Vice Mayor Jim Shulman shared in an email with The Tennessee Star that included the first draft of his plan to battle homelessness in the city of Nashville. The plan, titled the “Homelessness Planning Council Strategic Community Plan” (HPCSCP), included a mission, vision, and values statement; goals, milestones, and a theory of change.
The plan is dated from July of 2019 and aims to be in effect by June of 2022. It “intends to serve as a way to create a system where no person is forced to be homeless for more than an average of 90 days,” but add it is not to serve as a wish list of every person that is concerned with homelessness.
The HPCSCP also states:
The primary aim of this plan is to develop a fully-realized, effective Housing Crisis Resolution System for the Nashville area. In such a system, the community will work together to ensure that homelessness is a rare occurrence, lasts only briefly when it does occur, and does not recur for those individuals who have been housed.
The four goals listed in the plan are to optimize all resources, improve data collection and usage, enhance and expand formal collaboration, and develop commitment through engagement.
However, the HPCSCP does not include any form of funding, nor does it state how the city will obtain the money to fund these goals.
In a separate update on the Homeless Committee Meeting sent by the Vice Mayor’s office, it said some progress has already begun to be made. The shelter committee voted to raise the opening temperature of the Metro Overflow Shelter to 32 degrees, versus the current opening temperature of 28 degrees. This was one of the topics discussed at the second meeting the Vice Mayor held.
Other topics from the last meeting have been discussed since then, including the process of breaking ground on a new 90-unit facility that Shulman said will begin in April 2022, and it has been asked if the project could start sooner.
Shulman said Mayor Cooper has been invited to the next Homeless Committee Meeting, but it does not say if he has agreed to attend.
The next meeting for the Homeless Committee Meeting will be held on December 20, at the Nashville Public Library, from 5:30 – 8 pm.
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Morgan Nicole Veysey is a reporter for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
