The Cycle of Homeless-Camp Closures in Nashville

Last month, at the direction of Mayor David Briley, Metro cleared out one of Nashville’s largest homeless encampments, beneath overpasses near the intersection of Fifth and Main streets in East Nashville. In doing so, the city evicted the inhabitants of some 30 tents that had been set up there for roughly a year.

But more than that, the eviction represented another episode in what has been a recurrent cycle in and around the city for years. Looking to make the best out of life on the streets, a group of people will erect a campsite under an overpass, or off in the woods to the side of a greenway; after a while, word will begin to spread through the community of outreach workers and housing advocates that the campsite is going to be shut down by the city; they may be successful in staving off eviction for a while — as was the case with the East Side encampment last year — but eventually, the bulldozers come. 

After a large camp at Fort Negley was cleared out in spring 2016, advocates managed to get city officials to agree to certain protocols for camp closures. As part of that agreement, residents of the East Side camp were given a 30-day warning before the camp was cleared, and most had already moved out. What followed was similar to what’s come before under past administrations: a statement expressing concern for the safety of homeless people, describing efforts to connect them to resources and touting meager investments in affordable housing. But Nashville’s homeless population has only grown in recent years, and more camps will spring up again.

The map included here is by no means comprehensive, but shows a number of campsites — pulled from a list maintained by homelessness-outreach nonprofit Open Table Nashville — that have been shut down and cleared out in the past five years.