Nashville officials have begun telling people living in the Brookmeade Park homeless encampment that they must leave. Metro is offering help to find housing, with a goal of moving everyone by Christmas.
That timeline is faster than some advocates and outreach workers had originally anticipated.
People have been living in the park off of Charlotte Pike for more than a decade. About 45 people are there now, making it one of the largest encampments in the city. An additional 25 people living in a South Nashville encampment at Wentworth-Caldwell Park will be moved out next, officials said Tuesday.
The two sites scored the highest on a risk assessment being run by Metro Social Services and local nonprofits. The review factored in the challenges being faced by the camp residents.
Closing the encampments and getting people into housing has been a priority of the mayor’s office. The city says they have gotten more than 1,900 people off the streets and into housing in the last year, but it’s estimated that about 500 people still live in encampments.
Courtesy Lindsey Krinks Open Table NashvilleA resident of Brookmeade Park homeless encampment holds a letter from the city.
The city delivered eviction notices to Brookmeade a few hours after a memorial service at the park for residents who have recently died.
Three residents of the encampment were remembered. Through laughter and tears, friends, family and outreach workers told stories about their loved ones on a small patch of grass between a Bojangles and a Walmart super center.
Chris Brown, Sara Morris and their family drove down from Kentucky for the memorial. Their dad, Drandon John Brown, known as Chief, was fatally shot by police earlier this month.
“It was just two armed police officers against one old man with a knife that was out of his mind,” Brown says. “And it really didn’t have to play out like that. But it happens every day.”
Morris wishes the officers would have handled her dad — who struggled with his mental health — with more care.
“Maybe something like this can open their eyes to, hey, maybe we should train these people better,” Morris says of the police department. “Maybe we should give them training on how to deal with people who are dealing with addiction or mental illness because it’s something that is sorely lacking, obviouslt.”
But she says her dad was never one to ask for help.
The family had fallen out of touch, and didn’t know he had been living in Brookmeade Park.
Tasha A.F. Lemley contributed to this reporting.
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