Stone by stone, Jim Dorven built a round, craggy fire pit in a campsite on a wooded hill near the Adventure Science Center. He's been living at the site for four months. The bottom of the deep pit, made up of larger ash-gray stones, provides a foundation for smaller rocks, which stack incrementally up to nearly pebble-sized rocks lining the rim. At its base, near the campsite entrance, is a stone bearing a two-word inscription: "Welcome Home."

The campsite he calls home, however, has been anything but welcoming over the past few weeks. Especially at night. Metro park police have come out several times after dark, knocking around the camps and writing citations for illegal camping.

About a month ago, Metro Parks gave homeless campers a Sept. 15 deadline to leave Fort Negley, a historic site that was grounds for fugitive slaves during the Civil War. Last month, nearly 30 people were living there behind the Adventure Science Center.

Now, maybe fewer than 15 campers remain.

"I haven't been able to light a fire in this pit at night since we found out they'd be out here looking to kick us out," says Dorven, 46, who became homeless earlier this year after losing his job and then his wife in a car accident. "I've been too scared Ranger Rick and his sidekicks would be out here to get me."

Nashville's lack of affordable housing has raised the question of what to do about tent cities like the one Jim Dorven calls home. Makeshift encampments have popped up increasingly over the past few years, comprising roughly 200 sites as of the city's last count. A year ago, at an executive Metro Homelessness Commission meeting, someone asked a pointed question that's only gotten thornier: "Has any community effectively ended homelessness?"

That person was Nashville's new mayor, then At-Large Metro Councilwoman Megan Barry. At that meeting, the commission's director, Will Connelly, outlined a few cities that were making progress. One, Salt Lake City, had ended homelessness for veterans. Others, Seattle and Phoenix, were making progress, he said.

On Monday, a year after that meeting, the commission and several community stakeholders — nonprofits, government workers, people who are homeless, advocates — met to discuss what a sanctioned camp might look like in Nashville. Other cities have conducted similar "encampment visioning" meetings and acted on them. Those meeting in Nashville wondered not only how but why.

In Seattle's case, Mayor Ed Murray — who, like Barry, won a bumpy election and was greeted by an incredibly supportive council — pitched the idea to regulate tent cities rather than dismantle them. Right now, three regulated tent cities are used in Seattle as a sort of stopgap measure while social and outreach workers help people apply for housing. Three more sites were approved in the Emerald City earlier this spring.

Murray was careful to call the regulation a response to a housing crisis. At the time, Seattle was struggling with more than 90 percent housing capacity. The city saw a huge rise in encampments and homelessness over a four-year period, according to data from Seattle's government website.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Nashville is currently at 98 percent housing capacity, according to Metro Development and Housing Agency. The city is struggling to find housing for the 2,200 or more people left homeless on Nashville's streets each year. More than 200 camps were identified in last year's count of people living on the streets and where they lived, according to the Metro Homelessness Commission, which leads the count.

Many of the campers at Fort Negley are on their way to securing a Section 8 voucher, which provides housing subsidies for people in poverty. The long waiting list in Nashville, however, means many won't have the voucher in hand for at least three more months. (See "Vouchsafe," Aug. 27.)

Sam Lester, street outreach coordinator for housing nonprofit Open Table Nashville, says tent-style encampments provide a somewhat safe environment for homeless Nashvillians who may not fit into the traditional shelter model. For example, most of the programs at the Nashville Rescue Mission and Room In The Inn are religion-focused; neither provides shelter for couples or people with pets.

"That might not seem that like a big deal, but many people feel safer in a camp with people they know than alone at the mission," Lester says. "And people with pets who are homeless face a lot of criticism, but for some people, animals are their only companions. Some are also struggling with mental illness, and that's difficult to manage in a place like the mission. It takes a complex solution to address homelessness."

Eric Tars, senior attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty in Washington, D.C., says the rise in camps here corresponds directly to Nashville's affordable housing shortage.

"The majority of people who become homeless is because of lack of affordable housing," Tars says. "Nationally, 25 percent of people are spending more than 50 percent of income on rent. Those people are one missed paycheck or car breakdown or medical expense away from eviction."

In Nashville, the problem is potentially much worse because of the lack of housing, Tars says. If cities do choose to disband tent-style encampments, he explains, four things need to happen: preparation and adequate time for outreach workers to plan; collaboration with every party involved; intensive one-on-one outreach; and low-barrier housing in the city.

"Otherwise, you're spinning your wheels," Tars says. "You're shuffling people from one area to another without solving the real problem, which is that these people don't have a place to live."

Tars is quick to add that regulating and permitting tent cities is neither an overall humane nor permanent solution to homelessness. An August 2015 U.S.Interagency Council on Homelessness report did not endorse using tent cities as a permanent solution to homelessness, but as more of a stopgap measure as people search for housing.

Handing out citations while people wait and giving only a short period of time to move out is just "shuffling the deck," Tars says. He adds that "forced dispersal without adequate housing in the city" is an inappropriate solution to camps.

"Criminalization is never a good approach," Tars said. "It only puts further barriers between homes and homelessness. Once you have a citation on your record that you obviously cannot pay, often that will turn into a bench warrant and then an arrest."

Once an individual has an arrest record, applying for a job or housing becomes even more difficult for someone living on the streets, he says.

Nashville could pay a price for criminalizing homelessness, Tars says. A recent Department of Justice ruling said arresting people for sleeping on the streets when they have no other options is illegal. Because of that ruling, according to Tars, federal funding applications with Housing and Urban Development — which gave $1.7 million to Nashville last year — will now include a question asking if the community is working toward ending the criminalization of homelessness.

"Writing citations and jailing people, which is incredibly expensive, is not an effective use of resources," Tars says. "So the new condition for federal grants around whether communities are taking that approach could amount to the loss of some very real dollars."

So far at Fort Negley, three campers have been given five citations total. Three were civil citations six days after the deadline to move out. Two campers were brought additional criminal citations on the seventh day, which come with a court date.

Tars says at least three to six months is an appropriate timespan to disperse camps. In Nashville, campers were given about a month to disperse. At least two similar camps here have been shut down the same way over the past year, according to Open Table's Lester.

Regulating tent cities doesn't come without controversy, though. Some argue that permitting even small numbers of campers goes against the idea of permanent housing. There are also concerns about proper waste disposal and health risks that come with sleeping outside. Yet Lester says those issues could be dealt with in a way similar to Seattle's regulated tent cities.

"If you set up city services to carry out the necessary activities to carry out daily life, like garbage pickup and restroom facilities, that could eliminate health risks," Lester says. "And one problem, which often leads to the issue of tearing down these camps, is that occasionally there are people within camps that are disruptive to the whole community. But if you had permits as well, other campers — who, by the way, don't want those disruptions either — would be safer by being accountable to that permit."

The Metro Homelessness Commission's Connelly says he's always open to "stealing other great ideas" from cities like Seattle that are working toward ending homelessness. The commission is meeting again Oct. 13 to discuss whether — or how — to regulate tent cities.

"We just need to look at whether sanctioned tent cities are something we'll use as part of our response," Connelly says. "Homelessness is a complex issue that will take a complex solution."

That's because an unexpected storm of events can cause the solution to crumble, no matter how carefully it's put together — much like Jim Dorven's fire pit.

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