Housing Last | The Rodeway to Nowhere; Follow-up Thread
Modifications to "Housing Last | The Rodeway to Nowhere" since publishing consolidated here for transparency
On Sunday, May 18 I published a post about Nashville’s Office of Homeless Services.
As I have in the past, I strive to make any update and corrections in a timely and public manner. Because of the especially high profile manner of this story, I’m consolidating them here and publishing via email on May 20 so these updates reach the same level of audience.
You can return to this page in the future to see any updates or corrections as they are made.
Prior to publishing, OHS leadership had an interview scheduled for 5/15/25 which they pushed for one month. This came after several back and forth attempts to connect with them on answers to specific questions and sourcing specific metrics. They were advised that an article would go to publication without their commentary and did not request a review of its content or for further discussion.
Table of contents
Metro/OHS Response
Updates
Clarifications
Corrections
Metro/OHS Response
No commentary has been submitted yet since publication, though it was solicited early Monday, May 19. It will be publicized if and when it is submitted. In an effort to be collaborative and transparent I have also submitted the below attached financials to leaders of Metro Legal, Metro Finance, the Metro Council’s Health and Public Safety Committee, and the Metro Audit Committee.
Corrections & Clarifications
As I often do, I made some edits to grammar and spelling that were caught after publication. I won’t go into detail on those, but you can refer to the original emailed version here.
Updates
Oct 4 incident
More details were provided after posting regarding the Oct 4, 2024 incident at Strobel House. This was provided by the same source who had worked with the alleged assailant and was concerned over his mental health status. This is the same former staffer who asserts that Director Calvin was on-site that night.
The update, which does not alter the contents of what was asserted, can be found here.
Clarifications
Financial Statements
I’ve been asked my citation on statements such as: “It submits extraordinary travel expenses, millions in temporary employee costs, and tens of thousands in overtime” that reference the spending patterns of OHS.
My source for that are records obtained by CM Ginny Welsch which were forwarded to me by a source I have redacted.
While I can’t independently verify the provenance of the financial documents, they do align in formatting and detail to financial docunts I am familiar with from working at Metro Nashville in an office where I had to track budgets across multiple sources. Given its original source (an elected official) and that in broad strokes they aligned with observations I was provided from multiple sources about OHS activity, I feel comfortable making these statements.
I defer to others to investigate more fully the alignment of procurement and allowable expenses detailed in the original documents as they exist in Metro financial records.
I link here to documents as they were submitted to me, though I advise more detailed forensic accounting to start from documents obtained through a formal open records request.
Corrections
But only after a
security guard peer support specialist3 at Strobel House “followed his gut” and checked a trash can
3Correction 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.”“18 new FTEs”
In the initial version of this article, it was stated that OHS was requesting 18 additional staff for FY26. This was an unintentional misinterpretation of reporting on the May 13, 2025 Metro Council Meeting for OHS where the 18 positions discussed were not net new hires, but are proposed to be migrated from one time COVID relief “ARPA” funds, and onto Metro’s General Budget. The article was updated with the following footnote change to the text and accompanying footnote.Despite its vast resources, ballooning staff (34 FTEs as of this writing, with
an additional18 requested [to transfer from ARPA funds to Metro General funds] for next year’s budget),1
1 Correction Edit, modified 5/18/25 10:55 pm CT
As per Fox 17, the 18 FTEs mentioned are being diussed would transferred from one-time Metro General budget, not net new positions as was previously implied before this update.SecuritySupport services2 are handled by a vendor hired last minute: Hospitality Hub from Memphis.
The initial of this version identified Hospitality Hub as providing “security services.” Though reports I have been provided of their activity at Rodeway align with this terminology, I have revised it to “Support services” to more accurately reflect how they are described in their contract with OHS.2 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.