The community around City Road Chapel
All names with an asterisk are pseudonyms.
In mid-January, Nashville experienced a record-breaking snowstorm. More than 7 inches of snow blanketed the city, with Jan. 15 seeing more snowfall in a single day than Nashville typically gets during the entire winter season. Frigid temperatures kept the accumulation from melting for several days, making for a cold, icy week.
Most Nashvillians sheltered in their homes during the storm, but the city’s unhoused population didn’t have that luxury. Metro opened an extreme cold weather overflow shelter to expand access to more people in need, and the city’s network of homelessness-focused organizations sprang into action. The temperatures were deadly, and all hands were needed on deck.
One such organization was The Beat, which we met in April 2023 in the first installment of this three-part series. The first two pieces in the Scene series sought to give voice to people who are closely affected by the homelessness crisis: those who live it and those who work to end it. This one is more ellipsis than period, as — broadly speaking — little has changed since this time last year. But as we’ll see, there have been smaller-scale wins that could point to a way forward for everyone.
The Beat was founded by Darrin Bradbury, a folk musician turned outreach worker who initially operated under the pseudonym “Mother Hubbard.” Part of The Beat’s ethos is a commitment to flexible, on-the-fly action, so when the snow began to fall, Bradbury teamed up with the Rev. Jay Voorhees of City Road Chapel to open an emergency warming shelter in the church’s basement.
Additionally, Bradbury and his team of volunteer workers — most of whom are formerly unhoused themselves — ventured out into Madison to perform welfare checks and distribute propane tanks to people still staying at encampments. The Beat was able to do this via real-time grassroots fundraising during the storm, raising $7,000 from “mostly small donations,” primarily through social media. All proceeds went directly toward necessities for those in need.
Darrin Bradbury
“We hosted and fed 40 people per night while simultaneously providing $1,000 worth of propane each night to those stranded in camps,” Bradbury says. “The money was crowd-sourced, and the total head count was about 200-plus folks still out in camps [during the storm]. We did this during the thick of night in case anyone needed emergency services, and provided this service for the duration of the storm.”
Since its inception in early 2023, The Beat has carried out several other DIY, spur-of-the-moment efforts, like setting up another temporary shelter at City Road last summer after an encampment closure left a dozen people with nowhere to go. In addition to offering them a safe place to stay, The Beat helped move half of the group into other shelters.
Not all organizations can operate with that level of agility — most are hamstrung by lack of funding, red tape, understaffing or some combination thereof — but several unhoused people expressed to the Scene that they hope to see more like-minded, quick-thinking efforts as homelessness continues to grow in Nashville. While 2024 data is not yet publicly available, the Metro Development and Housing Agency’s 2023 point-in-time count saw an 11 percent increase in unhoused Nashvillians from 2022.
Jen Alexander is a longtime vendor and writer for local street paper The Contributor. Having bounced around the country for years, she settled in Nashville because she “fell in love with the people.” Her first experience with homelessness in Nashville was shortly after the deadly May 2010 flood that killed more than two dozen people regionally and displaced more than 10,000.
“People had come together and said, ‘Oh, my God, these people have lost their homes — they’ve lost everything,’” says Alexander. “Everyone just rallied together and helped everybody out. And people were not rude to you because you were homeless. They were fabulous.”
Around that time, Alexander found refuge at Room In The Inn, which she says — along with The Contributor — saved her life. Her more recent stint with homelessness was anything but “fabulous,” though. After leaving Room In The Inn and living in Hadley Park Towers for a decade, she found herself once again without a home. She then discovered that Room In The Inn no longer accepts women, so she slept on the street for nearly three months, spending the night in the downtown bus station when she could.
“I was never treated so badly in my life as I was treated this last time,” she says. “I was only homeless for two-and-a-half months, and I’ve never been spoken to so rudely. I’ve never been treated so badly. I was spit upon. It was awful.”
Alexander specifically hopes the city can invest in hiring more outreach workers, particularly to serve aging people experiencing homelessness as well as other less visible unhoused populations — groups including women, children and people of color. She understands the scope and complexity of the problem but can’t grasp why more isn’t being done to help people in need.
“First, I would say [the city] is doing a good job,” she says. “Second, I would say they’re not doing enough. There are just so many people [in need]. There are too many people out on the street. There are too many people crying out for help, and no one’s listening.”
Demetris Chaney, public information coordinator for the Office of Homeless Services, says OHS has hired a manager and two additional staffers for its outreach team. Chaney says that as Nashville is a “Housing First Community,” OHS is primarily “focused on housing creation for our unhoused neighbors.”
“OHS has a robust outreach team,” Chaney writes in an email to the Scene. “Currently, we have acquired a manager and 2 additional positions. They coordinate outreach efforts across the city with multiple nonprofits, ensuring coverage of each quadrant in Nashville Davidson County. We will host weekly service events, monthly resource fairs and schedule cleanups.”
Caroline Lindner is a critical-time intervention caseworker at The Contributor and co-founder of outreach group Nashville Street Barbers. She also sees a need for more robust outreach efforts. She notes that while established processes and policies are necessary to run a successful organization, adhering too strictly to rules can sometimes undermine the efficacy of the work itself. Boots on the ground move quickly — policy change, not so much.
Lindner sees The Beat’s nimble approach as one way to fulfill that need.
“I’ve been in well-organized [nonprofits], I’ve been in not-so-organized ones,” she says. “The biggest thing I see between The Beat and all of the organized, even government-funded [efforts] is that The Beat sticks with you. It supports you, and there are multiple people that support you. And it’s a 24/7 job.”
It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon when The Beat’s outreach team convenes for its weekly meeting in the library at City Road Chapel. Bradbury leads the conversation, with his pitbull mix Albert making the rounds to lick hands and solicit head rubs. First on the agenda is checking in on a friend and neighbor, Ted*.
“He’s back out there [on the street], brother,” David Wooten says. “He’s back in the game.”
You may remember Wooten from part two of the Scene’s series. A photo of him with the Rev. Voorhees was featured on our cover — it was taken on the day Wooten and his wife found out that their yearlong effort to secure a Section 8 voucher was finally successful. Wooten, who uses a wheelchair, had been camping in a tent behind the church while his wife stayed at the transitional shelter upstairs — the building is not handicap accessible, so he could not stay in the shelter with her.
Unfortunately, Wooten’s housing situation is also an agenda item, but the group will return to it after making a plan for Ted.
The group throws out names of potential places Ted could go, and a subgroup forms to take the lead on his case. It’s not their first time helping him — The Beat has no cap on how many chances they’ll offer someone in need, with only a handful of exceptions for legal or safety reasons.
Bradbury and several Beat team members live communally. His south Madison home houses a group of formerly homeless people, all of whom share chores and responsibilities to keep things running smoothly. Affectionately named “Hobo House” (a portmanteau of “Homeward Bound,” though Bradbury quips, “Bob Dylan can sing, ‘I am a lonesome hobo,’ and that’s not a problem, but a bunch of people that are actually hobos can’t be hobos”), the home is, thus far, a successful experiment. Each resident has solid employment and maintains a strict commitment to sobriety.
Jeff and Cat were photographed for the first piece, hours before both overdosed and required immediate life-saving medical attention. Now they are both sober, hold steady jobs, live in their own apartment and will welcome their first child later this spring. Both tried rehabilitation and other support programs before, but nothing stuck until The Beat brought them into Hobo House. Jeff credits the group’s persistence, compassion and open-mindedness as a saving grace.
Jeff and Cat
“When we showed up, we were at the lowest point of what could happen in a life,” Jeff says. “It was a downward spiral. And the fact that when we showed up there, Wes and Biddy came out and helped me with my stuff — it felt like somebody picking you back up, and doing it unbiasedly.”
“When we showed up, I sat down in a chair and fell asleep,” Cat adds. “I felt comfortable. I felt safe. Nobody made me feel weird, because they knew that I needed that time.”
Wes and Biddy are two pillars of Hobo House. Wes and his fiancée MacKenzie are the house leaders, and Biddy is integral to outreach efforts and bringing new team members aboard.
Biddy’s journey to Hobo House was a winding one. Having spent much of his youth in and out of prison and mental health facilities, he says he “never thought [he] had a shot.” Later this month, he’ll graduate from Lincoln Tech’s welding technology program. He’s proud of that accomplishment and of his sobriety, which he’s maintained since moving in.
“I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t met Darrin that couple days before my last overdose, I’d still be out there doing the same thing that I was,” Biddy says. “And that’s because I didn’t have anybody. He presented himself and made himself available. And he showed his willingness to help and that he cared. It just took off from there.”
Another agenda item is “Operation Cat Out of the Bag” — an effort to find stable housing for Betty*, a 61-year-old unhoused woman battling colon cancer and other health complications. Betty lives in the woods and does not want to leave her camp, as she takes care of and is closely bonded with five area cats.
Lindner contacted Southern Alliance for People and Animal Welfare, an organization that helps people experiencing homelessness take care of their pets. SAFPAW, Lindner and Betty agreed on a plan that would allow her to keep two cats with her (the housing options they are exploring allow residents to have two pets) and find new homes for the remaining three.
“The thought process was, ‘We have to first figure out what we can do with the cats, and then she’ll start listening and taking care of herself,’” Lindner says. “Laurie Green from SAFPAW, which is based here in Madison, is taking a cat a week and getting it fully vetted, getting it spayed or neutered if it needs it. … Then, Laurie has a relationship with The Catio. So she’s going to take those cats directly to The Catio so they’ll be adopted into families. Betty was very OK with that.”
Back to Wooten. The 62-year-old and his wife used their Section 8 voucher to move into Chippington Towers, an apartment community in Madison for seniors. Both Wooten and his wife found steady jobs after moving in, which proved to be a double-edged sword: Their now-higher income affects their Section 8 eligibility, and even with steady paychecks and disability benefits the pair can no longer afford their rent.
Wooten explains that it took him more than eight months to secure a voucher and then more time to find an available unit within the Section 8 housing system. Now he’s unsure they’ll be able to stay there another month.
“Section 8 isn’t what it’s cut out to be,” he says. “I found a place to get into, and I thought it sounded like a good deal. I get a check once a month, and next thing you know, my check isn’t going to pay the rent.”
“In one way, it was a tremendous blessing because you’re no longer in the tent outside of the church,” Bradbury adds. “But in other ways, it beats you down in the sense of like, this guy was promised help with rent, and now he’s paying a grand.”
There is no easy solution to Wooten’s problem, so the group offers commiseration instead.
As the meeting closes, the conversation turns to January’s makeshift warming shelter, with the team expressing pride in how many community members they were able to serve.
“We walked about three miles in the snow to reach people,” Wes says.
“She was pregnant, waddling down the road,” Jeff adds, pointing to Cat.
“Darrin took heat to everybody, found all the homeless people out there in that terrible snowstorm and took them all propane,” Wooten says.
While the meeting unfolds, team members head in and out of the building to check on Adam*, a longtime community member who relapsed that same afternoon. Adam is visibly upset and a bit unsteady but sticks around for a firm chat with Jim Neely, a retired schoolteacher and City Road member who heads up the church’s Showers of Blessing program, which offers free weekly showers and laundry service. Neely exudes a quiet, paternal energy and sits outside the meeting room with Adam while the group discusses next steps.
“When it comes to that situation and stuff like that, you really need to get a look at somebody and really, really, really keep them under your wing,” Jeff says. “For me and Cat, it’s the same thing. In the past, we would do great, but as soon as we got out there by ourselves, you know, we’d run into someone else [who was using] or we’d hit a trigger.”
The group once again rattles off rehabilitation facilities that could be a fit for Adam. They also consider what might have triggered him to start using again.
“I think this is a trigger,” Wes says, gesturing toward the window. “Just Madison.”
The Contributor vendors line up to purchase papers
“There’s something I would like to point out about your first article,” Alexander tells me, referring to the Scene’s April 2023 piece.
“I think that [piece] reinforced the idea that all homeless people are drug addicts,” she says. “And that’s what I hated most about the article, because that’s just not the case. This 73-year-old woman was homeless. And I know other older — and younger — women who are also homeless, who are not drug addicts.”
Alexander is right. Though each person I met for that first piece was struggling with addiction, there are many people in Nashville who find themselves unhoused for myriad other reasons. Focusing solely on the intersection between homelessness and addiction without acknowledging that it’s only one piece of a much larger whole is a disservice to those other populations.
She explains that drug-related stereotypes not only embolden others to treat unhoused people cruelly but also divert resources away from people experiencing homelessness for different reasons. She offers the example of an elderly person becoming homeless after being scammed financially and losing their savings, though she clarifies that is not what happened to her. She considers educational outreach for aging people as one way to prevent more seniors from becoming homeless.
“The outreach is just not there,” Alexander says. “Outreach for people who are homeless but who are otherwise not burdened … those outreach programs are not available to older Nashvillians who end up homeless … because they’re naive and they don’t have the information they need.”
Alexander explains how elderly people experiencing homelessness struggle even more with visibility, largely due to physical limitations. You won’t find her sitting outside on a hot day, as extreme heat would be an even greater threat to her health than it is for younger people. This lack of visibility can translate to a lack of available resources, as efforts tend to target the most conspicuous groups.
Keith D., The Contributor Vendor
“I spend a lot of time by myself,” she says. “I think a lot of older people do. … Older people are isolated, alone. We need some sort of effective outreach. Please, God, the city of Nashville — find these people. Not only the older people, but the younger people who have become confused and have nobody to point them in the right direction.”
Asked if the city has plans to expand programs for both older people experiencing homelessness as well as the broader aging community, OHS rep Chaney writes, “Metro has multiple departments that serve the aging population of which our unhoused citizens qualify based on their age, social security benefits and housing needs.”
Alexander was fortunate enough to connect with The Contributor, which offered her not only a way to make a living but a platform for her voice as a writer. While she was grateful for a means to help pay the bills, she says the opportunity to express herself through writing is “the life-saving quality of The Contributor.”
“I have a brain,” she says. “And people who think I’m homeless don’t think I have a brain, and don’t think I can contribute in any way. Writing for The Contributor was a way to prove I had a brain and to keep my mind sharp. It was a way to be a whole person. Without that, I wouldn’t have had the ability to be a whole person, to even look at myself as a whole person. It helped me remain who I was.”
Alexander believes she will experience homelessness again in her lifetime, primarily due to her age, as it will become increasingly difficult for her to earn a living wage. She loves her current housing in a residential neighborhood but is uncertain how long she’ll be able to stay there.
“It’s the most charming place I’ve ever lived,” she says. “The architecture just sets my heart aflutter. People are very kind, and it’s very quiet. You know, for an old woman, it’s sort of perfect.”
I ask Alexander what she would change about Nashville if she could snap her fingers and make anything happen.
“I don’t have the answer,” she says. “There’s no way I have the answer. I just think that people need to realize that people who are homeless need their help. We need helpers. We need people who will identify people who have been left behind, who have found themselves lost in the big city. … The thing that I most care about these days is, how can all of us help everybody else?”
In my email conversation with Chaney, I ask what could be done to help OHS better face the obstacles that inevitably present themselves when trying to tackle a problem as large and complex as homelessness in Nashville. Chaney points to limited community capacity as one obstacle, “as the Homelessness Planning Board Chair continues to remind [OHS] that the same few organizations are applying for funding.”
“Research shows that this is national issue, not a Nashville [issue],” Chaney writes. “Consequently, we are enhancing community training options and looking for ways to strengthen collective impact. For example, we recently trained 250 community partners and leaders on Housing First practices. We are seeking ways to decrease Continuum of Care meetings to offset volunteer fatigue.”
To a similar question, Bradbury answers: “The issue is fluid, not static. Invest in people, not shiny new buildings. Hire Metro outreach workers who get out of the car and meet folks where they are at. Work with community partners. Fund a shelter in each neighborhood that has the type of housing instability that Madison has. Empower other nonprofits to call out Metro without fear of repercussion.”
On May 10, The Beat will host a fundraising concert at Amqui Station in Madison. Performers include Becca Mancari, David Dondero and Bradbury himself, with state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) slated to speak. Beat worker and Hobo House resident Claire Annette Possum will showcase her artwork, which will be for sale. There’s a $10 suggested donation at the door, with all proceeds going directly to The Beat.
Like Alexander, The Beat understands the power of coming together for a collective purpose. The team hopes this second year in operation will bring even more growth than the first one did. During the outreach meeting, team members express sincere gratitude for how their lives changed in the past year, and for having the opportunity and resources to help other people improve their lives, too.
“What if we could just keep coming together more and more, and keep engaging with the people that are in our communities?” Wes wonders. “They may be unhoused, but they’re still in your community. They’re still your neighbors. And we’re supposed to ‘love thy neighbor’ as we love ourselves, right?”
Facing a housing crisis and an opioid epidemic, many Nashvillians struggle just to survive
Talking to outreach specialists at nonprofits City Road Chapel, Open Table Nashville and The Beat about the city’s housing crisis
The community around City Road Chapel
