Perkins

by Jeff Havens
Nashville’s homeless have a dedicated advocate in Douglas Perkins, associate professor of human and organizational development, who was recently selected by Bill Purcell to facilitate the Mayor’s Taskforce to End Chronic Homelessness. Sparked by a federal initiative under the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the taskforce has been working on developing a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness in Nashville.

“It’s important to stress the word chronic,” Perkins said. “These are people who have been homeless for at least a year and who generally have some form of disability, typically a serious mental illness or substance abuse issues. The reason we’re targeting that core group is because they take up the vast majority of resources. If we can make a serious dent in that group, we’ll be able to save enough money to more effectively help other groups.”

For Perkins, the desire to alleviate the problems of America’s homeless – which in a given year can include up to 3.5 million people, 38 percent of them children – has consumed the greater part of his professional career. As a graduate student at New York University he studied under Marybeth Shinn, now one of the country’s leading experts on homelessness. Since then he has worked with several grassroots volunteer organizations and local government agencies, including the Metro Development and Housing Agency and the Mayor’s Office of Affordable Housing.

As expected, the issue of housing is central to the taskforce’s 10-year plan. Structured around the idea of permanent supported housing, otherwise known as Housing First, the basic concept is to provide low-income housing alongside the various social services so many homeless people need.

“The old model was to provide low-income housing,” Perkins said, “but then simply refer people to the social services they needed and hope they would follow through. Unfortunately, that approach tends to involve a high rate of relapse into homelessness. Our approach is to surround them with the services they need and make those services as convenient as possible.”

For the last six months, Perkins, along with a number of his graduate students, has been gathering data, conducting interviews with some of Nashville’s homeless citizens, and planning for a working ten-year model. Despite the time constraints – other cities have spent two years or more on these preliminary stages – he is both pleased and impressed with what the taskforce has been able to accomplish. 

“Mayor Purcell was anxious to get a comprehensive plan done well, but quickly,” Perkins said. “It has made for an extremely busy six months, not only for me and my students but also for the Metro staff.

“I agreed to facilitate this project for two reasons. It gave a small amount of summer support for four of our graduate students, and we were appreciative of that. Also, I’m in the Center for Community Research and Action in the HOD department, and I thought this was a good time for us to connect with all the major political agency heads in Nashville. The list of task force members really is all the key players in Metro government.”

As with any comprehensive plan, this one is ambitious, involving a significant investment in low-income housing units and social and health services.

The number of services is considerable: mental health, alcohol and drug treatment; medical treatment; employment training; and case workers to help the homeless obtain these services and to make sure they don’t fall through the cracks again once their needs have been identified. Unfortunately, as with any major initiative, money is tight.

“Due to budget shortages, government spending at all levels – local, state and federal – will probably not increase as much as we’d ideally like,” Perkins says. “So the role for private-sector developers, lenders and volunteer organizations like Habitat for Humanity will be absolutely critical.”

Education will also play a major role, not only for the homeless but also for Nashville’s other citizens. When it comes to understanding the challenges faced by the homeless, Perkins said, the general public is largely misinformed.

“Most people believe that the homeless are homeless because they don’t work. In fact, almost one-third of them report having jobs. There is a great need on our part to educate the general public, as well as politicians, local businesses and service providers about the realities of homelessness.”

For those interested in volunteering, there will be plenty to do. Volunteers’ time and philanthropists’ dollars will play important roles in the creation and maintenance of housing and services. There is also a proposal for Metro Council create a Leadership Council on Homelessness to coordinate implementation of the plan, and public support for its creation and any expenditure required will be important.

As with any major undertaking, the challenges are daunting. But Perkins is convinced that this is a significant step in the right direction.

“Setting bold and distant goals is important, but it is even more important to recognize and achieve the smaller steps toward getting there, to learn and improve along the way, and to keep at it even if we never completely solve the problem once and for all.”

Posted 12/6/04