A year after severe flooding gave Nashville the wake-up call it needed, unhoused neighbors are still left at the mercy of the elements. Will Nashville fix the problem?
MAY 5, 2022 | MIQUÉLA THORNTON
CUMULUS STAGE
In the cumulus stage of a storm, air warms and moisture is swept up in an updraft. Cumulus clouds overtake the atmosphere, assembling into a tower, and the moisture in the air deliquesces. The clouds swell, preparing to shower. Lightning begins.
When it rains in Nashville it comes down hard and floods in a flash. The Cumberland crests and the rivers and creeks that crisscross across Middle Tennessee deluge. Homeless encampments dot the region most notably at riverbeds, low-point basins, and under bridge overpasses. At midnight on the weekend of March 27, 2021 people resting in sleeping bags, tents, and bare ground with all of their belongings were awoken to beds of water. Immense amounts of rain lashed down on them. Residents of Nashville called this flood a “mini-tsunami.” And these individuals were trapped in some of the city’s most dangerous flood zones. There was no one to warn them.
Sevenmile Creek meanders through Wentworth-Caldwell Park, the South Nashville address of a homeless encampment residents refer to as “The Jungle.” It hides behind a soccer field, camouflaged by a thick layer of trees. When it floods, “the field turns into a pond,” Open Table outreach worker, India Pungarcher said. That night, The Jungle became a rainforest as Nashville saw its worst flooding event in a decade. “Our population was not warned. They had no idea most of them were [living] in flooded areas,” Meredith Jaulin of the nonprofit Shower the People, said. No one came to warn them; take them from an area that would predictably be drowned; give them the choice of safety.
Afterward, rescue boats traversed the soccer field to save the individuals. Upon coming, residents said the rescue workers told them, “This is why we told you you shouldn’t be living here,” as if they had somewhere else to go. The closest shelters are downtown―over an hour's walk away―especially when buses don’t regularly come to the Southside.
Not everyone could be saved before the boats came.
Of the six individuals who passed in the floods across the region, two died that night in the Southside’s encampments Frederick Richards, who Jaulin knew well, was 64, unhoused, a veteran, and in a wheelchair currently living in the encampment. On the night of the floods, he could not get around the trees up the soaked, grassy slopes of the park. He was swept away on the corner of Nolensville, a road turned river. Melissa Conquest was 46, was also unhoused currently living in The Jungle. Both of their bodies were found Sunday morning.
“By the time they [the campers] were warned, nobody actually went back to help people evacuate out of camp,” Jaulin said, which led to the deaths of Richardson and Conquest. To Jaulin, the most heartbreaking part was to know “friends passed away because they could not get out of their tents fast enough or had nowhere else to go.” Where homeless Nashvillians are to go in the event of a natural disaster emergency is a problem the city has yet to solve, as nonprofit organizations are working toward a solution, largely without their local government’s help.
Meredith is the chief administrative director of Shower the People, a nonprofit with the initiative of providing showers and laundry services to those in need. They run out of a retrofitted bus equipped with two private showers. They regularly visit camps and outreach events and provide showers and relief after natural disaster events. Jaulin also represents Shower the People in Nashville VOAD: Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, a coalition of 30 groups who work together to provide aid after destructive flooding and tornadoes strike Middle Tennesee. VOAD formed out of necessity: after the historical floods of May 2010, known as when Nashville drowned. Jaulin also serves on the Continuum of Care Shelter Committee: a group of advocates who are liaisons between the unhoused community and Metro Council under its Homeless Impact Division.
The night of the March’s flood, campers woke up drenched and stunned in feet of toxic floodwater, polluted with sewage, chemicals, and hidden obstacles. As more water rushed in, dozens of people tried to get out, most leaving behind all they had, as the surge stole them away: blankets, tents, clothes, sleeping bags, and personal items to show a semblance of home. Some had animals. They lost them in the water. Some went in the water after them. The water was so high that Wanda, who stayed in a van in the park, was on top of it, with water surpassing the windshields, India Pungarcher said.
Johnny McKinney was in the same situation as Richardson and Conquest. At the time he was living under a bridge on the Southside. A veteran, he was originally homeless after having his VA Supportive Housing voucher revoked after being accused of selling drugs he said. He is also partially handicapped. On the night of March 27, he went under the bridge to get out of the rain. “I fell asleep and felt my feet getting wet,” McKinney said. “So, I scooted back and before I knew it, the water was rising so fast that I didn’t have time to get out like I wanted to.” McKinney slept under a bridge in the marshy area of a camp known as VIP, named after the VIP clothing store it sits behind. Campers sometimes sleep under the bridge in the marsh, Pungarcher says, because it makes them less visible. Similar to why The Jungle is so populated, it remains hidden and leaves unhoused neighbors less susceptible to both citizen and police abuse.
As McKinney was working his way from under the bridge, “the water was coming so fast, it almost pulled me away,” he said. No one from the city came to warn him that he was living in an area prone to flooding and that a flood was likely to come. Luckily, he managed to make it to a tree and used it to pull himself out of the increasing water. “By the time I got to ground level, the water had risen as high as the bridge I was under.” It flooded both the bridge and the Walmart parking lot that sits across the street from the VIP encampment, McKinney said. He was fortunate enough to be let into a restaurant for shelter. When asked where he was going to go next, he responded “I don’t really have a place to go.” After a call, he was able to stay with a lady he knew and survived the flood. He has since regained his voucher and is now in housing thanks to help from outreach workers such as India Pungarcher at Open Table.
Nashville is landlocked, about 500 miles from Alabama’s gulf coast, the nearest large body of water. “In my almost 20-year career, I’ve never seen rainfall amounts and rainfall rates this high not associated with some type of hurricane or tropical system,” Krissy Hurley, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told Associated Press. “So, to see something like this inland in Middle Tennessee is probably the rare of rare.”
The area fills with water often when it rains, the residents of VIP said of their camp and the area known as “The Cut” across the street. However, they said, it’s something you learn to deal with.
Historically, the city is not used to flooding, however, in recent years it has become a normality during the spring and summer seasons. Flooding and population growth have been in parallel inclination, especially as people pour in and development surges. “A warmer atmosphere that holds more water, combined with increased development and crumbling infrastructure that cannot keep pace, is turning once-rare disasters into common occurrences,” said Vanderbilt environmental engineering researcher Janey Camp in an interview with the university. Despite Tennessee's landlocked status, once rare occurrences prove fatal near Tennessee's vast network of waterways and low-point areas.
While last March’s floods were the worst Nashville has seen since the disastrous floods of May 2010, severe rain events partially induced by climate change have become more common, and smaller flooding events have been persistent. These persistent floods have “traumatized and retraumatized” unhoused individuals so much so that many didn’t want to go back to the South Nashville encampment last March, Andreos Chunaco, an outreach worker with People Loving Nashville, told the Nashville Scene.
Flooding in these areas now happens often. According to Pew Research, it floods every 10.2 days in Tennessee on average. As reported by Bloomberg in 2017, Tennessee’s major cities have warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. Just between 2000 and 2015, 26 federal disasters and emergencies were declared for floods and severe storms in Tennessee. The city is left vulnerable when the loss of natural floodplains, erosion and continuous construction remove barriers. However, Nashville does have significant mitigation structures in place. Existing dams prevented $1.8 million in damage by March’s flood as estimated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. However, when the floods disproportionately affect low-income and homeless individuals, the damage prevented is not extended to all equally.
Even in smaller amounts when those sheltered under roofs can watch the rain shower from a window with a book, and sleep to a good storm’s lullaby, unhoused individuals are inundated. “Even if it was not an issue for the city, it was an issue for our camps,” Jaulin said of last month's storms and of all of the unhistoric flooding events, which while unfatal and uneventful for those housed, continue to impact those in camps. What looks like a minor overflow into the road from behind a window looks like an immediate danger for those living on those streets.
In May 2022, Nashville is in the thick of a standard shower season. Not only has spring morphed into a standard flood season over the last decade, but floods in Nashville have become a year-round occurrence regardless of levels. Last year Hurley noted her Southwest region of Tennessee saw four significant floods every six months. These floods, once expected every 100 years, happened just in September in the state’s south and in March in areas closer to Nashville, posing a consistent danger to those living outside.
Last year, advocates called for a severe weather plan. Specifically, they called for a city-wide response led by the Office of Emergency Management (OEM). This plan would account for short-term necessity in the long-term goal of housing for all. “The government is the steward of the common good or they should be, and they should be the ones who are really holding this work,” Lindsay Krinks, co-founder and director of education and advocacy for Open Table Nashville told the Tennessean. Last year, Mayor John Cooper told Metro Council to “fix the problem,” of the lack of communication and outreach when it comes to homeless individuals in a natural disaster crisis. However, an official response plan for flooding has yet to be established and the problem has yet to be fixed. Still, outreach workers and nonprofit organizations continue to be the first responders to flooding impacts on unhoused individuals in the place of Nashville’s local government.
“I wish that after the floods [of last year] a plan would be in place,” India Pungarcher, Advocacy and Outreach Specialist of Open Table Nashville said. But it’s not. “So I think Metro just relies on nonprofit providers,” she said. Other outreach workers agree. Open Table Nashville is a group that has branched off from Nashville’s faith community. Reverend Jay Voorhees, a senior pastor of City Road Chapel, told the Tennessean that these are the groups leading the work. “Nashville as a city has outsourced the needs of the city's homeless,” he said. “Homeless advocacy has really been outsourced to the faith community. It sometimes allows the city to absolve itself of the responsibility.” They should’ve learned this lesson before two people died, he said. And now, as Nashville is deep into flood season, an open question remains on the table: what is the plan, and will the plan get done?
MATURE STAGE
A large amount of precipitation is produced. A downdraft combined with air cooled by the rain forms a line of gusty wind. Heavy rain, hail, incessant lightning, strong winds, and tornadoes increase in likelihood. The downdraft overtakes the updraft, making room for the dissipation stage.
“Underneath every overpass, every bridge, every clump of trees you see, behind every Kroger, behind every Walmart, in every park [is an unhoused person],” Chris Dillard told Fox 17 last November. Dillard is a former banker with an MBA in finance and was formerly chronically homeless for years after being struck with a deadly disease. Using his skills in statistics and lived reality, he estimates that Nashville is home to 20,000 people without homes, marking the estimated 2,016 total from 2020 as significantly off. Last year, the annual point-in-time count estimated that Nashville homelessness increased by 1.5%, or roughly, 30 people. Advocates including India Pungarcher agree that this number is likely vastly inaccurate. While the annual point-in-time count hasn’t changed drastically over the last 5 years she says “we know that it's huge, very inaccurate, and an underrepresentation of how many people are truly experiencing homelessness in Nashville.”
Pungarcher works with Open Table Nashville, a nonprofit organization committed to bettering the lives of unhoused and precariously housed individuals by, in their words, disrupting cycles of poverty. She, along with Meredith Jaulin, is one of many advocates whose work with Nashville’s homeless community has led to working in disaster and flood relief for these people. On the weekend of March’s floods and other emergencies, it is nonprofit providers who respond to the disasters and lead recovery initiatives, starting with cleaning up the encampments and garnering aid.
When asked how Nashville got to the point of thousands of unhoused individuals in danger zones of natural disaster, Jaulin points to Nashville’s outpour of development. “The way Nashville is growing and building, a lot of the spaces that our folks typically have been able to occupy are now very busy areas. So, they [unhoused individuals] are being pushed into smaller and smaller areas that are typically flood-prone areas,” Jaulin said. “Which is why there are no buildings and development in those areas,” she continued. “Those areas” she refers to are riverside and low-point sectors where encampments have established themselves. These parts are avoided as sites for development, due to the hazard living there poses.
Expansion not only pushes unhoused neighbors out of safe areas but also pushes those who can’t afford the eddying prices of real estate out of homes. Heavy gentrification has caused the median price of a home to increase by $75,000 in the last decade and rent in many downtown, midtown, and surrounding apartment complexes to increase by 50% in the last 5 years. In some cases, it has doubled, most significantly but not limited to, in historically Black neighborhoods. Construction floods in as cranes become cumuluses overlooking the city, and luxury overtakes Nashville like a tsunami. As The Guardian reports, due to the increase in luxury development and a downpour of gentrification, “whole neighborhoods are being wiped out and rebuilt.” Rebuilt at higher price points, Middle Tennessee’s median home price increased by approximately 22.4% in 2021. Additionally as of January, rent in Nashville has increased similarly, by 18.9%, making the typical monthly cost $1,788. “I think what it is, they’re trying to build Nashville up so fast, that they’re forgetting the little people. The people that’s been here,” Johnny McKinney said when speaking on Nashville’s homeless crisis. “And you’ve got new people coming in. And I don’t mind them moving here because Nashville is not a bad place to be,” he said. “But they’re [the city] building all of these houses for these people coming in here, and it's $1600 just to get in,” he said on the increasing cost of apartments. “They need more places where [the] homeless can get off the streets. The city of Nashville needs to step up, and meet people where they are.”
As more people are pushed out of their homes, the lack of affordable housing remains the main driver of the crisis. “They feed you and they give you some clothes,” McKinney said speaking of Nashville’s many nonprofits. “But I think what they [Nashville government] really need to do is build some housing where lower-income [people] can move in.”
Councilwoman Gloria Hausser evokes another climate natural disaster when discussing Nashville’s encampment problem. She describes them as a series of wildfires, popping up each time the city tries to get an encampment under control. As the city feels the pains of expansion, these “fires” are only doused with floodwater. The fires don’t end with the encampments, however. Flames of increasing population, unattainable housing, and continuous construction pile onto a history of neglect towards Nashville’s unhoused.
This neglect in the event of flooding is the origin of Open Table Nashville. The organization was officially incorporated into a nonprofit a year after the May 2010 flood washed away Old Tent City, a well-established homeless encampment located on the banks of the Cumberland. The events of March 2021 reminded advocates of the abandonment of unhoused folks a decade prior.
Before the historic 2010 flood, the people who would eventually become the founding members of Open Table Nashville were a group of outreach workers who not only advocated for the rights of individuals in this camp but became the neighbors they deserved. In the aftermath of 2010’s flood, outreach workers were there when city officials weren’t. Before the flood, Tent City was home to 140 people and a dozen cats and dogs. Afterward, they were all displaced. According to Open Table’s website, they evacuated residents to Red Cross’s shelter at Lipscomb University. However, after the shelter closed, the city condemned the camp, leaving nowhere for these individuals to go. The city failed to provide adequate solutions and displaced folks were sent back to the streets where they would either be cited or arrested for camping on public property. Prior to the flood, Metro had made numerous attempts to close the camp. After the flood washed everything away, Metro said it was uninhabitable and proceeded with a closing.
Similar closings have been happening recently. In February, a long-established encampment under Jefferson Street Bridge downtown was closed. A fence blocked it off, with no people living there in 35 years. While only 30 individuals were living under at the time, there were 200 in the wake of the 2020 tornados. The individuals living there have nowhere else to go and sense smaller camps have popped up in the area. It doesn’t flood in the bridge overpass as it does on the Southside encampments, Pungarcher said. Arguably, individuals were safer there. Camp closures, such as Jefferson Street Bridge are the reason more people have been arriving at her camp, said Misty Caudill, a camper at VIP who has been living there for years. Recently, however, police have been clearing the VIP camp and The Cut, Pungarcher says, leaving individuals scattered and distraught. The Jungle, however, the most dangerous of the three, lives in a different precinct and remains, for the time being, uncleared.
To understand why many unhoused individuals choose encampments over shelters, even when they are free (because not all are) one has to look at their reasons. “A lot of people don’t feel safe being in a shelter setting,” Pungarcher said. Not only currently because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but for reasons that existed in 2010. Going into a shelter involves being separated from spouses or partners, adult children of a different gender, and pets. And even without those obstacles, many people are uneasy sleeping in the same room as hundreds of individuals in close quarters, said Pungarcher. Moreover, the lack of space in Nashville’s shelters deters people, as well as the city’s social service workers, who Pungarcher says, are sometimes not trained on how to “competently and compassionately care for our friends.” “They don’t understand mental health or trauma-informed care and they are very much policing folks and coming into situations with a hostile presence.” In some cases, individuals have been kicked out, an issue that Pungarcher says is present in the conversations of the Continuum of Care Shelter Committee as they discuss implementing inclement weather emergency shelters. It puts peoples’ lives at risk, Pungarcher said, when those who want to be in a shelter are not able to stay there.
After 2010’s flood, Open Table found a series of new locations for Tent City’s former residents including land in Antioch donated by automotive magnate, Lee Beaman, until pushed off by locals. After other momentary shelters such as churches and parsonages, most previous residents of Tent City found housing with the help of Open Table as reported by the Nashville Scene.
Since Open Table’s conception in 2008 and the flood that propelled the group into natural disaster displacement relief in 2010, Open Table and other advocacy organizations have filled in the holes that Metro has vacated. Before Open Table, the city had no emergency cold weather shelter. In 2013, an unhoused man named James Fulner died on the steps of Crystal Fountain Church in East Nashville. Advocates at Open Table took to the streets, marching with a prop coffin demanding the city protect unhoused folks from extreme cold weather. The group had already been running shelters, Lindsey Krink told the Nashville Scene, but they were alone. It wouldn’t be until 3 years later, in 2016 that Metro Nashville Council would begin to open temporary overflow shelters for the coldest winter nights. Currently, the temperature necessary for the shelter to open is 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Currently, advocates are not only asking for the necessary temperature increase to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but they are also asking for it to open in the event of a storm.
Meredith Jaulin, who serves on the Shelter Committee for the Continuum of Care, is currently pushing for regional shelters that in her words “can open at the drop of a hat in case there’s a tornado or a flood.” She wants these shelters to be a place that people can actually get to instead of having to rely on public transportation. Even in an emergency, Jaulin says, “there’s most likely not a store that’s going to be open and accepting of our folks who are running during a disaster [trying] to hunker down.” Even if they were accepting, “disasters in Nashville happen at 3 AM,” Jaulin says. “We wouldn’t have to worry about ensuring everyone has a safe place to go during the storm iif they are already in a safe place during the storm.”
“We wouldn’t have to worry about ensuring everyone has a safe place to go during the storm if they are already in a safe place during the storm.”
DISSIPATION STAGE
Usually, after approximately 30 minutes, a thunderstorm begins to dissipate in a normal event. When the downdraft dominates the updraft, warm moist air is prohibited from rising, halting cloud droplets from further forming. The storm’s death is narrated by light rain and clouds vanish from top to bottom.
“We don’t set up emergency shelters for people who don’t already have a real home,” a responder at the Red Cross told India Pungarcher. Pungarcher sat in a wet ditch on the side of the Walmart parking lot across from The Jungle. Pungarcher was surprised by the response.
While the Red Cross did provide supplies for displaced homeless people such as sleeping bags, duffle bags, and tents, they’ve “never been in the business” of homeless sheltering, Sherri McKinney, the regional director of communications for the Red Cross told the Nashville Scene. The Red Cross does, however, provide overnight shelter for housed people impacted by natural disasters such as flooding.
“There needs to be a plan in place if we know there’s going to be potential for flooding. Whether it's opening an emergency shelter, or making sure that people know where they can go during certain hours, and making sure people are aware that they are near areas that are likely to flood,” Meredith Jaulin said.
Nashville’s cold weather shelter closed at the end of March. A week before its closing, there was a tornado warning in the midst of severe thunderstorms. It was the first time Metro opened up the overflow shelter for something other than cold weather, India Pungarcher said. “We didn’t have to ask,” Pungarcher said. “They just did it on their own. That was a huge win.” It was the first time advocacy groups didn’t have to convince the city that lives were on the line to open an emergency shelter. However, now that the cold weather shelter is closed, as of March 31, advocates wonder what happens next time the weather reaches that level of severity. “When there is a natural disaster and folks are displaced, are they going to put people up in a hotel again?” Pungarcher asks. “Are they going to have enough staff to transport people and check on people? [Are they going to] have a transition plan for where they’re going to go next? I don’t think they [Metro] have that plan in place.”
They don’t have that plan in place for a number of reasons. The plan would be put in place by Metro Nashville’s Homeless Impact Division. The division is currently headed by Jay Servias, the Interim Director. Servias, who did not respond to a request for an interview, took over the division after the last director, Judith Tackett, stepped down after leading the division for four years. In a recent Continuum of Care Shelter Committee meeting on March 17, the bulk of the meeting was dedicated to discussing shelter during extreme weather and temperature. When going over the budget at the committee’s meeting, Jay Servais said the cost of an emergency shelter would be $2,800 to $3,500 a night in order to cover food, staff, and all of the other necessities that come with operating an emergency shelter. However, according to Servais, “Metro Nashville cannot alone handle the load,” because of cost and staff.
The amount of staff necessary is gauged by the amount needed to operate the winter cold weather shelter. As aforementioned, providers are advocating for the opening temperature to increase from 28 degrees to 32. According to Pungarcher, some other major city’s open their cold weather shelters at 35 degrees. However, the amount of staff necessary for the increase would take needed individuals from other social services, according to Servias. Thus, to operate an emergency shelter, they would need to outsource staff. On their coldest nights, members of the committee said the cold weather shelter, currently located at Brick Church Pike, received between 1,000 and 1,200 individuals in need of shelter. They’ve been close to capacity, Carrie Siqueiros, Vice President of Ministries at Nashville Rescue Mission said at the meeting. However, Siqueiros clarified, “We will never say that we’re full. We’ll add mats on the floor and the cafeteria if we need to.” Currently, the occupancy rates are averaging 80% compared to last year’s average of 65%.
Despite the drawbacks, under Servais’s request for purchase, they would be able to shelter up to 250 people a night in the case of an emergency. Some members of the committee are skeptical that the request for purchase will pass with those numbers.
Meredith Jaulin critiques the way Metro Council is handling the situation.
“Particularly when it comes to natural disasters because we’ve had so many and it's at the forefront of people’s minds, it’s now an exciting thing to talk about. An exciting thing to still do in your area,” Jaulin said, referring to the areas of council members. “It kind of feels fake. It feels like it's the cool topic to talk about right now. It feels disingenuous because where were all of these concerns and thoughts when people were found dead in encampments?” To Jaulin, it doesn’t feel like something Metro Council wants to do. It feels like something they have to do.
The need for emergency shelters doesn’t stop at spring’s floods. As Jaulin states, “People forget how dangerous the summer can actually be,” referring to the trinity of tornadoes, floods and heat. While Nashville requires a shelter to open in below-freezing temperatures, it has no law in the case of extreme hotness, Jaulin notes. At the very least, Jaulin wants individuals to be notified when they should evacuate a dangerous area in the event of a natural disaster, however, heat, on the other hand, poses a unique threat: the only escape is inside. That is the reason that to Jaulin, Pungarcher, and many of Nashville’s other advocates, housing first initiatives are the main long-term goal. When it comes to disaster response, “if everyone had housing we wouldn’t have to worry about having a separate flood plan specifically tailored to people experiencing homelessness,” said Pungarcher. “Again, housing needs to be part of this conversation like it does every conversation.”
AFTER THE STORM
Storms do not end instantaneously. Instead, the storm rains itself out as new condensation seizes to form. When there are no longer enough droplets to join into raindrops, the rain halts. What happens next rests on the conditions. In some cases, the storm clouds slowly dissipate. In others, they go on to become the nucleus of a storm elsewhere. Experts recommend waiting 30 minutes after hearing the last thunderclap to return outside.
“Today, I am committing us to being a “Housing First” city,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper wrote in the 2022 State Address, published on April 28. The goal is “safe permanent housing options with wrap-around support services” that “will act as the foundation for people to rebuild their lives.” According to the city, they have housed 2,000 unhoused neighbors in the past year. Next month, they plan to break ground in constructing 90-unit permanent housing, which Pungrahcer says should have already been built according to last year’s plan.
Flooding impacts in general and their effect on unhoused individuals were missing from the address. As Nashville moves into the summer, flooding is not a thing of the past. Flash flooding presents even more of a hazard in this season. “When you’re looking at potential severe weather threats, really the thing to look for is not so much a tornado threat. It’s more about the flooding threat,” meteorologist Krissy Hurley told WKRN. “As we get into the summertime months, we get very heavy rainfall in a very short amount of time.”
In looking toward the future, progress for Nashville doesn’t stop with having a plan in place. The next step is having a plan in place “that providers know about,” Pungarcher said. “There are so many nonprofit providers that play a role in working with people experiencing homelessness in Nashville and they need to be looped in and involved in creating the plan.” Moreover, guidelines must be clear about when the plan should be enacted, because currently there is a lot of disagreement on the cold weather side of things, she added. When considering a plan for flooding, there needs to be agreement on how bad the flood must be, and what criteria must be met for a flood to reach the level of plan activation, she said. Importantly, Pungarcher notes that the city must make sure to not “force folks into a congregate setting.” Folks both need to be given options and listened to in their concerns, she said.
Furthermore, conversations that are difficult must be had about what the transition process will look like. Currently, there is a lot of vagueness around what the “wrap-around support services” outlined in the Mayor’s address will look like, Pungarcher noted. Similarly, there needs to be specifics on shelter in the case of an emergency: “If you’re providing shelter for someone, how long is that going to last?” she said. “What does it look like when someone’s encampment is flooded out?” After their stay is up at a hotel or temporary shelter, where are they going to go? “After the flood in March […] a lot of people’s camps flooded. They were in a hotel for a couple of months and then they were sent back to the same camps that flooded,” she said. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” Each of Pungarcher’s points is iterated in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) disaster planner for individuals experiencing homelessness. SAMHSA also points out the necessity of considering unique identities when placing people in the shelter by including and advocating for the special needs of families, individuals of color, LGBTQ+ youth, older adults, and those with companion animals. All of these are reasons Pungarcher says many resist going into shelter spaces. While no one should be forced in, due to the dangers flooding and other natural disasters present, according to SAMHSA, cities must develop regulations and guidelines to ensure inclusive access to shelter and support those who may encounter resistance seeking shelter.
Research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health shows that even one night in a shelter improves the health of unsheltered homeless individuals. Published in 2018, the year-long study anchored in Nashville, showed that individuals who spent just one night indoors over the course of a week, had a 1.8 higher general health score compared to those who did not. The paper’s lead author, then-Stanford Earth System Science P.h.D. student, Mary-Catherine Anderson, said that one day, she hopes there is not a homeless population to study. Throughout the course of her surveys which spanned from August 2018 to June 2019, “Between eight and twelve people probably perished,” Anderson said. “It’s a matter of life and death and I don’t know what else it's going to take to get people to care. That’s the battle.”
“There’s still this really grave disconnect between the public perception of not accepting that people truly experience homelessness because there’s enough housing that is accepting and affordable. I think that still, people don’t accept it. They don’t want to hear it,” Pungarcher said.
People camp out in forests and under bridges to remain hidden. While the public might not accept what truly causes homelessness, that does not stop violence and abuse against unhoused individuals from occurring. “Violence” is what surprised Meredith Jaulin most when she got into this kind of work. Not violence within the homeless camps. Those are like brother/sister altercations she says. The violence she referred to was “housed-on-unhoused.” Just like when some individuals woke up in deep puddles from the flood, some have found themselves in rivers at the hands of housed Nashvillians. “We've had people who were sleeping in tents and sleeping bags by the river, thrown in,” Jaulin said.
“People who’ve been shot at.”
“People who’ve been beaten with scooters.”
“Horrendous things, where it’s very clear, the perpetrator didn’t see them [the unhoused victims] as humans.”
“We don’t bother anybody,” said Misty Caudill who lives at VIP. “Everyone deserves to live the way they want to without being bothered.”
However, the fact that friends who have been on the street for so long are still hopeful and kind is what gives Pungarcher hope. That hope comes from witnessing the way people at camps like VIP care for each other like family. It also comes from witnessing the resourcefulness of her neighbors on the street. “I’m thinking of folks who are building literal houses in the woods out of anything they can find,” Pungarcher recalled. “I meant someone who made her own solar panel. It heated hot water so she could take a bath inside of the structure she built, and she had made her own makeshift plumbing in the woods that went off the side of the hill into a river.”
That kindness exhibited by many campers is something John Bull, a volunteer who lives on the Southside, wants to see in the rest of Nashville. Regularly, he hand-delivers water, meals, and company to individuals on the street and in forests. Bull, who is a long-time Tennessean, is ashamed of Nashville’s local government. “As soon as I get my passport renewed, I’m never showing my Nashville driver’s license again,” he said. Why? Among many reasons, it is the treatment of homeless Nashvillians. “If John could take care of the whole city,” Pungarcher says, “it’d be in good hands.” To him, kindness is the only way true change can occur. “I’d like to see the culture really care for each other,” he said. Care that people are dying in floods. Care that people need to be housed. Care that Nashville has a homeless crisis. To him, that’s the only way change, on any level, can happen.
CORRECTION (5/31/2022): Previous article stated that Melissa Conquest was a disabled veteran, however she was not.