This feature is part of an episode of This Is Nashville — from homelessness to permanent housing.
Last winter, we met Tammy and followed her story as she moved from a campsite in South Nashville to a subsidized motel room a few miles away. Like dozens of other Nashvillians, she was grateful to be out of the cold and into temporary housing through The Salvation Army.
Metro has since added funding to expand its transitional housing efforts and has moved to close more encampments.
But, a year later, Tammy is still living in the same motel. And she can’t see an end in sight.
The big move
It’s just over a year ago. Tammy sits with an outreach worker at a Hardee’s near her campsite. They’re starting paperwork. One step toward housing.
Just 2 months later, in January 2022, Tammy moves into a temporary unit. After 5 years of living outdoors, she plans to use the motel room for up to a year while seeking permanent housing.
Tammy’s new place looks like a small hotel room — because it used to be one. There’s a double bed that takes up more than a third of the width of the room. There are trash bags everywhere filled with her belongings. It smells good — like detergent — and there’s a sense of hope.
“We’re moving forward,” Tammy says. “I’m not going backwards. I know God’s on my side now, and he’s answering my prayers and I am here. I’m going to keep moving forward.”
Looking back
By winter — nearly a year later — Tammy’s still living in the motel room.
But when we take a ride outside the Inglewood house where her family lived for 28 years, she thinks of the life she used to have.
Tammy’s innovative. She says she took the two-bedroom home and turned it into three — moving one of her sons into the dining room for awhile. She says this place was full of life. “I’d have the whole ball team here,” she says, “I’m like, ‘Oh Lord, have I lost my mind?’ We had a field day.”
Later, when her kids had kids, one grandson put his handprints and initials in wet concrete on the sidewalk out front.
She has three decades of memories in this place, and there are still pieces of her life here. Her son did the drywall and built out the porch, and even though her husband was under hospice care at the time, she said he’d ride up and down the driveway on a moped. Barking orders.
“Hollering and screaming,” she says, ” ‘Ray do this, Ray to do that.’ Ray said, ‘Daddy, gimme a break for a minute! Quit hollering at me!’ ”
Tammy points at a tree that was a gift from her husband. She says she asked the realtor about the tree when she sold the house.
“Can I please take my tree with me? He said, ‘Well not now ‘cause you should have said something — took it up before we took all these pictures!’ ”
The tree is still there but Tammy and her family are long gone. After her husband died of cancer in 2008, she says his life insurance was denied by the company where he’d worked for 36 years. She says she’d still be in the house if she’d gotten the payment.
As it was, she couldn’t afford payments. So in 2014, she sold it for $175,000. Five years later it sold again for $360,000.
“Oh my goodness! That makes me sick!” she says. “But you know, my husband did all the drywall in it, the ceilings. Everything is mint … perfect.”
House hunters
Tammy has been through a lot of loss in her life. But even people who have not had a string of tragedies are finding it difficult to make this city home. That’s something Chelsea Vaughn sees firsthand. She’s a LifNav Housing Coach with The Salvation Army.
She’s been working with Tammy to find permanent housing. She says the transitional, or “gap,” housing Tammy’s been in is meant to last about a year, though the Salvation Army says about 18% of people in the same motel as Tammy have been there longer than a year.
“If it goes longer than that, because we’re having difficulties with any number of barriers, then we accommodate that as much as we possibly can.”
Chelsea says together they’ve put in multiple applications at private and subsidized locations. And, depending on complexities, the time from gap to permanent housing can vary wildly. She says in Tammy’s case, one thing making it harder was, until recently, that her grown son was living with her.
She knows firsthand just how few affordable units are even out there.
“I know that seems to be, you know, an answer that a lot of people give,” she says, “but it is true.”
Tammy says she’s completely overwhelmed when Chelsea asks her to submit applications on her own. She has a physical disability that keeps her from being able to walk very far. She’s got limited cashflow. No car. And, right now? No phone access.
Chelsea says she hopes Tammy will get a home in 2023.
In the meantime, she’s on waiting lists. If her name comes up, Chelsea will get a call, and they’ll go in person and fill out a secondary application. She’ll advocate for Tammy, and if she’s approved, there’s hope for a move-in date.
Comfort food
The path to permanent housing is a lot to go through. Where Tammy is staying now is very different than her old sweet neighborhood. She says she’s just waiting in her current motel room. There’s a bed, TV, tiny bathroom and mini fridge. The trash bags are still around. Laundry is an expensive and onerous task and she never really catches up.
She’s relatively safe, though, and says she’s grateful. But it’s no home.
“Sitting on the bed. All the time. I’m tired of a bed,” she says, “I don’t wanna live in a motel for two years. I want my own place.”
There’s a fair amount of homelessness and crime in the area. Recently, she says a young man was shot and died in the parking lot just feet from her door. And, for friendship, Tammy says she walks down the street and talks to neighborhood sex workers.
She says she feels alone. Her adult kids are both dealing with challenges that keep them from being present.
“I’m lost, and I don’t know where to look,” she says, “never been by myself a day in my life till now.”
Tammy says she’s also tired of soup and sandwiches. So whenever she gets her permanent home she’s says she’s going to finally get her furniture out of storage.
“I am gonna fix some of the best chicken dressing with gravy you’ve ever had. I want to cook my own dinner,” she says. “Oh, my recliner. Laid back. And a good old chicken dressing in my lap!”
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