Condos vs. Camps

IMAGES BY SUSAN ADCOCK

What happens when homeless encampments are no longer “out of sight out of mind”?

By Hannah Herner

Out of the three condos that Bryan Myers rents out in the Riverfront Condominiums complex, only one of them elicits complaints from the people renting from him while visiting Nashville. That one has a thirdfloor balcony that overlooks Jefferson Street Bridge and the homeless encampment underneath it. The complex put up some wooden slats to make a visual barrier on the bottom half of the balcony and complaints subsided.

Out of sight, out of mind.

That particular encampment has more people living in it than ever. When the March 3 tornado hit, condos and camps alike suffered damage, and resources poured into Germantown, where the bridge is located. People experiencing homelessness moved in to get what they needed to survive and get back on their feet.

“You could get three square meals a day

and more supplies than you can imagine, and it was all coming to the bridge. There was quite a bit of news coverage that was happening. So that’s when we saw the camp really grow,” says Jennifer Ranson, who has served with Bridge Ministries at Jefferson Street Bridge for 13 years. “Just a few weeks later we went into safer-at-home. We had two weeks of mass resources and relocations to under the bridge, and then safer-at-home. Everything dried up.”

When the citywide safer-at-home order went into effect, many of the organizations that were serving took time away to deal with the various challenges of being a service provider during a pandemic. The camp remained at an inflated number of 60 or more residents, compared to the typical 20 to 30.

The quiet and safe encampment that Katherine had come to know changed rapidly, she says. She moved under the bridge in early 2020, but became homeless for the first time in her life four years ago.

“At first, it was quiet. Now it’s loud. It used to be safe under here,” she says. “It’s hard being homeless. It’s very hard. If you never been there, I would advise you not to go there.”

Neighborhood Complaints

It was around the time of double disasters that District 19 Council Member Freddie O’Connell started noticing an uptick in emails complaining about seeing people living on the streets. The most organized effort was from Riverfront Condos, a 145 unit complex with 68 active short-term rental permits, located a stone’s throw from the encampment.

Myers, who lives in Indiana, complained about the camp to the police and Metro Council multiple times throughout the nearly three years he’s owned units there. As many as one in four of his short-term renters complain about the camp, he says. When they started cancelling bookings after they had already arrived and leaving negative reviews, he started getting nervous.

“When it first showed up and I started having people complain about it, I got nervous pretty quick because I didn’t know how many people were going to have an issue with it,” Myers says. “If it’s one in four, if it’s one in five, it’s a cancellation every couple of months. I can stay in business. But if it becomes every other person, we’ve got a serious problem here.”

Myers’ most recent email to O’Connell was prompted by the Homeowner’s Association for the complex. The HOA did not respond to a request for comment.

“I don’t care that they’re there. I would probably feel more strongly about it if I were experiencing crime, or if I felt like it was truly unsafe,” Myers says. “My personal opinion is that I don’t necessarily think they are unsafe, I think it’s unsightly for people who are on vacation and I understand why those people would feel unsafe.”

The dozens of emails to Metro Council members from those affiliated with Riverfront Condos cite drug activity, human waste, noise and crimes committed on condo property to be the top concerns. The emails also noted fear of campfires spreading and loss of property value.

MNPD said they do not organize incidents as such to be able to pull all those that happened at Riverfront Condos or Jefferson Street Bridge for public record.

Since March, four crimes recorded in the area by Metro Nashville Police Department list people experiencing homelessness as the victims or perpetrators. Two were assaults against women who lived in the camp, one was a robbery committed against a man who parked under the bridge, and the other was a fight over a generator that took place under the bridge, MNPD confirms. Copies of these incident reports found via crimemapping.com were not released because they are still open — meaning they haven’t been prosecuted, MNPD says.

The Central Precinct has seen a downward trend in crimes in which the victim or perpetrator are homeless throughout 2020, says Kristin Mumford, spokesperson for MNPD.

“I think Central Precinct is well aware of some of the concerns and complaints of people that live [near Jefferson Street Bridge], so we do have extra officers in that area and we have seen a downward trend overall,” Mumford says. “We do our best to do outreach with folks and also make sure that business owners and homeowners are also involved and understanding that the police are in the area and wanting to make sure that everyone feels safe.”

Enforcing public trespassing laws is tricky in this particular spot under the bridge, because there is a mixture of both city and state land on camp grounds, so the state would have to take the lead. Either way, Mumford says the focus now is offering services and gaining trust with the population under the Jefferson Street Bridge.

“We’re partnering with the city and with groups and the Salvation Army and giving meals and gaining trust,” Mumford says. “So as far as the enforcement part of it, we’re hoping to help people first.”

What is the solution?

When asked why the Jefferson Street Bridge encampment got to stay intact during the pandemic, Judith Tackett, executive director of Metro Homeless Impact Division said in an email: “While Metro does not sanction encampments, we strongly believe that homelessness can only be solved by linking people with access to housing, safe shelter, and services. COVID– 19 has caused disruptions in the way our community’s day centers operate and many of them are closed. That has led to an increase in the populations in our larger encampments.”

At a Continuum of Care meeting for Nashville area homeless providers on Sept. 17, Tackett also alerted the group to the “skyrocket” in complaints about people living on the streets around Jefferson Street.

Some emails to council members suggest moving the residents of the camp to the COVID-19 emergency shelter at The Fairgrounds Nashville. In order to stay there, a person must go through screening at the Nashville Rescue Mission. There is room for 200 people on the “well” side of shelter, and 250 on the “sick” side. A count on Sept. 16 had 71 people staying at the Fairgrounds shelter.

It’s not uncommon for O’Connell to get an email that says something to the effect of, ‘do your job and get rid of the homeless,’ he says. What O’Connell sees as Metro’s responsibility is to clean up the area of debris. The city put in hand-washing stations and port-a-potties in late March.

“The hard part is, the ‘do something’ element, in my opinion, is to find housing for folks,” O’Connell says. “If there is no housing, the things you can do are fairly limited.”

Housing Solutions

The housing the city has been waiting for may be partially coming in the form of an Emergency Solutions Grant totaling $10 million given by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to Nashville nonprofits. This is a one-time grant added to the $450,000 Nashville already qualified to get from this fund for 2020. The first wave of $1.5 million has already been dispersed to 14 Nashville-area nonprofits. The deadline for applying to the second wave of $8.5 million was Sept. 21.

These funds can be used for homelessness prevention, street outreach, or Rapid Re-Housing. The city’s plan is for a “housing surge,” a push to focus on landlord recruitment with the goal of setting up 400 individuals with rent assistance and support services up to one year with the Rapid Rehousing dollars, Tackett says.

Emergency Solutions Grant funds met up at the camp on Sept. 24 to complete assessments to get people in the city’s homeless database and on the path to housing — another goal of the surge. Tackett says MHID would like to get people out of the campsite as quickly as possible after that event, and is calling on local congregations to host them. (Email Judith.tackett@nashville.gov to volunteer.)

“Moving people out of the Jefferson Street Bridge encampment is dependent on housing availability,” Tackett says. “However, due to the COVID pandemic I am calling on all nonprofits and on churches to see if they can identify some private property where a few people are welcome to relocate in very small numbers while they are working actively with nonprofits on housing. It takes the entire community to work together.”

There is also a need for landlords and motel owners willing to charge fair market rates for their properties and house people being helped by Rapid Re-Housing dollars. (E-mail deon.trotter@nashville.gov if interested.)

Nothing New

What’s going on with the Jefferson Street Bridge encampment may feel like deja vú to Nashville’s homeless service providers.

One of the founding members of homeless outreach organization Open Table Nashville, Ingrid McIntyre, estimates that there are more than 200 homeless encampments in Nashville.

“People love to pay attention when there’s a big thing like Fort Negley or Jefferson Street Bridge. But that’s going on every day,” she says.

Ten years ago the camp in the public eye was “Tent City,” which was cleared out by the 2010 flood, while Metro was already working on removing it. Five years ago, an encampment located at Fort Negley Park was cleared out. Now, Jefferson Street Bridge is in the public eye. There’s a pattern, McIntyre says.

A 2016 press release from former mayor Megan Barry’s office boasts a coordinated effort between the police, city, and homeless service providers to get the majority of people who were staying at the encampment at Fort Negley Park into housing. They were housed through a combination of housing vouchers that aren’t available right now, tiny homes and Rapid Re-Housing. Fort Negley was at least somewhat a coordinated effort, McIntyre says, but it was more visual than anything — the issues were still there, and the solutions weren’t lasting. There is simply not enough housing, and there are not enough caseworkers to help people get into it.

McIntyre doesn’t feel it’s a very safe environment to have so many people living together in such a small area, particularly during the pandemic. But it’s also important to be sure that the people in the camp are willing to utilize the kind of housing that’s offered, she says.

“It’s a complex societal issue that needs to be addressed holistically and not just like ‘whack a mole,’” McIntyre says.

Camp resident Katherine says people might think she is in a relatively good situation, with a tent and the bridge overhead to protect her from the elements, along with the resources that nonprofits bring to them, but it’s the seemingly smaller things that really get to her. “It’s not taking showers every day, cooking meals every day, watching TV every day,” she says. “I don’t watch much TV anyway. But where you can sit down and just enjoy your meal in a comfortable environment. This, you have no comfort.”

Like the barricade on the balcony, clearing out the camp would hide some of the people experiencing homelessness from sight. The tornado destroyed that barricade literally and figuratively and the pandemic has kept people there. Now, homelessness is no longer out of sight, out of mind.