Letter from ‘The Contributor’

BY AMANDA HAGGARD & LINDA BAILEY, CONTRIBUTOR CO-EDITORS

Housing saves lives. There’s absolutely no denying it. Advocates and service providers around the city have been pushing for years to help people on the streets find housing, to otherwise find spaces for them to exist during the day, to work with them to find healthcare and food and more.

The coronavirus pandemic has turned working with people experiencing homelessness and the outreach involved in meeting people where they are completely on its head. What happens if you have the virus, meet with someone to fill out some paperwork, meet with another person to help them sign up for food stamps, pick someone up to give them a ride to their campsite? Not doing any of those things feels wrong, but the chance of spreading the virus to someone already vulnerable feels worse. Much of it feels like an impossible choice.

Many, if not most, nonprofits were spread thin before the pandemic — and many are operating on skeleton crews now. The city has made strides in working with service providers to set up temporary shelters in places that will allow for more distance between people, though some people on the streets may not be able to get to a new temporary shelter. Group housing like the Nashville Rescue Mission or Room In The Inn doesn’t exactly work if people aren’t supposed to be in groups. A playbook for how to handle this situation, with an already broken system that was not working for the poor and most vulnerable, is being written on the fly. Metro has added 14 sanitation stations with portable restrooms around the city to encourage people to stay in their camps. They’re organizing food box drop offs to camps as many of the large weekly meals have been forced to close. Outreach workers are educating people on how to practice social distancing and what to do if they think they are sick, and helping people find ways to charge their phones. But there is still so much that needs to happen in Nashville to make sure people experiencing homenessles — who already have an average lifespan 20 years lower than someone with housing — can stay safe through this pandemic, which of course allows everyone to stay safe during this pandemic.

We must find a solution in Nashville that puts people into individual spaces. Many other cities are putting people experiencing homelessness into hotels, closed down nursing home facilities, and other spaces that can act as temporary housing. Advocates have been saying for years that housing is healthcare, and this situation only emphasizes this point. A vendor for The Contributor recently told us she had ventured out of her home in public housing for the first time in three weeks to pay her rent and medical bills. She didn’t want to be late — hadn’t made a late payment in eight years, but she was fearful to leave. “I didn’t feel brave,” she said. “I felt more like the wife from The Road.” In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, the wife is unable to face the brutal post-apocalyptic world. To put it extremely lightly, she doesn’t have many options to go on and her journey ends most sadly. Her very real fear makes it impossible for her to move on. Plenty of people say that flattening the curve and helping to stop the spread of the virus is as easy as staying home. That’s true, but there’s fear in the invisible threat for many people when they do have to go out.

As those of us who are housed stay home to keep ourselves and others safe, we must remember to advocate for others to have access to stable housing. It’s something that’s true whether a pandemic is happening or not, but the need is now more acute than ever. Removing barriers of any kind to keep people safe and healthy should be our priority.

Shelter in place because you should, but use your voice however you can to advocate for those who don’t have a place to.