On Saturday morning, dozens attended the Nashville Homeless Memorial downtown near the Cumberland River. The service was held in honor of 194 people who died in 2021, all members of Nashville's homeless community, and the highest number of deaths ever recorded.
While it was a day of mourning, it was also one of frustration, with many speakers calling the majority of these deaths preventable.
“[We] believe that health care and housing are human rights, and that housing is health care,” said Bobby Watts, director of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, which is based in Nashville. “In the richest country on earth, we have thousands and thousands of people living on the streets … and thousands dying every year.”
Watts noted the lower life expectancy for people experiencing homelessness. He said those who died were an average age of 54 years old, and the oldest person was 73; in comparison, the national average age of death in the U.S. is 77. Watts said the disparity between housed and unhoused Americans looked like “two different countries.”
Watts also noted the memorial service, which is now observed nationwide, started in Nashville.
The list of names is up from 132 in 2020. Lindsey Krinks — a co-founder of Open Table Nashville, a nonprofit that works with the unhoused community — said some of that increase is due to improvements in tracking those deaths, but also because conditions on the streets are getting more dire.
“It’s going to take a collaborative effort and a serious effort to put together and streamline the process of housing,” said interim director of the Homeless Impact Division Jay Servais.
Krinks also read a letter from Servais’ predecessor Judy Tackett, who was not in attendance.
Councilmember Freddie O’Connell read the Metro Council’s proclamation recognizing the memorial day, and also expressed frustration that a project to create more than 100 units of permanent supportive housing by the end of 2021 on Second Avenue has been delayed.
India Pungarcher of Open Table credited the improved accuracy of the list to consistently reaching out to sources like the medical examiner’s office, social workers at hospitals and other outreach programs. At the moment, only one person — a recent addition to the list — is unidentified.
Pungarcher says they are still waiting on medical examiner records and can’t speculate on why there may be a higher number of deaths this year, but did note there have been some deaths due to COVID-19 and drug overdoses. (Drug overdoses have been surging nationally and locally.)
Pungarcher worked with Vanderbilt University professor Beth Shinn on a digital memorial page in 2020, and the two are still working on a paper about those who passed that year. Pungarcher says part of the focus is on what services and resources people were or were not receiving.
“We know that solving the affordable housing crisis is something that is not going to happen overnight, so in the meantime are there solutions or points of interaction that someone could have gotten connected with a resource or housing that could have prevented their death?” Pungarcher told the Scene.
The list of names of those who died this year were read aloud, and the service ended with a procession to the Metro Courthouse, where flags bearing the names of the deceased were placed in the lawn.
