- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- What Memphis is doing to help the homeless, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Rhonda Logan, Memphis City Council District 1.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Absolutely.

Along with Kelcey Johnson, executive director of Hospitality Hub.

Welcome back.

- Thank you so much.

- And Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

For both of you, there's a lot going on with Hospitality Hub, other efforts as well with trying to address homelessness, end homelessness, if that's possible and so on.

But for each of you, this will almost sound like a flippant question, but I want to just go deeper on what does it mean to be homeless or to be unhoused, because it takes different shapes and forms?

We did a really great show with Kelcey four years ago now, and it opened my eyes on just such a complicated topic, but I'll start with you, Councilwoman.

What does it mean to be homeless?

- Well, you know, that's a great question.

My first term, well, going into my first term, I had a traditional view of homelessness.

You know, we would think, we would often see people maybe dealing with substance abuse or mental illness and see them, you know, in the streets and things like that, what you see on TV.

That was basically my view.

But, the first term during COVID, right after COVID, I really began to see the faces, the many faces of homelessness in Memphis and our fellow Memphians who are experiencing homelessness.

So, you know, then I began to see it's really transition.

You know, that's what I saw.

Professional people that were having a difficult time post-COVID.

A lot of people were losing their homes, their jobs.

And I just really started seeing a different face, a different side of homelessness.

And the majority of what I saw was, basically, transition from one, you know, position or a circumstance to another one that left a lot of people without homes, without shelter.

- Yeah.

When you were on the show four years ago, and again, it was great to, I mean, it's a difficult subject, but it was really great and we talked a lot about homelessness.

And I remember I asked you the question, Kelcey, of, you know, is it your job to end homelessness?

And you gave me this answer that I've quoted many, many times, and I don't know if you remember what you said, but you said to me, "My job, our job is to end homelessness for you."

- For you.

- Because everyone's reason for being homeless is so different.

And the state of homelessness is so different.

- Right.

- Talk about that.

- You know, each person, their journey into homelessness.

For some people it takes a long time, 'cause you have to burn through so many levels of support before you end up sleeping in your car and then lose your car, and then you're on the street, and then you're in shelter, and that kind of thing.

Whereas some people were in foster care or state custody and they turn 18, and there are no levels of support.

They don't have any buddies from the military, they don't have any frat brothers from University of Memphis.

They don't have anybody who's there to rescue them or help them even a little bit.

Homelessness is us.

It can be anyone, anyone can experience homelessness.

One of my clients had been a pilot in the Air Force, and around 26 years old, 27 years old, he developed schizophrenia and walked away from his life.

A recent woman that we just housed, she had been an OBGYN with a thriving practice, and she had a psychotic break, because of something traumatic that happened in her life.

And she couldn't stand to go back into a hospital, you know, and we were able to house her.

You wouldn't believe the job she has now.

Nothing in the medical field.

- It was probably a hard number to get to, but I think at a recent, I read something and maybe it was you, Councilwoman, who said that in 2024, 2025, about 2,700 children told a teacher I think it was within Memphis-Shelby County Schools, maybe this was a quote from you.

- 2,690 children.

- So, that's children, which is, you know, daunting and sad.

And then adults about, at any given time, about how many homeless people, unhoused people are there in the Memphis area?

- In 2024, we did intake interviews, case counseling on 5,200 first-time homeless people.

- And that's separate from people who are already.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

Okay.

- Exactly.

- Bill.

- And Kelcey, from what you said at the event this week, these are kids who are going to school every day.

- Exactly.

- I think you talked about an honor student at White Station who works as a job at Subway, and you get a call from the manager and what does the manager tell you?

- "I think she's sleeping behind my building.

"I think she's sleeping between the building and the dumpster."

And so, we were able to reach out to her and assist her and hold hands with her until she graduated.

Delta Sigma Theta sorority paid for her prom and her dress, and her hair and nails, and all that kinda stuff.

And later we were able to do a mediation and get her with a aunt who she stayed with in the summer until she started college.

And she went off to school on scholarship to college, but her senior year she slept outside for most of it.

- That has to be a surreal existence to showing up for time on time for your job, being ready to do it.

When you clock out, you go behind the store and sleep.

- Correct.

- Get up the next morning, - Correct.

- And go to school.

- Correct.

- I mean, that has to be part of the barrier that you deal with is these people are existing in this surreal existence and it's got to be uncertain footing for them.

- And unfortunately, it's not strange.

It would be great if that was a strange, outlandish story, but it's not.

You know, we've talked to teachers, coaches, principals all over the district who are opening their doors an hour or two before class starts, letting kids come in to take showers, because they're sleeping in cars with their parents, they're sleeping in abandoned buildings, they're sleeping outside, they're sleeping in all kinds of places that are not fit for human habitation, yet, they continue to go to school.

Think about the 2,609 children, that's people between 5 years old and 18.

Maybe they have younger siblings who are also homeless.

You got kids who aren't old enough to go to school, so they don't have a principal, or teacher, or guidance counselor to report this situation to.

And then you have so many children who've given up and just dropped out rather than being picked on for being the stinky person.

You've worn that clothes three times this week already, because this is what I got.

You know, they're not washed, hair's not washed, teeth aren't brushed.

And so, a lot of kids would give up in that situation, but 2,690 of 'em are continuing to go to school as of last year.

And as the adults and tax-paying citizens of this community, it's our job to do something about that.

And I'm thankful for Rhonda Logan and Michalyn Easter-Thomas, who have gotten behind us and made Hub North a thing that's gonna happen that's gonna serve families in this district.

- Right.

And Hub North is basically, I've heard it referring to as a village too.

- Correct.

- You're gonna have about sixty units there on the site of the old Manassas High School.

- Yes.

- Right off of Firestone that families can stay in.

Talk about the difference between this campus and what you're doing on Washington Avenue.

- Yeah, yeah, 590 Washington Avenue is our major super campus and everything under the sun goes on over there from COVID testing to free haircuts.

Today, right now, there's 40 barbers on campus cutting hair.

We have a beauty salon for women, hair and nails.

We do state IDs, birth certificates.

We have a mail room that is the place that homeless people in Memphis get their mail.

1,750 mailboxes open today.

Your medicine comes there, your social security benefits, your food stamp card, all those things.

And you can apply for food stamps on that campus.

We have 10 studios on that campus that are co-ed.

And they're designed for people who cannot sleep in congregate shelter due to PTSD, or OCD, or just can't do it, haven't lived in a shelter and won't, or they have a child, a male child that's older than five years old.

What's that about?

Most shelters in Memphis, if you have a 5-year-old child that's male, they can't stay in a family shelter.

And so, you've got a 14 to 15, 16-year-old boy, only the Hub will shelter you, you know?

And so, when we do it in those studios and the cottage village out at Hub North is gonna be a lifesaver when it comes to those families who have older kids.

- And Councilwoman Logan, this did not happen overnight.

In fact, - Yeah.

- You worked really hard on this.

- Yes.

- And there was an original site in Scenic Village, an area of Frayser kind of on the Frayser-Raleigh border there, and it wasn't able to happen there.

- Yes, absolutely.

I do wanna say, kind of build on what he was saying.

In 2020, during COVID, right after COVID, I had a lot of phone calls from principals, pastors, different people in my community expressing the need for housing, for teachers, for faculty members, just, you know, parishioners at churches.

And I knew that we needed something different than what was downtown.

What we had had.

During that time, we were sheltering people in hotels and just wherever we could, but that was not what my district needed.

We needed somewhere that was like home, somewhere that was safe, somewhere where the children could do their homework, they could stay near their schools, they could be near their churches and you know, just the vicinity that they needed, because these were our neighbors, these were my, you know, our church members.

And so, I reached out to a nonprofit in our area and they had cottages.

I'm like, well, they're not using 'em.

Nobody's using them during this time.

So, let's see if they can keep families there.

And we started doing that and it made me look for somewhere like that.

And I was then put in touch with Hospitality Hub and the great work that they were doing, and just started the ball rolling from that perspective.

And so, I went to my colleagues and was like, "Hey, I need a place.

"I want to see a place in every district, you know, but I wanna start here in the north," talking to Kelcey and Jared about it.

Let's do a pilot, you know, in the north where we put a hub out here that is more transitional living for families, for children and moms, for dads and moms, you know?

They can stay in their area, they still can see grandma, they can go to their schools.

And so, we started that process at that time and we were going to do it in District 1.

And we found a wonderful plot of land, I think 11 acres or so.

And the county, you know, went through that process.

And I thank my counterparts in the County Commission for being on board with it.

We had a community meeting.

And many of you know, you know, it's one of my platforms to really support neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods is key to me.

And the neighborhood was just not ready for it.

They did not want it in that area.

They felt that it was an unstable environment or, you know, situation for their community.

And though initially I was disappointed, because I knew how that, you know, could have been anyone in the neighborhood, that people didn't really realize the face of homelessness had changed.

And the opportunity we had to create a village for people supported by the community, that didn't work.

And I'm never going to be a proponent for pushing something on a community or neighborhood, and they don't want it, because it's gonna take a village to really make it a success.

And so, we, Jared and I and Kelcey, went back to the drawing board and it kind of sat for a minute and my colleague, Councilwoman Easter-Thomas, called and said, "We have a spot, let's look at that."

And we, you know, went to check that out and turned out to be, it was a wonderful place, because the neighborhood embraced it, the church across the street, they, you know, really embraced the idea and got to work, and now, it's coming to fruition.

We've recently had that ground breaking, so they didn't want it at that time, but we found a home.

- And it's the old Manassas High School, right?

Across Firestone,- - Yes.

- right across from the old Firestone.

- Right across from Grace Missionary Baptist Church.

- Absolutely.

- Talk about that dynamic, and I think if I read right in Bill's story I think it was that you went and met with, you know, pastors and neighbors.

There had to be, not everyone necessarily met this with open arms, I assume.

This certain awareness of, oh, we wanna help people, but boy, what's that gonna do to our neighborhood?

- Yeah.

- Oh no.

The very first meeting was, [Kelcey chuckling] there was some combative personalities in that first meeting.

And you could imagine, if you're born raised and you're cutting your yard and keeping your house up and you're hear they're gonna do some homeless thing.

Your first image is probably something ugly.

And we had Councilwomen Easter-Thomas and Rhonda Logan and the other hero was Pastor King.

And what he did was he got other pastors who are there in New Chicago and Smokey City to attend the meetings.

And he didn't try to push this idea down anybody's throat.

What he got people to do was listen to our story and look at pictures of things we've done in the past.

The Hub focuses on trauma-informed design and making things beautiful for people who are going through traumatic situations.

And there are a few more traumatic than homelessness.

And so, that was the thing.

And so, with getting people to listen, and getting his congregation to listen, and these other pastors to listen and ask the right questions, and then get them to be involved in designing how the whole place would be laid out all the way down to what the houses would look like on the inside.

Would they have kitchenettes, bathrooms?

One thing that jumped out at me was that so many people were adamant that, if it's a mom with children, we want her to have a bedroom door.

You remember that?

And so, yeah.

- Yeah.

- I was just gonna say that, - Go ahead, yeah.

- I always wanna throw this in.

You asked the, you know, I put this together, I did not.

You know, I attended and answered questions.

- Sure.

- But I mean, it was Rhonda Logan and Councilwoman Easter-Thomas and Jared and Pastor King.

And it was a lot of arm wrestling, and talking, and cajoling, and almost begging and that kind of thing to get people to even come, you know?

- The fears I assume we have about ten minutes here in show.

The fears, I assume are, well, you know, "I've seen homeless encampments.

"We're gonna have drugs here.

"We're gonna have people coming in and out.

We're gonna have criminal activity."

It's gonna be, I mean, like, you can imagine everybody saying, "I don't like that there are homeless people out there."

But these are all the things that are gonna happen.

And how do you assure people that won't happen?

You talk about the design and you talk about the kind of, that these are not, you know, temporary shelters.

They're nice cottages or homes.

But I assume part of what, 'cause I know enough about what y'all do, I assume part of it is an assurance that there will be support for these people.

It's not sort of, here's a key, goodbye.

- Right.

- Right.

- And does that, go ahead.

- Well, that was one of the things that's most important.

Making certain that we have wraparound services on campus.

You know, the original conversation was to make sure that the children that are there are able to play and able to be children and have homework and that, you know, support for homework, but to also make sure that the parents and their children, the entire family are receiving support, wraparound services, and that'll be there, and making sure all their needs are there.

But it's not a detention center, you know?

There was never a way that you could promise or assure people that there won't be, you know, situations, but the design of it and those that are screened to be there.

So, another idea was that, because we have the facility, because they, I say we, because Hospitality Hub has a facility downtown that you're gonna be able to screen who can attend or who would be at that location, who would be downtown, who would be at the male shelter and the women's shelter.

So, there are many options, and I'm so glad that as a city, we are growing those options.

- One more question before I go back to Bill.

The cost associated with this, and there's the construction cost, there's the services cost, and who's paying for it?

Give or take in round numbers.

- Let me start from the last question first.

The original funding came via Rhonda Logan and her peers on the Council.

That was $3.5 million to get the ball rolling, and then we got money from Congressman Cohen and Mayor Young, and then foundations and individuals.

And the thing I say all the time is without churches and church folks, the Hub would've went out of business a year after they opened.

You know, the churches are huge supporters of us, and even churches that don't have a bunch of money to donate, they've got parishioners who write big checks.

And so, that is how we got this thing.

- And that total amount was, give or take?

- Right now, I think we've raised about nine million dollars, right in there.

I'm not sure, it's right in that area.

But what we want is to be able to do the construction of the place, all the landscaping, all the everything all in, and then be able to hire people to work there.

And if we'd never raise another dime, the place would stay open for at least three years.

And so, that's the budget.

- And then are there plans for others in other neighborhoods?

I mean, it's a lot of money.

- I think it's necessary for other communities.

I think that one of the communities that could really, really use this is Hickory Hill, southeast Memphis.

There's a lot of homelessness in southeast Memphis, and there's a lot of homeless children in southeast Memphis.

Southeast Memphis leads the city, leads the county, excuse me, in evictions.

Almost three times as many as the rest of the city combined.

- And so that's, I mean, $10 million a pop across many different neighborhoods.

I mean, at a minimum $10 million to do what you're doing there?

- You know, but it's so much cheaper than people going to sleep in an emergency room.

- Yes.

- Or jailing a person, one person, $46,000 a year, you know?

It's just so much less expensive.

- You, then we'll get Bill in.

- Okay.

As well as, you know, when you think, when you see homelessness in Memphis, a lot of times you drive down the interstate or you drive through neighborhoods and you see a lot of trash.

So, you know, or you see encampments, or you see squatting, or you see those types of things that, that costs money to mitigate as well.

So, there are a number of hidden costs that you don't see by not addressing this and providing a space and a place ongoing.

And like we said, being in transition, being homeless, those unsheltered, they have different nuances in different parts of the city.

So, having one in each district, or at this point in each region, north, south, east, and west, I think would be very beneficial.

- Bill.

- Okay.

It looks to me like Hospitality Hub has gone at what was one of the really kind of contentious parts of the discussion about homelessness before here and probably elsewhere.

And that is the barriers that exist to just getting basic shelter.

- Correct.

- Other cities are grappling with this too.

I believe you've been to the... - Correct.

Right.

I have.

- Baltimore in particular, I think.

- No, that wasn't me in Baltimore.

I think Jared went to Baltimore.

- Okay.

- I went to Huntsville, Nashville, I can't remember.

Florence, Alabama had me come down and do an audit of their homeless services.

And the thing I found just about everywhere that I've gone is that cities don't have this Hub mentality, this Hub structure where you have one agency that is seeking to work with everybody.

And you know, you have a men's shelter, and he has a treatment facility, and she has a domestic violence shelter, and this other person has a food program.

And so, I get knowledge about all these places, and I've got your cell phone number, your cell phone number, your cell phone number, and we have lunch together and that kind of thing.

And we're all working toward the same goal.

I'm not gonna duplicate anything that you do.

I'm not gonna duplicate anything you do.

And this person has this feeding program and you know, one of the places that donates food to us is the Naval Air Station.

You know, they donate 150 pounds of chicken to me.

My freezers are full, I call you and say, "Hey, man, I wanna bring you 80 pounds of chicken."

You know, and other cities don't.

And then we have this beautiful City Council and a city mayor who doesn't believe humans should live outside.

You know, we talked about this seven or eight years ago.

Are we a city that's going to support people in encampments or are we a city that's gonna break up the encampments with compassion?

And we decided on number two.

And so, when you think about an encampment in the city of Memphis, it's two people, it's three people, you know?

- It's someone who's pitched a tent.

- Yeah, it's one or two people that's pitched a tent.

We don't have those 30, 40, 50 people encampments in the city of Memphis anymore, 'cause we've all agreed humans should not live outside.

So, we're not gonna be delivering you tents.

We're not gonna put a food truck at the tent encampment.

We're gonna come and talk to each individual and I'll bring a Chick-fil-A sandwich, Egg McMuffin, coffee, and say, "Hey, don't you wanna go somewhere else?"

And that's how we break up encampments here in the city of Memphis.

That's why we don't have what you see in Nashville, a hundred and forty people in an encampment.

In Huntsville, 470 people in an encampment.

In Seattle, 900 people are living in two different encampments.

We don't have that here, because we've agreed as a city we're not gonna have it.

- And as someone who has family, and I think I said, we talked about this last time in Seattle and Portland and the San Francisco Bay area and LA all that, people who haven't been out there, their minds would be blown.

- Right.

- By the scale of what's going on.

- Correct.

- And you, I remember you told me that in some, that's a choice.

And that's what you talked about.

Like, it's a choice to say that's okay, and give somebody a new tent.

And it doesn't work.

I mean, a lot of those cities are realizing that now they've gotta go backwards and they've gotta break up these encampments and the encampments it's not talking to two people, it's talking to 500 people, and trying to undo that.

- That's absolutely correct.

- We could talk for a whole another half an hour.

Thank you so much for being here.

Again, thank you for being here.

Appreciate all this.

Bill has been writing and writing more about this so that you can get more on The Daily Memphian, but we are out of time.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full show online at Youtube, wkno.org or The Daily Memphian, or you can download the full podcast of the show from iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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