<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3CaHG7_13mK5ym800" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3CaHG7_13mK5ym800" width="1024" height="683" ><figcaption>Habitat for Humanity of Sumner County is just one of multiple local organizations working to assist the homeless population in Sumner County. HHSC</figcaption></figure>Homelessness in Sumner County is not a new issue. Nonprofit organizations across the county consistently work together to support members of the community that experience homelessness.“I think it’s really hard to capture, because a lot of times everything is seen as a statistic,” Habitat for Humanity of Sumner County CEO Kate Ritchie said. “It’s not seen as a person. I think we’re very fortunate in our jobs that we get to meet people and hear their stories and hear their struggles and put a face to this. They’re just like anybody else in my family, anybody else you would meet at the store. They want a better life just as much as the next person does.”Deborah Alston opened up Stay Warm Shelter in Gallatin 11 years ago, and has been serving the homeless community in other ways for over 20 years.“I have whole families sleeping in parking lots at the Walmart in Hendersonville and the Walmart in Gallatin,” Alston said. “Both parents work, but there’s no affordable housing.”Outside of January and February when Stay Warm’s shelter operates, Alston and her husband help homeless individuals across Sumner County, bringing food, blankets, clothes and other necessities. In the summer, they have a program called Water His Sheep, providing coolers of water and ice to provide water to individuals in need.Alston works with employed and unemployed individuals experiencing homelessness. For those who need to be on disability benefits, she helps them apply. For those who need to go to the doctors, she takes them to appointments.“In order to get any kind of help, you’ve got to have two things: an ID and a birth certificate,” Alston said. “I’ve got plenty of people who don’t have that, so I started a program called First Two, which means we pay for them to get their ID and their birth certificate so that they can go get housing.”Hendersonville Mayor Jamie Clary said that the city has been aware of approximately a half-dozen individuals experiencing homelessness in the city over the past two years.“Homelessness is not a crime,” Clary said. “Trespassing and public drug use is and those are our concerns. Probably four or five times, we’ve had to contact property owners about tents on their private property and remove the people that were trespassing.”Federal action coming?On July 24, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to take a new approach to homelessness that’s focused on “protecting public safety.”The executive order tasks the Attorney General and Secretary of Health and Human Services to seek the “reversal of Federal or State judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees that impede the United States’ policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time” in appropriate cases.It also tasks both offices to provide assistance to state and local governments for the identification, implementation and adoption of maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment and “step down” treatment standards through guidance, grants or other legal means.Section 3 tasks several offices with assessing discretionary grant funding programs and giving priority to states and municipalities that enforce prohibitions on open drug use, urban camping and loitering and urban squatting. Other criteria included enforcing and adopting standards that address individuals who have a serious mental illness or substance abuse disorder, or who are living on the streets, by moving them into treatment centers or other facilities through civil commitment.“I am in favor of forcing people off the street,” Gallatin Cares Executive Director Blake Parks said. “There is no ordinance anywhere which says we’re entitled to let people take over our sidewalks, parks, libraries where it’s affecting our entire community. That’s not helping anyone to become an advocate to alleviate homelessness.”“I used to have some people in the park,” Alston said. “They can’t even go to the park anymore. It makes it harder on me, who’s trying to take care of them. I have to go trekking through some woods.”Will homeless become criminals?Grace Place Ministry Founder and CEO Desnéige Bourret said that her concern is that the executive order will result in the addition of criminal records, debt and trauma to an already dire situation, which would in turn create more barriers to employment, treatment and housing.“Criminalizing homelessness I don’t think helps at all, in any way,” Bourret said. “From a humane perspective, it’s extremely dehumanizing to arrest or fine someone for doing the only thing they can to survive. When you’re homeless, there aren’t a lot of options for where you can just sleep safely.”Bourret said that the root causes of homelessness include mental health, trauma, addiction, job loss, domestic violence and affordable housing.“Across the nation as a whole, the No. 1 cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing,” Bourret said. “When we set up this whole punitive approach to address homelessness, it’s like we’re saying all of these people across the entire nation are guilty of some kind of moral deficiency, and that’s just not the case.”Grace Place Ministry is a long-term life restoration program for single mothers and children who are experiencing homelessness. Families stay with Grace Place anywhere from six to 18 months.“We just help them put life together and help them eliminate risk so that when they leave here they can be independent in the community,” Bourret said.For the last three or four years, the organization has received over 500 requests for assistance per year from single mothers and children. Alongside shifting housing prices, Bourret said that the organization’s requests for help per year has increased, from a previous average of 150 to 200 requests for assistance per year.The time it takes for a family to move through Grace Place’s program and be able to move into their own home has been impacted, causing the need for families to stay with the program longer. The program is able to support five families at a time.“We’ll have a family that’s completed all their goals and they’re ready,” Bourret said. “They’re ready to be independent, but the timeframe that we spend trying to find a place that will actually work within their income margins and affordability has increased dramatically. That is detrimental to a population that is already struggling so much.”United Way Sumner County predominantly works with the Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) population, which refers to individuals whose income is above the federal poverty level but still struggle to afford basic expenses.In Sumner County, United Way CEO Erin Birch said that 39 percent of households are considered to be ALICE or below that threshold, with 30 percent categorised as ALICE households and 9 percent considered to be at poverty level. In Hendersonville, 34 percent of households are classified as ALICE households.According to Birch, rural communities have a higher concentration of ALICE households. In Westmoreland, 59 percent of households are living at the ALICE level. In Bethpage, the number is slightly lower at 54 percent. The number of ALICE households in both Gallatin and Portland is around 45 percent, Castalian Springs has 43 percent of households at the ALICE level and Cottontown has 35 percent.For homes with zip codes within Sumner County in White House, 38 percent of those households are deemed as ALICE households. In Goodlettsville, 42 percent of households with a Sumner County zip code are ALICE households.“These are people that are working but are still struggling to make ends meet,” Birch said. “Often one unexpected expense can put them at the risk of losing their housing.”Birch explained that homelessness in Sumner County may mean living in a car, staying in motels or in the homes of friends and family.“We believe that addressing homelessness requires both emergency support and long-term investment in affordable housing, mental health care, child care and the workforce,” Birch said.United Way collaborates with other nonprofits, faith-based organizations, businesses and local and state governments to provide families with the tools they need to thrive and survive.Birch stated that United Way Sumner County doesn’t take political positions and that the organization remains focused on local solutions to homelessness and housing instability.“We do definitely welcome the attention on the issue of homelessness. It’s really a serious concern in our community and we’re hopeful that any attention on this brings more resources and solutions to the table. Even though we remain nonpartisan, we really support any policy or investments that are helping reduce homelessness and support vulnerable families in our community.”Other services often neededGallatin Shalom Zone offers services that include an afterschool program, summer enrichment camp, an urban leadership program for middle school and high school youth, ESL classes for adults, a hygiene and diaper pantry, a summer street feeding program and hygiene packs for the homeless population.“We’re trying to supplement in other ways to where [families] can keep their lights on, put food on the table and put gas in their tank,” Gallatin Shalom Zone Executive Director Bethany Sullivan said. “We think that if we can provide school supplies or new underwear or even homework help, then that keeps a parent working the hours they need to support their family.”Gallatin Cares works in a program called the Three-Legged Stool, made up of a food pantry, thrift store and its benevolence assistance for housing. The benevolence assistance for housing program is called Shelter Protection, which is designed to help families at risk of losing their shelter and families that are in a place where they can receive shelter coming out of a situation where they were experiencing homelessness.“There’s no answers in Sumner County overall for people that’re homeless, transitioning, can’t afford their ever-increasing rents, have a housing crisis, domestic dispute, health crisis, lose their job,” Parks said. “There’s no good answers. We don’t have a temporary shelter. We don’t have transitional housing. We don’t have starter homes or any of those things in our area. If you can protect the one you’ve got, that’s where we focus all of our assistance.”Parks said that long-term solutions for homelessness need to include services that support individuals in that situation, which includes job training, mental health services, addiction services and family counseling.“We cannot house our way out of homelessness without offering the auxiliary services that people need [for what] got them there in the first place,” Parks said. “That can be anything from choice to addiction, mental health, loss of a job, running from the law, domestic situations. All those things are out there and you can’t shelter your way out of it.”Habitat for Humanity of Sumner County CEO Kate Ritchie said that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the homelessness crisis has been exacerbated.“I think a lot of times, homelessness is cloaked in, ‘Well, they have a drug problem or a mental health problem,’” Ritchie said. “A lot of that is absolutely concurrent, so you can’t just put a Band-Aid on one and hope it fixes the next problem.”Steve Castle oversees Room in the Inn at Hendersonville Church of Christ, a program that provides shelter to 14 men from Nashville from each Sunday night from November to March. Once they arrive at the church, volunteers serve the men a homecooked meal and open a clothing room for them.“Most of the men have struggled at some point with addiction or mental health,” Castle said. “That’s a need that they all have, to get help. There’s programs that Room in the Inn has and other programs like Matthew 25 and Operation Stand Down that can help. Beyond that, they need shelter, a shower, a hot meal and the clothing’s important.”Community Church and Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church also host Room In the Inn programs.Ritchie described services provided by nonprofit organizations as a three-legged stool: emergency housing, transitional housing and homeownership.“There needs to be long-term solutions,” Ritchie said. “There’s no quick shot at this. Everybody is different and this is not just: ‘We’ll send you to treatment for 30 days and everything is better. I wish it was that simple.”</div></body>

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Homelessness in Sumner County is not a new issue. Nonprofit organizations across the county consistently work together to support members of the community that experience homelessness. “I think it’s really hard to capture, because a lot of times everything is seen as a statistic,” Habitat for Humanity of Sumner County...

Homelessness in Sumner County won’t be quick fix

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Homelessness in Sumner County is not a new issue. Nonprofit organizations across the county consistently work together to support members of the community 

Homelessness in Sumner County won’t be quick fix

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