WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
- A coordinated effort to lower homelessness in Chattanooga is about two years ahead of a goal.
- City efforts have helped reduce red tape needed to get formerly homeless people into housing by tweaking existing programs.
- Workers canvassed homeless encampments to help spread the word and the city’s also working with religious organizations and landlords.
- The city also used federal relief money to open a housing shelter.
After seeing numbers spike during the pandemic, Chattanooga officials are celebrating a 31% reduction in Hamilton County’s homeless population — a decrease that leaders say resulted from an influx of federal funding and a restructured approach to addressing the issue.
According to data from a January count, the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people in Hamilton County decreased from 1,144 in 2022 to 785 in 2023. The latest tally includes 44 children, 50 veterans and 59 domestic violence survivors.
“For any mayor, homelessness is kind of the most wicked problem we face — the most Sisyphean thing we face,” Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly said in an interview. He says “it was the thing that as much as anything kept me up at night.”
Chattanooga experienced “one of the largest increases in homelessness in the nation” during the pandemic, said Richard Cho, a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Hamilton County’s homeless population grew during the pandemic, jumping from 364 unsheltered people in 2021 to 1,008 in 2022. The number dropped to 607 later in 2022, a 39.8% decrease, according to the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition and its partner agencies.
“This shouldn’t be us spiking a football because there’s still far too many homeless out there,” Kelly said, “but it does indicate real momentum and that what we’re doing is working.”
There is a myth in Chattanooga that many of the city’s unsheltered people came from outside the area in recent years, said Mike Smith, executive director of the regional homeless coalition. “People aren’t coming here to live in the streets … even if they do come here, they’re human. We’re going to get them back into housing.”
Smith said that Hamilton County’s decrease in 2023 surpasses a goal set by the federal government to reduce the unsheltered homeless population 25% by 2025.
“We’re two years ahead of schedule,” he said.
Paths to reducing homelessness
City officials have attributed the decrease to several factors. One is extra federal funding available through the American Rescue Plan Act. The relief measure allowed the city to cover moving costs and monthly rent for residents until they were able to receive a housing voucher.
The city has so far used about $860,000 of the almost $3 million it received in extra funding through HUD’s Home Investments Partnerships Program.
The second major factor was HUD’s emergency voucher program. Historically, homeless people would be stuck in a queue alongside already housed people also waiting for a voucher. The department has created a separate pool of vouchers for people experiencing homelessness that allowed officials to quickly place them in housing.
Kelly’s chief of staff Joda Thongnopnua said the city also made a decision to put the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition at the center of its response, adding that the city invested significantly into the organization.
“This was work that over the course of this administration has resulted in us housing over 2,000 people alongside our partners … which is a huge, huge number,” he said.
The city’s support played a key role in allowing partners to better organize homeless outreach, Smith said. Workers canvassed every homeless camp and worked to ensure there wasn’t unnecessary duplication of services.
In the future, the city hopes to encourage more landlords to accept vouchers and is also looking for ways to engage churches and businesses. Thongnopnua said the city has convened a group of faith leaders to gather ideas on how to use their facilities for transitional or permanent housing.
“There’s about 1,000 acres of vacant land owned by churches in Hamilton County, and we’re asking faith-based institutions to think creatively about those parcels of land,” Thongnopnua said.
The city is also looking at other long-term solutions. An estimated 156 people are suffering from chronic homelessness in Chattanooga, meaning they have been homeless for more than a year and have a disabling condition. The best way to address that issue is through permanent supportive housing, Thongnopnua said, and there are 133 units that will become available over the next 18 months.
The city is also establishing a low-barrier shelter using federal funding it received during the pandemic, and the mayor’s office has established a $33 million affordable housing fund.
The Kelly administration hosted a video conference recently to share the news with local service providers. The conference featured remarks from HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge. She praised Chattanooga-area leaders, saying their accomplishments fall in line with commitments in the Biden administration’s House America plan.
Chattanooga is a member of the program, which the federal government launched in 2021 to address the homeless crisis during the pandemic. City spokeswoman Kirsten Yates said in an interview that the city is one of 105 participating communities. It involved meeting several goals, she said, including rapidly rehousing 240 people and creating at least 100 new affordable housing units in 2022, both of which the city surpassed.
Using a housing first model, Fudge said, was a key factor in Chattanooga’s success. The approach prioritizes placing people in permanent housing while also providing support services so they’re less at risk of ending up back on the street.
Homelessness disproportionately affects people of color, Fudge said. In Hamilton County, the January count showed 37% of the homeless population is Black, compared to their being 19% of the county’s overall population.
“Banning homelessness is not the way forward,” Fudge told the 60 people on the video call. “Neither is sweeping encampments or moving them from one area to another. To solve homelessness, we must offer people the housing support and services they so desperately need.”
Thongnopnua said that many people assume drug addiction and mental illness are the primary drivers of homelessness.
“The cities with the highest housing costs have the highest homelessness,” he said, “and that is just something that I think is difficult for people to wrap their heads around because we’re dealing in large numbers.”
Staff writer Ellen Gerst contributed to this report.
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