Housing Last | The Rodeway to Nowhere
The Cruel Illogic of Encampment Closures Without New Housing
Casualty (1939), Donato Rico
An earlier version of this was posted under the title “Housing Last: What Problem are They Trying to Solve?” A few non substantive edits have been made to grammar and spelling.
Any corrections will be applied within text accompanied by footnotes, and will be tracked with more details here.
On March 31, Nashville’s Office of Homeless Services (OHS) announced to the media that they would be shutting down Old Tent City (OTC). At least 120 people were told that for their home, Nashville’s largest and oldest homeless encampment, it was closing time.
Though it had long been suspected, the closure of the encampment was a closely guarded secret. Neither service providers, Metro Council Members, nor the residents themselves were involved in the planning of the closure or the logistics around where they would be relocated.
It is OHS official policy to not disclose plans for encampment closures (which is explained by their leader as being a “trauma informed best practice”).
This is a “best practice” that is hard to square with the federal guidebook OHS purports to ground their relocation process in. Its very first strategy, of the “19 Strategies for Communities to Address Encampments Humanely and Effectively” advised to behave precisely counter to this mode of secrecy.
Engaging and including people living in encampments in policymaking, planning, and nearly every strategy of this guidance increases their likelihood of receiving the housing, health, and other support necessary to move off the streets and into housing or shelter while they await permanent housing.
USICH
19 Strategies for Communities to Address Encampments Humanely and Effectively
Many advocates for the unhoused, including the National Coalition for Housing Justice, have criticized the “19 strategies” doc for not being progressive enough in its approaches to humanely addressing the root causes of homelessness. Yet Nashville’s Office of Homeless Services has managed to not pass even the low bar of these guidelines.
This is only one of many examples, large and small, of the actions, methods, policies and spending patterns of Nashville’s Office of Homeless Services that stretch the bounds of any credulity to align with the models and best practices it preaches.
Public record details repeated patterns of vital service contracts for the unhoused collapsing just as they are needed most, lapses in provisioning of wraparound services, duplication by Metro Employees of services already or previously provided by existing organization, and operating practices that do not align with the guidelines OHS itself promotes.
They also show spending practices that, if not evidence of gross misuse of public funds dedicated to serving Nashville’s most vulnerable, should require an extremely thorough accounting of what happened inside of OHS causing millions to be spent on things like $6M+ in temporary employees in FY24.
But listening to the OHS leadership discuss the office’s performance, and their request for General Funds monies to replace disappearing federal ARPA funds while they continue to vastly expand their bench of full time employees, would give you no such impression of this chaos under the surface. And it is becoming increasingly risky for those with knowledge of the situation to speak out on the subject.
Throughout this, it is Nashville’s unhoused residents, some of the least powerful people in our society (whose unchosen life conditions are being increasingly criminalized) that are caught in the crossfire.
Tensions have flared between OHS leadership, homelessness advocacy orgs, and the Mayor’s Office, but none of the back channeling and sub-tweeting have successfully answered the core question that the residents of Old Tent City want answered.
“If we transition from Old Tent City, where do we go after that? Beyond the temporary housing provided by OHS, there’s simply nowhere to go.”
If You Built It, Will They Come?
The Office of Homeless Services has rebranded these camp closures as “housing surges.”
The new name is a typical enough liberal euphemism, but the closing of camps has not been met with any meaningful surge of housing. Despite Metro’s $50M investment into ending chronic homelessness allocated in 2022, what residents are being offered is a short-term motel stay and a vague promise of case management.
Those familiar with the process say there has been no observable coordination with the limited open housing slots for the unhoused. Despite its vast resources, ballooning staff (34 FTEs as of this writing, with an additional 18 requested [to transfer from ARPA funds to Metro General funds] for next year’s budget),1 OHS has not lined up any volume of “permanent supportive housing” for Old Tent City residents — despite the provision of permanent housing being the cornerstone of the “housing first” model it allegedly operates under.
New units were supposed to be coming online, like Shelby House from Holladay Ventures, ideal for OTC residents. But Holladay, as per Director Calvin on 5/14/25 pulled out of its arrangement with OHS, returning the money to Metro, and requiring the 14 referrals OHS had placed there to find somewhere else to live.
Director Calvin’s explanation of the crack-up was that Holladay wanted residents placed in those units who did not have sobriety issues, and OHS was unwilling to waver from its allegiance to housing first principles. Other reports allege Holladay dropped the units from circulation because of “lack of direct support from OHS.”
There are similar reports about lack of follow-through from OHS that is putting permanent housing at-risk, the exact type of housing that Old Tent City residents would need if they were actually to transition out of transitional housing.
An anonymous whistleblower complaint was submitted to me about the alleged imminent collapse of a contract for 80 deeply affordably housing units at 1210 Murfreesboro Pike, set up by the development corporation I AM NEXT, Inc. I haven’t been able to independently confirm its allegations, but it aligns with accounts I’ve been told from various sources.
I AM NEXT dedicated 80 units to those exiting homelessness, specifically those that are in Coordinated Entry that are exiting homelessness. This deal also came with a contract stating that OHS is contractually responsible for sending referrals for these units. OHS has not responded to I AM NEXT's referral requests and zero referrals have been made. Per the contract, there is about a 2 week waiting period for a referral once the referral request has been made, then I AM NEXT can move on to leasing the the [sic] general public. Due to the zero response from OHS, the homeless community is at risk of losing these units, just like Shelby House.
My review of the contract in question, worth $7.5M indicates that indeed, the developer is required to only use the 80 units funded through The Barnes Fund to house referrals from OHS. But there is not, if we were to be precise, an obligation for OHS to actually provide these referrals.
It’s unclear why a Department of Homeless Services, with a backlog of thousands of families and individuals who are living out-of-doors, would be unwilling or unable to provide referrals to fill these units.
Even for local government, there is something uniquely chaotic about the way the Metro Department of Homeless Services operates under Director April Calvin.
“Polite bourgeois values are grounded in the ever present threat of the unspoken or else.”
Twenty-four days into the two-month closure plan, my former boss Ron Johnson and I walked around OTC. We were there to build relationships with vocal residents who had recently undersigned a petition to Mayor O’Connell with help from Open Table Nashville.
We hoped to resurrect a meeting for the Mayor to speak with residents. They weren’t getting answers from OHS, and without a grievance policy in place, appealing to higher offices felt like their only option.
A message was being lost in the childish game of telephone between unhoused Nashvillians, service providers, Metro agencies, the Mayor’s Office, and busybodies like me who hope naively that if we could just connect the dots we might start seeing the same picture.
The message from residents: “You’re telling us to leave. Fine. But there’s nowhere to go.”
Outreach workers from OHS appear unable to tell residents what happens if they don’t vacate. The implied threat is criminal charges under HB 978/SB 1610, which took effect July 1, 2022.
This statute made it a Class E Felony to “camp” on public property not officially designated as a campsite. A May 2, 2025 update gave any TN resident the right to call for the eviction of someone living on public land where they shouldn’t. Conviction could carry up to a six-year sentence.
As late as May 14, 2025, Director Calvin’s only response to what happens if someone is not willing or unable to leave Old Tent City by June 2 is to deflect blame onto unnamed “advocacy agencies” who were purportedly telling the residents they did not actually have to vacate by the June 2 deadline.
I cannot independently confirm Director Calvin’s accusations. In my time visiting the camp with various organizers, I have actually only heard residents be encouraged to take up OHS on their support into the Coordinated Entry system, and to leverage transitional housing on the path to permanent housing.
But when asked, even Director Calvin won’t say whether MNPD will be there on June 3rd, cajoling people to leave and arresting those who don’t. Her response pivoted to the aid organizations who by her definition appear not to be team players, and are not “selling” residents hard enough on shacking up at OHS’s one transition location: The Rodeway Inn.
It’s Rodeway, Or the Highway
Unless a resident finds another route, a single transitional housing option is being offered for those leaving Old Tent City, but it doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.
There have been no real solutions from OHS about common needs like having more than one dog, or staying in the same room with an unmarried partner. These are deal-breakers at the sole option: a converted one-star motel at 95 Wallace Road, operated like a prison, residents say. Curfews are mandatory, and “room tossings” are allegedly common.
At the aforementioned May 14 meeting, Director Calvin’s update on finding a solution for a resident who is living in an RV and has 8 dogs, is that OHS is “exploring creative housing options” — not much progress for 45 days into a 60 day closure, with imprisonment the potential threat for noncompliance with Metro’s arbitrary deadline.
Security Support services2 are handled by a vendor hired last minute: Hospitality Hub from Memphis. Director Calvin’s former employer, The Salvation Army, refuted a contract OHS claimed obligated them to provide support at Rodeway. The contract’s “scope of services” didn’t mention Rodeway.
Support services are essential to any Housing First implementation. But some who have worked in facilities that are contracted by OHS, such as Metro’s Strobel House, allege that despite contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, many of the “support service providers” give residents no concrete access to mental health or substance use support.
One especially alarming incident involved a resident at Strobel House who allegedly reported to a staffer, hired by the vendor Depaul, that he was having nightmares and suffering from insomnia. With no guidance on how to connect him with any resources, the staffer reported to me expressing sympathy, but not having anything else to offer him.
[Update: More information has been provided about what was done regarding reports of the alleged assailants mental health issues by Depaul and detailed at the bottom of this article.]
A brief time later, on Oct 4, 2024, he knocked on the door of another resident. He requested a cigarette and then suddenly stabbed the other resident repeatedly, and fled the scene. An audio recording of the court proceedings I obtained indicate that another person was initially suspected by MNPD and was held in some form of custody. But only after a security guard peer support specialist3 at Strobel House “followed his gut” and checked a trash can, did he find the assailant’s bloody clothes in a trash can and the alleged assailant was arrested.
It’s currently unclear who is providing support services at Strobel House. Some statements by Director Calvin indicate that her own staff is now delivering these services. If that is the case, it’s unclear if Depaul, the firm contracted to operate the facility and provide support services, is also being paid for this. And this lack of transparency with OHS is typical.
In researching the stabbing of Oct 4th, there actually were no media reports confirming that it took place at Strobel House, nor were there statements by OHS notifying the public or the Nashville’s formal homelessness system known as a “Continuum of Care.”
When I inquired to the Metro Council Member whose district Strobel House is in, he had no recollection of being notified of it, or was it a familiar event to anyone I spoke with on various committees in the Continuum of Care.
When I asked OHS directly if this event involved Strobel House residents, I was given a non-denial denial by its Public Information Coordinator, Demetris Chaney Perkins.
What we can affirm is that resident safety remains our top priority. Strobel House, like all supportive housing programs under our partnership network, has safety protocols in place, including secured entry, on-site staff, and coordination with public safety agencies when incidents occur in or near the facility.
The Office of Homeless Services collaborates closely with Metro agencies whenever public safety concerns arise, and we stand ready to support impacted individuals through trauma-informed care, behavioral health resources, and housing stability services when appropriate. We work closely with property management, law enforcement, and case managers to ensure the wellbeing of all individuals on site.
It was only after I obtained court documents from the Metro Clerk’s office that I had confirmation that not only did this involve Strobel House residents, it took place within Strobel House, and for an extended period of time, the wrong person was detained on-site while the alleged perpetrator moved freely, attempting to hide evidence of the “especially aggravated assault.”
On-site responding to that incident, allegedly, was Director Calvin.
This is all a tangent. These are things, some submitted as fact in court records, some expressed to me as first person accounts, at Strobel House, not The Rodeway Inn.
Yet Strobel House is meant to be Nashville’s shining light on a hill, offering best in class support services as a model of what we can do when we set our minds to it. Ranking elected officials have said in stump speeches “what we need is dozens more ‘Strobel Houses'.”
But if we don’t have a clear picture of what’s happening in a building a three minute walk away from City Hall, how can we reasonably expect to know what’s happening at the Rodeway Inn? Or at whatever place Old Tent City residents end up in after Rodeway?
For those I spoke with, Rodeway’s poor conditions aren’t the main issue. Most would accept temporary hardship for a better future. But the truth is, that after their stint in Rodeway, there is virtually nowhere to go, even for those able to pay rent.
The Landscape as I See it
(And please correct me where I’m wrong michaeltlacy@gmail.com)
There are few deeply affordable units, and no new vouchers to access them. MDHA, the middleman between HUD and Nashvillians, is offering none. Zero.
With HUD facing over 40% cuts, this may become the new normal. Metro has discussed creating its own vouchers, paying market rate to landlords directly.
In 2022, Nashville touted a $50M investment into services for the unhoused, meant for permanent supportive housing and relief for the chronically homeless. Many are being relocated in ways OHS claims are “trauma-informed” and aligned with “Housing First” practices, and the assumption is that they are going to be placed in the permanent supportive housing that all that funding went towards.
But my interviews with residents, providers, Council Members, and review of contracts, court documents, and financial records tell a different story.
A narrative has emerged in the time I’ve been studying this, the story of a fragile ecosystem unraveling, and an ongoing coup within the network that serves Nashville’s most vulnerable.
I see a concerted effort to diminish the voice of trusted agencies, and I’ve heard of retaliation against critics and people holding multi-million dollar contracts left on read.
I hear doublespeak and fiction dressed as progress, while staff grows to support the illusion. Behind that: grim truths told by dollars, contracts, placements, and units.
I’ve read consultant reports worth $750,000, obtained outside Metro procurement channels, which say all the right things (and mostly the same things that previous, far less costly reports claimed) — but between the lines they steer us away from solving homelessness, and towards erasing the sight of the visibly homeless. At any cost.
I look back and see that we had an opportunity, using ARPA funds, the silver lining of the last great catastrophe, to integrate the complex systems behind housing insecurity. That chance has been squandered. Instead, something that no one at Old Tent City, or Brookemeade Park, or at the Rescue Mission asked for is being built: an army.
An army increasingly fed from Metro Nashville’s general budget—a top-down hierarchy that has built its barracks with federal funds intended for the most vulnerable.
This army writes media restrictions into contracts. It duplicates existing service roles that already exist in the broader community, increasing liability for Metro while sidelining trusted partners. It hires PR staff to film its director’s every move at the same time it “can’t afford” to pay a vendor market rate for winter shelter staffing. It submits extraordinary travel expenses, millions in temporary employee costs, and tens of thousands in overtime.
This is not an army of salvation. It’s an army of self-justification.
With no proof it can solve complex problems using a low-complexity hierarchy, it still demands more staff, more funding.
The endgame may be to starve out independent agencies—those who ask hard questions like, “How is this Housing First?”—and to make itself too big to fail.
Time and time again my interviewees ask: “How can they say this is Housing First?” or “We’ve told him what’s happening, why isn’t he stopping her?”
And I have to ask: “Is it possible they’re doing exactly what is expected?”
Are these outcomes a feature, not a bug? Is sweeping away the most visibly homeless, at any cost, with just enough lip service to ‘trauma informed’ and ‘Housing First’ and Dr. Sam Tsemberis, their end in of itself?”
I have asked OHS repeatedly for figures and interviews.
I actually had an interview scheduled with Director Calvin. Two hours before it was to take place, her office postponed it by a month without explanation. I was honestly surprised, based on my prior inquiries of her office, my broad FOIA requests, and my general just being me, that the interview was agreed to at all.
But in truth, I wasn’t going to grill her.
What interests me is her worldview.
What I really wanted to ask about was salvation—in the truly theological sense. About the role of material support in our spiritual journeys. I’ve read some fascinating articles by Jason Davies-Kildea, a long time Salvation Army officer just like Ms. Calvin, who writes about the fundamental ideological tension inside the corps.
There is a majority view in the Salvation Army, he says, based firmly in the Methodist teachings of its founder William Booth, that essentially says that the whole of the law is contained in its motto “Soup, Soap, and Salvation.” But the salvation part, the changing of the moral character of the subjects of care, is the primary, even the exclusive goal to many in the Salvation Army.
The point is to bring you to Jesus. The “social service stuff,” he quotes another officer as saying “can get in the way.”
It is this theological bent of the Salvation Army that makes it fundamentally unaligned with the notion of “Housing First.”
But Davies-Kildea, is not of this view. He is a proponent of the heterodox perspective that providing care, providing things like housing and food, is sacrament in and of itself.
He seems to be edging towards a non-dualistic interpretation of the divine, the sacred that appears before us when we humble ourselves in service — treating the least of these not as the objects we must manage, but as the subject of our divine worship.
This aligns only too well with Dr. Sam Tsemberis in his seminal text Housing First: The Pathways Model to End Homelessness for People with Mental Illness and Addiction
However, the most radical aspect of the approach is… that the client’s perspective is the fundamental value that influences every measure taken.
pp 239
Suddenly the perspective is changed; the client is the expert and the staff assists him/her to achieve the goals.
pp 239
The principles of Housing First are: housing as a basic human right; respect, warmth and compassion for all clients; a commitment to work with clients as long as they need it; scattered-site housing; independent apartments; the separation of housing and services; consumer choice and self-determination; a recovery orientation; and harm reduction.
pp 237
If she had taken the interview, the thing I would been most interested to learn from Ms. Calvin is where does she fall on this spectrum that Jason Davies-Kildea describes as existing within the Salvation Army corps, though I think we can see it manifest everywhere in our society, and most especially in those who seem drawn, for whatever reasons, to those who need help.
This whole story feels like a puzzle, with pieces scattered all over our city. But as I start to put them together, I’m beginning to see a bigger picture of what’s colliding in our larger world.
Sometimes, I view it through the lens of spiritual forces — each one sacred in its own way, grounded in something pure. But if taken too far, these forces start drawing tighter and tighter circles around who belongs, who counts, who gets helped. Eventually, they become toxic. They lose sight of their original purpose and focus only on self-preservation.
Other times, I see the whole system more mechanically: as a network of causes and effects that act in predictable ways, deceiving us into thinking we can control their output. But these predictable nodes combine in unpredictable ways, and our grasp on omnipotence is humbling. Or at least it should be.
No matter how much we try to control complex systems by centralizing resources or organizing programs, they often resist simple solutions.
The key lesson from systems theory is this:
You can't solve a complex, higher-level problem using a lower-level, overly simple solution.
And the people allowing OHS to operate the way it does — I think they already know that.
So that leaves me with this question:
If they're not really trying to solve the root causes of homelessness,
what exactly are they trying to solve?
🏠
Sam Tsemberis, Ph.D, the founder of the “housing first” methodology will be speaking at OHS’s “2025 State of Homelessness Symposium”, among other speakers including Mayor O’Connell, on June 4, 2025.
Register for OHS’s 2025 State of Homelessness Symposium
Oct 4, 2024 Strobel House Incident Update
Updated on May 18, 2025
These additional details have been provided from the former staffer who spoke with me about this event.
I'm not sure if it's necessary to edit but I want to clarify that I did notify the Strobel House director and case management about the resident reporting having nightmares and suffering from insomnia. Also, the previous day, another staff had reported strange behavior from this same resident.
It is protocol for Strobel House staff to call the non emergency number who would then contact mobile crisis if the resident request it or displayed or threatened harm or violence.
Since none of that was the case, I documented it in the shift report notes and sent it to all staff, case managers and the program director.
I'm not sure what Strobel or OHS did with the information but the stabbing incident occurred roughly one month later.
You are right on point about Depaul USA not providing the support services that they were contracted to provide. This also helps explain why OHS has now placed designated staff to oversee Strobel.
The people are paying twice for supportive services that are still being outsourced to existing service providers. It's so bad...sometimes residents are denied treatment when they go to the ER from Strobel House.
Correction Edit, modified 5/18/25 10:55 pm CT
As per Fox 17, the 18 FTEs mentioned are being discussed would transferred from one-time ARPA funds to the Metro General budget, not net new positions as was previously implied before this update.
Correction Edit, modified 5/19/25 2:53 pm CT
A prior version of this article identified these services as “security” rather than “support” services. While accounts of what Hospitality Hub is performing at Rodeway, including instituting curfews and searching the belongings of residents entering and exiting (accounts I was provided from OTC residents who were in contact with those at Rodeway), Hospitality Hub is labelled in its contract as “providing case management, resource referral, and housing navigation”. That contract is provided below for review.
Correction edit, modified 5/21/25 2:45 pm ET
This employee was identified as a security guard, but a former staffer of Strobel House corrected me that his position is a “peer support specialist.”