You can't move folks until you've got another place to put them, period.
As for the camp, it's been a full year now and literally nothing has changed on the "government" side of the coin regarding the formal sanctioning of this, or the proposed "new and improved" camp officials were hoping to create. While Doug Sanders and company continue forward progress on procuring the land and laying out campsites, work continues by residents and advocates on the spruce-up: gravel has been laid, tents are now usually quickly available, people and critters are cared for and the camp continues its course towards self governance and "neighborhood" status.
Unfortunately, It's disheartening to me to know that while concerned citizens and advocates pour blood, sweat, tears and money into the camp to increase the standard of living for the folks there, threat of closure hangs over the camp like a toxic smoke.
And by the way, I've got to add here that the continual requests for lists by Metro, while I understand their rationale, seems to be a direct infringement of civil rights, since a police officer would never approach an apartment complex or neighborhood and request the same info from every resident and/or visitor in said neighborhood.
Nashville wants to help homeless, then close Tent City camp
Everyone involved — police, advocates for the homeless, Metro Homelessness Commission members, even the homeless themselves — agrees that Tent City has to close.But no one knows when the camp on the Cumberland River bank downtown will stop being a home for those with nowhere else to go, or nowhere else they want to go to.
Metro Police Cmdr. Damian Huggins told the homelessness commission earlier this month that it's time to put a limit on the number of people living in Tent City and move toward shutting it down.
But since then, things appear to have changed.
* A year at Tent City
"I know we're not going to agree to limit the population right now," Huggins said at Wednesday's homelessness commission meeting.
"I don't want to shut a place down and send someone away without getting help. This is something we need to phase out because we are impacting lives."
Huggins still wants to start a register of people living at the camp.
Metro Police Lt. Nikki Swisher and Huggins said basic information, such as name, age, sex and race, would be included on the register.
Advocates are leery of list
Some advocates said they feared that such a list could be used to restrict services.
Huggins said that is not his intent.
"My hope is to grow a database and share information with groups to coordinate who is receiving services," he said.
"I don't want Social Security numbers, and I don't want any medical history. I just want names to keep track of who is where and who's helping who."
Tent City council members said they don't object to the list as long as it didn't restrict services.
In the past few months, the council — made up of people who live at the camp — has formed a list of rules and regulations to make it a more organized community.
At Wednesday's meeting, they said they hoped to get help from the police in enforcing those rules and keeping troublemakers away from the camp.
Plan includes campsites
Doug Sanders, associate minister of Otter Creek Church in Brentwood and a homeless advocate, took the organization of Tent City a step further, presenting detailed site plans drawn by volunteer civil engineers.
The preliminary plans showed 117 campsites within the 2.41-acre site, but Sanders said that number would be lower.
Jeannie Alexander, a homeless outreach advocate with Park Center, said a survey of residents at Tent City earlier this month showed the population hovering around 50.
Sanders said he hoped to begin moving residents within the next 30 days.
Though Huggins and other central precinct officers had visited Tent City and posted no- trespassing signs on private property surrounding the camp, he said police would not be enforcing the no-trespassing laws until the homelessness commission agreed to do so.
