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Learn More About: Mobile Housing Navigation Centers

Why providing choices for people moving off the street is critical

BY JUDITH TACKETT

One new approach that the Community of Care (CoC) Shelter Committee has recommended that the city of Nashville expand is Mobile Housing Navigation Centers.

Mobile Housing Navigation Centers were set up to move people who refuse to access other shelters off the streets and out of encampments as quickly as possible. They only need to agree to work with staff on obtaining permanent housing. The centers are set up for 15-20 people at each site, which allows for the intensity of services that is needed for this population while also creating a sense of community.

The history of Mobile Housing Navigation Centers goes back to the COVID pandemic. In May 2020, when I was still working at Metro, I was brainstorming with Ryan LaSuer, the executive director of a small nonprofit called Community Care Fellowship, about how we could offer motel rooms for some of the people we believed would die on Nashville’s streets. At that point, Metro had made it clear that motels were out of the question for funding. Community Care Fellowship was already strategizing how to expand its existing day center program (which offers meals, showers, and laundry among other things) in different geographic areas to meet people in the areas they are living.

As you may recall, during the early months of the pandemic, many churches were forced to close their doors because none of us knew yet the full extent of how COVID was spread or how we could protect ourselves. This affected the service delivery model to people experiencing homelessness. For the first time in decades, people on the streets suffered from hunger in different ways than they had before as many churches provided meals. On top of it, their mental health was affected more so than usual due to the lack of connections. One person living in an encampment told me that all of a sudden he found himself cut off from his church community.

We quickly drew up a concept of what it would look like to utilize motel rooms and pilot a temporary housing program for the most vulnerable people who potentially could die without an isolation option. From the start, we utilized the coordinated entry process as a referral tool and focused on people who absolutely refused to access the community’s congregate shelter operation (Metro was partnering with Nashville Rescue Mission, Room In The Inn, and other providers to open a 24/7 social distancing facility at the Fairgrounds).

In consultation with Bloomberg Associates located in New York City, we developed a pilot plan and partnered with The Frist Foundation to get it funded for the first few months. We soon realized two things. One, this model worked for some of our most vulnerable neighbors. And two, it sped up the housing process because providers were able to locate people and work with them intensively on housing and service linkage. We also quickly recognized that once motels were going back to charging full rates, this approach would not be sustainable. Therefore, we started concentrating on utilizing empty church spaces. Another observation was that more people moved out of shelters into encampments during COVID, making it clear that the city needed options for quick access to temporary housing for people who would not go back to large shelter settings. We redrew the concept and worked with two churches who were willing to partner with Metro on this.

The Mobile Housing Navigation Center program was funded in August 2021 when Metro Council appropriated $850,000 in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds for them. Community Care Fellowship opened the first location in Bellevue at the end of November 2021 with a full staff and security in place. A second location opened in Madison at the end of January 2022. Utilizing church spaces, we discovered, has the welcome side effect of leveraging resources from the community through food programs, substance use programs, health care providers, and from volunteers at the congregations. Church leaders have immediately stepped up to build a community that creates a sense of belonging and with that comes accountability.

People access the Mobile Housing Navigation Center via a referral through the community’s coordinated entry process. What that means is that outreach workers will offer the most vulnerable people a spot when they become available. The only prior verbal agreement is that the person will be working with a staff member on obtaining housing.

The faster our community in Nashville is able to provide permanent supportive housing, which is what most of the people utilizing the Mobile Housing Navigation Centers need, the more efficient these programs become. At this point, Metro estimates that the path to housing is up to 120 days.

This month, I had the pleasure to listen to the stories of three different people who have obtained housing through the Mobile Housing Navigation Centers. One thing that stood out to me was the individualized approach to services and the relationship building that they all seemed to have experienced, and each of them is still connected to the communities they have become a part of.

While all this sounds great, I also would like to stress that Mobile Housing Navigation Centers are only as effective as the Housing Crisis Resolution System that we are building in our community. They are one piece of the puzzle and not the solution to homelessness. But they certainly fulfill a dual role: a) they offer a choice for people who cannot or will not go to other shelters or programs; and b) they help as we, as a city, need to close down some encampments that have become too much of a health hazard and safety issue for people who live (and barely survive) there.

I want to be clear, I don’t condone dismantling encampments without providing people with places to go to, which is where my support for more options of immediate access to shelter, temporary housing, and most of all — permanent housing — comes from. But the reality is that encampments, especially in the larger locations, are unhealthy, unsafe, and certainly not meant for human habitation. Trash is piling up, encampments are being flooded out, and people are forced to live in inhumane conditions, some of whom even end up losing their lives. We would not want our parents, children, siblings, and friends to live like that. And yet, that’s what is happening all across the United States. It is up to us to pressure all levels of government to invest in more housing solutions and to prevent homelessness whenever possible and provide a hand up to help open doors for those who are already living outside. In the meantime, innovative programs like the Mobile Housing Navigation Centers can help fill a small gap on the path to housing.

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THE INNOVATION OF MOBILE HOUSING NAVIGATION CENTERS

The concept of a housing navigation center started on the West Coast when San Francisco opened the first one in 2015. Now, eight housing navigation centers are run in that city. Other cities have opened similar projects as well for temporary housing where people move out of encampments as they are waiting for permanent supportive housing units to become available.

Nashville’s Mobile Housing Navigation Centers launched at the end of 2021. These centers differ from other cities' housing navigation centers in that they use existing spaces in local churches that can be scaled back once fewer people are living outdoors in Nashville. Because these churches are spread widely throughout the city and county, different locations can be mobilized based on need. Finally, Mobile Housing Navigation Centers’ strength is to offer small-group settings allowing for intensive, individualized support services.

The difference between the housing navigation center concept and a regular emergency shelter in general is that people can access an emergency shelter for a bed, a shower, and a meal. The beds are reassigned nightly.

In our city, Nashville Rescue Mission serves as the main 365-day shelter operation in town, and Room In The Inn offers different shelter programs for people through referral (from hospital, police) as well as a congregational winter shelter program from November through March. Together these programs assist thousands of people with shelter and services and cannot nor should they be replaced by mobile housing navigation centers. In addition, Metro has run an overflow cold weather shelter during winter months that opens at below-freezing temperatures.