Lots of stuff on pads
Vice Mayor Jim Shulman's discussions on outdoor homelessness this week misled Nashvillians and left attendees confused and frustrated.
Eternal thank-yous to Nicole (@startleseasily) for editing and explaining the nuanced, existing efforts across multiple government levels and agencies to support unhoused Nashvillians.
Vice Mayor Jim Shulman convened two events on homelessness this week, which he termed charrettes. These events responded to growing media coverage, criticism of Metro by housed and unhoused Nashvillians, and missteps by the Mayor’s Office regarding an encampment at Brookmeade Park in West Nashville. Over a hundred people met over two nights at the Downtown Library.
Incomplete information available to attendees, as well as the meetings’ poorly defined premise and lack of agenda, left many frustrated and confused. Shulman and Patsy Cottrell, a retired Tennessee Court of Appeals judge and chief compliance officer under Mayor David Briley who played a sort of emcee role, struggled to facilitate discussion. The stated goal of the meetings—to create a plan to address outdoor homelessness, with the term ‘outdoor’ defined in contradictory ways throughout the meeting— openly defied the city’s existing blueprints to support Nashvillians without housing. These include the Homelessness Planning Council’s Strategic Community Plan (2019), a part of HUD’s Continuum of Care program that coordinates services within Davidson County, and the Affordable Housing Task Force Report (2021), which articulates steps for tackling the city’s housing shortage. According to Metro Homeless Impact Division (MHID) interim Director Jay Servais in a Tennessean op-ed Tuesday, there is a mysterious long-term plan that is coming out very soon as well.
The Vice Mayor failed to mention any of these resources, despite the fact that they encompass highly relevant subject matter. Instead, Shulman repeatedly implied that the city had no plan to address outdoor homelessness or homelessness in general, stating towards the end of the meeting: “We’ve spent 30 years at this, we don’t have a plan. But it’s time to have a plan.”
Whether his statements referred to a plan not developed that night or any city plan, Shulman repeated some version of “we have no plan” dozens of times. In context, his statements were ambiguous and misleading.
Frustration on all sides defined both meetings. Jim Shulman was frustrated that the meetings weren’t producing the short- and long-term plans that he had tasked the room with developing in six hours with sharpies, poster paper, and a couple of guiding questions. Patsy Cottrell was juggling facilitation, microphone duties, and cross-talk. Attendees were frustrated by the branches of conversation that appeared and evaporated with each new speaker and, later, by Shulman’s abdication of any relevant legislative or political power, a refrain he adopted halfway through Wednesday’s session.
“Try to give me all the power you want but I don’t have a lot of power,” Shulman said in response to a question about who has any power to act on any of these recommendations. “The power is in you all. The power is in the people,” he explained. He later emphasized that the power was in the Mayor’s Office. Often split over other issues, criticism of John Cooper united the entire room. The Mayor’s absence and decisions earlier this month did not help the perception that Cooper’s office is out of touch and unconcerned with homelessness in Nashville.
A confusing system of facilitation further complicated matters, with Cottrell passing microphones around the room and allowing attendees to speak for arbitrary amounts of time. When Cottrell determined that time was up, she stepped closer to a speaker and reached for the microphone. Cottrell was later joined in microphone-passing by Servais, who used the opportunity in between speakers to defend his office and MHID. No one knew what was happening now or next or how to contribute anything useful.
Tuesday hosted small group discussions with share-outs. About 150 people attended, split into eight-person tables. Each table had a sharpie and easel-pad poster paper. Besides a few discussion prompts, the meeting lacked an agenda. In theory, Cottrell was there to facilitate, with Shulman sometimes stepping to the mic. In practice, groups, largely made up of strangers, were expected to self-facilitate discussion and use poster paper to keep track of ideas. Cottrell allowed the groups fifteen minutes to discuss the first prompt, “Once a plan is implemented, how would you define success?” and over an hour on the second prompt, what kind of “short-term and long-term plans” individuals would like to see. Cottrell advised groups to define the meaning of short- and long-term for themselves. Between topics, individuals walked up to the mic in the front of the room to volunteer their thoughts and report out on small group discussions.
It was not clear how any of these exercises would translate into a cohesive plan to address the complicated causes and effects of homelessness and housing instability. It was even less clear how such a plan, once drafted, will be adopted, or by whom, or why. The front of the room provided little guidance, with instructions that were unclear and even contradictory at times. For example, Patsy Cottrell initially encouraged groups to focus discussion on outdoor homelessness, explicitly including encampments. She handed the microphone to Judith Tackett, who recently resigned from her role as MHID Director citing a toxic work environment. It was assumed that Tackett was there as a private citizen. When she spoke, Tackett redefined the term outdoor homelessness and seemed to categorize encampments differently. Before groups began discussing long- and short- term plans, Cottrell advised groups to keep to what is “feasible and possible,” to “keep resources in mind,” but told groups not to “limit ideas because of resources.” You can parse Cottrell’s instructions here and here.
Even so, many attendees left hopeful, relieved to be discussing critical issues and under the impression that recommendations would cohere on Wednesday and influence decision-makers like the Vice Mayor.
Wednesday’s meeting started with more poster paper—this time on easels—where groups’ notes from the previous day had been categorized and consolidated. Shulman went over each bullet and solicited input from the room. Almost an hour in, when Shulman appeared to open Q&A, a woman spoke about her experience without housing. She shared her experience navigating Nashville’s shelter system and living outside, was not given the microphone, and was eventually cut off by a mic’d up Shulman. In the absence of organization, these kinds of arbitrary power dynamics defined the meeting. They valued individuals’ voices differently—long-time direct care provider, minister, and Room In The Inn founder Charles Strobel got the mic for five minutes to talk (movingly) about his time working with unhoused individuals in Nashville. Rebecca Lowe, Reclaim Brookmeade organizer, was actually given the floor by Cottrell to answer another attendee’s question. Lowe, too, was eventually cut off by Cottrell.
Lucid explanations about Nashville’s increasing shortage of units, how to keep them affordable, and how to stand up wraparound services to support residents mixed with rants about threatened property values and why we must “eliminate the camps.” Wednesday ended with a few consensus recommendations, none made with any kind of formal approval process. With no clear next steps or followup systems in place, one attendee tried to assign tasks and delegate responsibility for reporting back to the group. Shulman left the group with a promise to be in touch via email and the parting words, “There’s a lot of stuff on those pads.”
Unfortunately this fits squarely in the non-politics of our city, the dominant mode of governing since the resignation of Megan Barry. The Mayor, touting NDOT as his top accomplishment, is obsessed with strategic planning and bureaucracy. This council has been defined by a total lack of legislative priorities. Even Sara Beth Myers, a challenger in next year’s DA race profiled earlier this week by the Scene, defined her campaign on reorganizing the office into precincts and holding community listening sessions. Hopefully more details about her platform will materialize.
Shulman’s charrettes left out critical information. Lacking facilitation, an agenda, or a convincing purpose, attendees left unfulfilled.A good faith event amounted to an unserious attempt to address outdoor homelessness that was more concerned with managing the public’s perception of the problem than developing solutions. Shulman invited more people into the political process only to discourage them, a loud echo of the June 2, 2020 council meeting when Shulman told off residents waiting to give public comment. Seeing how government officials treat the “wrong types” of civic engagement made a lot of people, including me, pay closer attention to Metro. Being reprimanded by Jim Shulman in the courthouse hallway is a lot of the reason why I got interested in Metro and write about it today.
In the larger context of city politics, these charrettes are the latest examples of a worrying trend: acting like we don’t have solutions when we do, therefore avoiding the complicated or potentially unpopular work of addressing big problems. So when do we actually do things? And who is supposed to lead?
I wasn't able to make it to either night and so this is SUPER helpful. Thank you!
Thanks for this analysis, Eli.