Recording Demonstrates Early Tension Between Metro Officials and Homelessness Planning Council

While tensions between the Metro Homeless Impact Division and members of the Continuum of Care Homelessness Planning Council boiled over in February, the frustration and communication breakdowns go back at least a month prior. A recording shared with the Scene shows that at the Jan. 12 HPC meeting, service providers were upset about the introduction of a draft plan to address homeless encampments as well as a corresponding pilot program to address the camp underneath the Jefferson Street Bridge — officially named the Kelly Miller Smith Memorial Bridge in honor of the late local civil rights leader.

That camp plan went on to spark arguments at a February meeting, when service providers voiced their frustrations that the HID and its interim director Jay Servais didn’t wait for their input before implementing the program. A few said they'd expected Servais to present the draft in full at the February meeting.

In the recording, Karri Gornick, director of the youth-outreach organization Oasis Center, voices concerns that they hadn’t seen a copy of the plan prior to the January meeting, and requests that HID present the plan in fuller detail in February.

In the recording, Servais and HID’s assistant director April Calvin hand out drafts of the Housing Crisis Solutions Strategy, emphasizing at certain points it is just a draft, but also mentioning a pilot program to house people living at the Jefferson Street Bridge camp.

Servais says: “And we’re going to be having a pilot program at Jefferson Street on how this helps people get housed. And then we’ll see the effects of this as a draft form, bring that back, present it and then we can talk about it more.”

Asked to clarify the pilot, Servais says: “We are focusing on Jefferson Street now and applying this in draft form as a plan, a structured plan. And this plan starts weeks out when we have housing available, and working through our partnerships with our case workers and housing navigators to get these people housed from that area. So this is just a draft of how the system works in our timelines in which that’s going to be applied.”

Gornick says the effort didn’t feel “like a collaborative community response."

“We ran it through the staff, we ran it through the charettes, and now we’re introducing it to you in draft form so that you can have your input right here,” Servais replies. “It’s not like we’re making the strategic plan right now. It’s in a draft form so we can get there.”

The tensions at this meeting may have been just as pitched — if not more so — as at the February meeting. When Gornick says she hadn’t received an email from Servais since he started, he replies that he never received one from her either. Gornick also asks where the housing units for the plan were coming from, and Servais says people would be housed as units became available — he also mentions that The Salvation Army, which has been conducting outreach at the camp for months, is helping in the effort.

One HPC member asks what the city’s long-term plan is, voicing concerns that resources could run out after eight months. Another says it sounds like a plan to close camps, which Servais denies.

At another point, Servais — having weathered a few comments from HPC members — says, “The posturing against me is not fun.”

Closing out the discussion, HPC chair Laura Bermudez says she would prefer a more robust discussion. She also invites Servais to engage one of the HPC’s committees in the effort. “We meet once a month, things move fast,” she says. “I want this council to feel we are engaged properly.”

From the January meeting minutes, it does not appear that a fuller presentation was slated for the February meeting. The Feb. 9 agenda does not list a presentation either.

Some of the language does seem reminiscent of what Servais said at a hearing held by District 16 Councilmember Ginny Welsch to discuss the Jefferson Street Bridge plan. In that hearing and a statement released afterward, Servais described the program at the camp as a “draft.”

Gornick reached out to the Scene with a copy of the Jan. 12 recording, saying she received it from someone else who had attended the meeting.

“I definitely wish we had asked them to define 'draft,'" Gornick tells the Scene. "I didn't think we needed to do that." She says she believes a draft plan “is something that's going to go through several iterations” before being implemented.

Says Gornick: “I wish we had specifically asked, ‘Are you implementing this?’ Because, the way it was presented [was] that there was going to be community feedback. That they were going to … get that feedback, that they wouldn't implement it until there were enough housing resources. That all implied to me … that they were not implementing this.”

Gornick says the process of engaging the Homelessness Planning Council with plans can take weeks or months at times, but addressing homelessness requires a long-term commitment.

“Homelessness is a systemic injustice that requires a systematic solution,” she says. “It's not small crises that we can just crisis-manage as we go. We need a systems approach so that as we're providing resources and housing solutions, they're the right resources and housing solutions to help people maintain their housing.”

Gornick and other service providers raised concerns that the pilot program at the Jefferson Street Bridge would not result in an equitable distribution of housing resources. The city has a coordinated entry system to match people experiencing homelessness with the appropriate forms of assistance and housing, prioritizing them by vulnerability. Members of the HPC have said they were worried the camp plan circumvented the system. 

Servais and other Metro officials have denied that this is the case, saying all residents of the Jefferson Street Bridge camp were in the coordinated entry system and that many people living outdoors are especially vulnerable. Still, Gornick feels the plan shut out service providers and avoided the process of collecting feedback and input from stakeholders and the community.

The Jefferson Street Bridge campsite was fenced off on Feb. 12.

Councilmember Freddie O'Connell posted on Twitter an email from Nashville's HUD technical assistance team that commented on the tension on both sides. "In our experience of the last few HPC meetings ... there is failure on all sides to communicate clearly, to be respectful of each other’s time and perspectives and now a complete breakdown in willingness to work together for the homeless households who desperately need you to do so," the email reads. "There seem to be clear lines now that are 'us' and 'them' in the room, when you are in reality all sitting at the same table to move policy and strategy to implementation for those who often have no voice but yours."

Servais has said that a series of three charettes — or public meetings — hosted in December by Vice Mayor Jim Shulman were used to collect community input on the plan. The Scene reached out to Shulman, who replies: “The charettes were designed to encourage the drafting of a plan to address outdoor homelessness. … A formal plan was not presented at the meetings to be vetted; instead, a draft plan was handed out at the third public meeting so that people could review and make comments.”

A video of the charette on Dec. 20 shows Shulman saying that the goal was to collect ideas and recommendations for Servais and the HID’s outdoor homelessness plan. Materials passed out at that charette included a draft of the Housing Crisis Solutions plan, which April Calvin described at one point in the evening, also emphasizing it was still a draft.

Shulman shared with the Scene the documents that were handed out that evening, as well as notes taken at the meeting. He also shared an email showing he had forwarded those materials to Laura Bermudez of the HPC on Dec. 29.

The Scene received a copy of the draft presented at the Dec. 20 charette and compared it to one from the Jan. 12 meeting. There do not appear to be many significant differences between the two.

The Scene reached out to the Metro Homeless Impact Division for clarification on comments made during the Jan. 12 meeting and whether the Jefferson Street Bridge camp plan was already in effect at that time. However, the Scene did not receive an answer by publication time.

A 13-minute clip of the Jan. 12 recording is below, featuring the discussion about the camp strategy.

Update: After this story was published, HID spokesperson Harriet Wallace responded with the following:

The "draft" plan was introduced to the public as early as November during the charette hosted by Vice Mayor Shulman. It was introduced again in the HPC's December meeting as well as the January meeting. An attempt to discuss again was made in the February meeting but that unfortunately did not occur.

As I've shared before "draft" means just that — "draft" or not yet complete. This "draft" plan for outdoor communities is a working document with the goal of being finalized once all (HPC & community) had a chance to offer input. Interim Dir Servais made it clear in the meetings that he wanted feedback and input from the HPC body. The goal was to get feedback from everyone and create a tool that all agree on moving forward.

The Salvation Army [TSA] was brought in as lead at JSB in 2020, prior to Servais' tenure. That practice remained in place. While TSA remained lead at Jefferson, the "draft" plan was tested to create a baseline. The case studies requested by the HPC were designed to help inform the HPC's review of the "draft" plan.