Temperatures plunged Saturday, Jan. 13, and snow fell heavy Sunday night. Nashville got above freezing just once over the following week — a sunny Thursday afternoon — before plunging back to single digits over the weekend. Metro canceled school for two days, then the whole week. As of publication, school is canceled through Monday, Jan. 22. Sledders packed the fairways at Shelby and McCabe.
Prolonged cold and ice tested the city’s shelter network, a broad coalition of institutions and people trying to help the growing population of people living outside.
“I’m looking for my friend Ed,” Claire Hennigan told the Scene outside Metro’s Extreme Cold Weather Overflow Shelter, where I had been turned away at the door after identifying myself as a reporter. Hennigan had a temporary housing option for Ed, but sometimes he could be hard to find. “I’m sorry they didn’t let you in. Sometimes it just depends who’s working security or at the door.”
Hennigan is an outreach worker at Open Table Nashville, an interfaith nonprofit working to alleviate homelessness in Nashville with direct service, advocacy and education. At its best, Nashville’s network of volunteers, nonprofits, houses of faith and city services work together to mitigate the immediate dangers of living outside and bring as many people as possible into stable housing.
Last week’s weather also canceled four different Continuum of Care Homelessness Planning Council meetings. About midway through the winter, this group was already wrestling with differences in direction and methods specifically around the city’s plans to address encamped communities. Just before snow hit, cold weather plans were unfinished but on track, represented by one ominous agenda item: “Locate and address shelter capacity and challenges.”
Integrating the city’s Extreme Cold Weather Overflow Shelter has been this winter’s priority (and challenge). The site, dubbed a “near-term solution” by Mayor Freddie O’Connell, is intended as a last resort for existing spaces that hit capacity. It’s the catchall for spaces like Room In The Inn and the Nashville Rescue Mission. Both come with restrictions and limits.
The Nashville Rescue Mission focuses on housing women and families, sometimes for months at a time. Men get spots at Room In The Inn, which sends small groups to religious spaces for dinner and a bed each night. Sheltering from the cold at a West End church, a few of its beneficiaries praise RITI’s professionalism and sense of welcome. Despite the uncertainty of RITI’s lottery system, they say many of their friends have been able to get a bed every night through the cold stretch.
Such exceptionally severe weather turned Metro’s overflow shelter on Brick Church Pike (formerly MNPS’ Baxter Alternative Learning Center) into an essential stopgap. Moving around the city without a car takes time and sometimes money; long journeys in the bitter cold carry physical risk.
Metro’s 2023 Point-in-Time Count identified 2,129 people living in shelters, cars or outside. That number (up 11 percent from 2022) is considered a significant undercount by many in the city’s homelessness network. Metro tells the Scene that the 2024 Point-in-Time count will take place on Thursday, Jan. 25. Freezing temperatures activated the city’s overflow shelter on Jan. 14, bringing in 298 people, the lowest total of the week. On Thursday night, Metro opened an additional overflow site, pushing totals to their highest of the week at 422. The overflow shelter quickly became a refuge for hundreds of Nashvillians. Such demand pushed the city to not just offer a high-capacity shelter, but actually operate one.
“I saw it would be 2 degrees and thought I’d try to go to the city’s overflow shelter,” says Jen Alexander, a writer for The Contributor who is currently unhoused. “It was like a military installation. There were strict rules, and it got worse and worse — in these shelter situations where someone rules over someone else, sometimes people get horrible. I just thought, ‘Please, do better by us.’”
Lengthy security checks caused crowds to form outside the doors, remembers Alexander. Individuals were required to stay in assigned rooms, she says, which changed regularly. Bathrooms lacked toilet paper, soap and hot water.
“I watched them physically drag two people out of there — they told them never to come back,” recalls Alexander, who compared the shelter to the Stanford prison experiment multiple times in our conversation. “I just thought, ‘This is horrible, and it was just going to get worse.’ They searched all your belongings each night. They said my nail clippers were a weapon, and took them.”
Harriet Wallace, spokesperson for Metro’s Office of Homeless Services, tells the Scene that the shelter dispenses soap and toilet paper in individual allotments. Wallace says everything went “exceptionally well” in the face of extreme cold and sudden high demand for shelter.
Talking to outreach specialists at nonprofits City Road Chapel, Open Table Nashville and The Beat about the city’s housing crisis
After a few nights at Metro’s overflow shelter, Alexander left for City Road Chapel United Methodist Church in Madison. Lead pastor Jay Voorhees had set up an impromptu shelter alongside The Beat, an outreach and advocacy nonprofit founded by Darrin Bradbury to address homelessness in Madison.
“Within the first day of the snowstorm, it became clear there were folks who weren’t going to other emergency shelter options — the mission, RITI or the city’s shelter — for one reason or another,” Voorhees tells the Scene Monday, as City Road has just finished its last night as a shelter. “Folks come and go. A few were asked to leave because of behavior, but everything went relatively smoothly. I don’t think we ever had to turn anyone away, although we were close to capacity.”
He estimates they served about 40 people total, with around 25 staying each night.
“We really don’t have enough capacity to handle the emergency shelter needs,” says Voorhees. “That’s not to take away from anyone or any existing organizations. There are just limits to what we can do. While we wish we could stay open, we just can’t. We did what we could.”
