Joey Garrison

jgarrison@tennessean.com

Two weeks ago, Marilyn and Wayne Dickerson loaded up their 1997 Ford Escort en route to Florida. The Jackson, Tenn., couple had planned on making the Sunshine State their new home. But things took a drastically wrong turn during a pit stop in Nashville when their car was stolen.

The vehicle recently popped up, but they can't afford the fee to retrieve it from a towing company. That's forced them to try to make do in Nashville.

Marilyn has found a bed to sleep at Room in the Inn downtown. Wayne hasn't been so lucky and has spent his nights on the street.

"Every city's got places that will feed the homeless, but we've not seen anybody that will help us get our stuff back so we can pick up the pieces of our broken lives and start over," Wayne Dickerson said.

“It takes a one-time event and things start spiraling out of control," Marilyn Dickerson said. "It don’t seem like Christmas.”

Homelessness in Nashville rose 9.8 percent from 2015 to 2016, according to a new national study — the sixth-largest leap among major U.S. cities.

Meanwhile, two out of five homeless people in Nashville, or 40.3 percent, are experiencing chronic homelessness — defined as lacking shelter while also having repeated medical issues, mental illness, substance abuse disorders or remaining homeless for long stretches. That percentage tops all cities.

The sobering findings are detailed in the 2016 United States Conference of Mayors' Hunger and Homelessness Survey released Wednesday. The 34th annual study, conducted through a partnership with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, included participation from 39 cities. Nashville's data was compiled by the Metro Development and Housing Agency in June.

Everyone has their own story.

The numbers illustrate a homeless struggle in Nashville that has worsened even as the city prospers economically on many fronts. Rising housing and rent prices in Nashville have made housing affordability more elusive than ever, forcing more people to the streets, homeless advocates say.

Figures are based on a single-day, point-in-time count of homeless individuals in Nashville taken Jan. 28 and compared with a single-day count from the previous year.

Nashville homelessness jumps 5 percent, report says

In all, 2,365 people in Nashville were counted as homeless in January, with 1,692 counted as being sheltered and 673 classified as unsheltered.

Nashville's latest year-over-year increase is nearly double the 5 percent jump that occurred from 2014 to 2015. Only Austin, Texas; Oklahoma City; Washington D.C.; Cambridge, Mass.; and Los Angeles had greater overall homeless percentage increases than Nashville's 9.8 percent jump.

Homelessness in Nashville has cumulatively risen by 5.8 percent since 2009. That's counter to the national count, which has declined by 12.9 percent over that same time and 2.6 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Other statistics in the report related to Nashville include:

Nashville saw a 17.6 percent increase in homeless individuals, fourth overall, behind only St. Louis, Austin and Cambridge. Individuals are defined as homeless people who are not with families.

Nashville has seen the second-highest spike in the U.S. since 2009 in percentage in unsheltered homelessness — 69.1 percent — and the third-highest since last year, 43.3 percent.

At 77.8 percent, Nashville has the second-highest homeless population that is male, trailing only Atlanta.

Metro clears abandoned homeless camps at Fort Negley

Nashville homelessness commission director is leaving

In a statement, Mayor Megan Barry called increasing Nashville's supply of affordable housing and providing resources to those experiencing homelessness a "top priority" for her administration.

"While the numbers provided in this report are disheartening, I am grateful for all of the community partners who have stepped up to create a safe, warm and welcoming environment for the unhoused," Barry said. "Over the coming year, and during the budget cycle, we will continue to seek out more opportunities to provide housing options and supportive services for individuals experiencing homelessness in Nashville.”

Percent change in total homelessness by city, 2015 to 2016:

MDHA spokesman Jamie Berry said additional scouting by skilled outreach workers ahead of January's homeless count accounted for some of the increase in unsheltered homeless reported.

"There was more outreach, and they covered more ground," Berry said.

Samuel Lester, street outreach and advocacy coordinator for Open Table Nashville, a nonprofit that assists the homeless, agreed with the report's conclusion that homelessness is on the rise in Nashville. But he said the real figure is drastically higher than the point-in-time sample suggests in the report.

Lester estimated that as many as 23,000 people in Nashville are experiencing homelessness when taking into account individuals who are in shelters and transitional housing, as well as some 10,000 parents and students who he said are homeless.

He attributed the spike to an increase in Nashville's average cost of rent. The average rent for a one-bedroom unit has increased from $915 a month to $1,129 over the past two years, according to data on rentjungle.com.

"The lack in affordable housing, I think, is the main reason we're seeing this," Lester said.

Findings aren't all negative for Nashville in the new report.

The percentage of homeless people in Nashville who are veterans is 9.7 percent. Though that is higher than the national average of 7.2 percent, Nashville has seen a 38.2 percent decrease in homeless veterans since 2011. The Metro Homelessness Commission recently outlined a goal of ending homelessness among veterans by the end of 2017.

The percentage of homeless families in Nashville decreased by 24.9 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Nashville distributed 7.7 million pounds of food to people in need, a 6 percent increase from last year.

This past year, Barry's administration faced criticism from many in Nashville's homeless community when it enforced a no-encampment policy at Fort Negley, a city park, to disband a large homeless camp.

Individuals experiencing chronic homelessness by city, 2016:

Metro is searching for a new director of the Metro Homelessness Commission after Will Connelly, who held the post for nearly four years, left last month for a job in Denver.

Efforts to combat homelessness from Barry's administration have included new funding to establish a Nashville Outreach Team for Encampments to connect individuals experiencing homelessness with housing and other resources. Metro also has overseen a program called How's Nashville, which, according to the mayor's office, has increased housing for the chronically homeless from 19 a month to 55 per month.

Barry this year led the infusion of $10 million in additional funding to the Barnes Fund for Affordable Housing. There are 500 affordable and workforce units either built or under construction as a result of the Barnes Fund or other Metro-assisted initiatives.

At-large Metro Councilman Jim Shulman, a former chairman of the board of Safe Haven, a Nashville nonprofit that serves homeless families, said it makes sense that homelessness would rise as Nashville's overall population grows.

"I worry that we don't have a good short-term or a long-term solution to dealing with this," Shulman said. "We've been focused on affordable housing, but that's for people who are trying to find housing and have incomes. Now we're dealing with people who probably don't have any income."

In a letter to the mayor's office, Shulman recently raised concerns about Metro's community response plan for cold weather, which outlines the protocol to provide shelter for homeless people during freezing temperatures.

"The problem with the plan is: Do people know what the plan is and does it work?" Shulman said. "I think there's a feeling that it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work then we all need to get back together and figure out how to make it work."

Staff photographer Lacy Atkins contributed to this report. Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.