Rescue Plan Report
What is this department doing to decrease homelessness?
The Office Homeless Services serves as the funder and lead in Metro Nashville’s Homelessness Response Efforts.
OHS addresses the needs of unsheltered homelessness and supports housing placement using the following: expanded outreach efforts, coordinated entry process, the utilization of the Homelessness Management Information System (HMIS), landlord engagement efforts, Collaborative Applicant for HUD and the Strobel Center, Nashville’s first permanent housing development for our most vulnerable population.
We continue to pursue and expand collaborative efforts with businesses, philanthropic, faith-based communities, state and local government and funding opportunities for community partners who share in our goal of ending homelessness.
Why does the homelessness number appear to be increasing in your monthly reporting?
In this WKRN News story they are referencing the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness in March 2023 vs. March 2024.
In March 2023, 34 agencies and 261 users were entering data into the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). By March 2024, the number of participating agencies increased to 42 (a 24% increase), and the number of users rose to 310 (a 19% increase). Our outreach team at the Office of Homeless Services (OHS) has also grown significantly. Between March 2023 and March 2024, the team doubled in size, resulting in a substantial increase in the number of people actively tracked in HMIS, from 35 individuals in March 2023 to 228 in March 2024.
If we look at the latest data from June 2024, there are now 44 agencies and 316 users participating in HMIS. Additionally, the OHS team is currently tracking 296 individuals experiencing homelessness.
We are continually working to recruit new agencies to participate in HMIS to ensure comprehensive coverage across the city. Accurate data entry from all service providers is crucial for us to have a complete and reliable count of everyone experiencing homelessness. This ongoing effort is vital for addressing and ultimately reducing chronic homelessness in Nashville.