As Displacement Looms At Multiple Nashville Encampments, Metro Tries A New Sheltering System

Many Tennesseans go outside to find sanctuary and recreation — and some make the outdoors their homes, often trespassing to live at campsites. But now, more than usual, several encampments across Nashville are being slated for closure.

It’s not part of a coordinated strategy, but the result could be a significantly different landscape for people without homes.

For the last year-and-a-half, Angie McGuire has slept on the side of a closed restaurant near an interstate. But she has long dreamed of having some land of her own — no matter the size.

“I don’t care if it’s an eighth of an acre … [just] so they can’t kick me off of it,” she says, “and I want to put me a little something on there. And it’d be mine and I’d never have to move again.”

For now, she’s on land that’s not hers. But she’s part of a little community, she’s able to make a few dollars panhandling on the same block and her outreach workers know where to find her.

McGuire doesn’t always feel safe. She says she gets her stuff stolen regularly, and says there’s problems with drugs in the parking lot. But it’s home.

“Even after they make us move, I’ll probably come back here somehow. Cling to one of these trees or something,” she says.

The state has given notice that McGuire’s camp near downtown Nashville will soon be cleared. It’s one of nearly a dozen that, for a variety of reasons and on a mix of property types, could soon be disbanded.

Another is in West Nashville, where a recent community meeting drew a crowd of about 200 people.

‘Reclaim Brookmeade Park’

As the meeting, service providers like Liz Mallard spent over an hour explaining their work with homeless Nashvillians. For her, the story is one of giving and receiving that aid. She spent about 10 years in the camp at Brookmeade Park.

“And it’s gonna make me cry,” she said in front of the audience. “These organizations helped me. I was dying out there. I had nowhere to go.”

Mallard, who volunteers with Colby’s Army, says she’s now sober and housed. And she asked the room for patience.

“What they need is your support. They don’t need to be pushed out and pushed around and lose everything,” Mallard said.

The meeting had two pretty clear sides: those who, at least for now, want the campers to be able to stay. And a group, with T-shirts and signs, working to “Reclaim Brookmeade Park.” Their founder, Becky Lowe, says they want the people living there to get the support they need — but that they want their park and greenway back.

Tasha Lemley WPLN News

There’s long been tension over an encampment in West Nashville’s Brookmeade Park.

Most of her ideas at the meeting were met with resistance from the homeless advocates. At one point, she asked about an abandoned hospital space.

“I think it has 400 and something beds in it. Perfect place to put these people,” Lowe said, as vocal discontent arose in the room. “What’s the problem with that?”

Frontline service providers have built relationships with Brookmeade Park residents, working with them on needs like health care and permanent housing.

“People just have to exist somewhere, so we’re really concerned if we just keep playing this whack-a-mole game where we close one camp and then folks move to a different camp, and then that gets closed,” says India Pungarcher, an outreach worker with Open Table Nashville. “Not only is it maddening and not fair to our folks … they have to repeatedly start over.”

Pungarcher is worried about just how many campsites could be closing.

“Normally, you know, we have one or two happening, but all of a sudden, from the spring, we’ve had 11,” she says.

She notes that the closures disperse an already vulnerable population. And, despite the imperfections, these spots do offer some shelter and stability.

A new approach

In the meantime, Metro has been ramping up a new strategy to get people indoors — by inviting them into temporary shelters in areas far from the longstanding downtown facilities.

“Getting small groups of people right out of the encampment into a church space where they 24/7 stay — where they can look at what their needs are while they’re working on housing,” says Judy Tackett, director of Homeless Impact Division.

These shelters will each hold 20 people at a time for up to 100 days, ideally until they get an apartment. And that’s among Tackett’s priorities — to find and increase affordable housing in a city where that’s far from easy.

“There is housing out there. Is it enough? Is it quick enough? Is it for everybody who needs it right now? No,” Tackett says. “But that’s what we need to all continue to work on.”

Some campers from Brookmeade Park will soon be among the first to move into one of these temporary “housing navigation centers.”

Another closure timeline is looming for what may be the city’s largest encampment, just south downtown along the Cumberland River.

Tasha A.F. Lemley WPLN News (File)

David Craig is among those living in a large camp south of downtown Nashville. A new park will likely lead to the campsite’s removal.

David Craig lives there, with about 100 others, in an elaborate collection of interconnected tents that he’s poured effort into.

Just two years ago, he lived indoors and was a contractor for some of the largest construction projects in town, including the 505 Nashville tower. Now he’s watching as the city plans to convert 25 acres into a new park — right over the land he’s on.

“If Nashville is doing this for the people that live, work and prosper here in Nashville, then I’ve got no ill feelings about it,” Craig says.

He can understand how coveted the land might be. And he says he’ll pack up and go, and work just as hard on a new arrangement.

If he must.

“I hope I don’t have to, though.”