Nashville’s unsheltered population will not be counted this year

BY HANNAH HERNER

Nashville will not have a count of people sleeping outside in 2021. The city’s Continuum of Care Homeless Planning Council was granted an exception for this count, which is typically required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The unsheltered count normally takes place during one night in January, where more than 100 volunteers canvas the city to count those sleeping outside. If these folks are awake, volunteers administer a survey; if they’re asleep, volunteers merely count them. In a typical year, the city is required to submit this unsheltered count, along with the Housing Inventory Count of how many shelter beds are empty on a given night and a count of those staying in shelters. The latter two will still be submitted this year. Nashville joins cities including Austin, Denver, and Los Angeles, in canceling the unsheltered count for 2021.

Up through December 2020, the PIT count committee of the Nashville Continuum of Care Homeless Planning Council had planned to conduct the unsheltered count with new protocols in place, including a shorter survey and skipping the in-person volunteer training.

The exception request written by Suzie Tolmie, homeless coordinator for Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, cited the following as the reasons for canceling the count: “Tennessee faces highest positive rates in US; the increase in illnesses already observed locally — and anticipated — after the holiday; the reported ICU bed availability in Middle Tennessee as of Jan. 6 was only 4 percent; and the spectre of a (second) variant of COVID that is more contagious.”

Tolmie says she doesn’t yet know the effect this could have on the amount of funding that Nashville receives from HUD. She added that HUD also looks for shrinking numbers of people who are homeless for the first time and shortening the time spent homeless when deciding funding awards.

“Just because you have more homeless folks, it doesn’t always mean that you’re going to get more funding,” she says. “What HUD is looking for more and more is to see those numbers sort of begin to dwindle, and effective addressing of the homeless problem out there.”

The exception request also promised to bolster outreach to encampments, especially to get more people entered into the Homeless Management Information System, a database that tracks homeless services and who they’re going to in Nashville.

“Those of us who are for the data collection being centralized in the homeless management information system kind of dream for the day that we really will not have to do an outdoor unsheltered count or sheltered count, for that matter,” Tolmie says. “We will all be in one place. Technically, we’ve got some work before that something like that happens”

The unsheltered PIT count has historically been considered undercounted, but without it, 2021 will be an anomaly amongst other years.

A Facebook post on the matter by Open Table Nashville, a homeless outreach organization reads: “While we absolutely support the decision to cancel the outdoor portion of the year’s PointIn-Time count as a COVID-19 precaution, we know it means so many people will be left uncounted. We worry about what that will mean in regards to funding based on the PIT count data — especially during a year when more people are choosing not to stay in congregant shelter settings.”