CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
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DOCKLESS E-BIKE PROGRAM
OCTOBER 20, 2022 | VOLUME 34 | NUMBER 39
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Nashville approves $50M plan to address homelessness
PHOTO BY MATT MASTERS
First Lady Jill Biden speaks alongside Nashville Mayor John Cooper on on Oct. 12, 2022, at St. James Missionary Baptist Church during a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic.
First Lady Jill Biden visits North Nashville church for vaccination event
BY CONNOR DARYANI Despite some skepticism, Metro councilmembers and local nonprofit leaders alike are celebrating the approval of a $50 million plan from the mayor’s office as a big step forward in solving Nashville’s homeless crisis. “It’s definitely moving in the right direction, and on paper, $50 million sounds like a lot,” said India Pungarcher, the advocacy and outreach specialist at Open Table Nashville. “But that is going to be spent really quickly, and these are the types of investments that we desperately need our city to continue making year after year and not just this one time because we have an influx of federal funds.” The plan, which was passed during last week’s Metro Council meeting and was signed by Mayor John Cooper on Wednesday, directs federal American Rescue Plan funding toward four areas. The largest of those allotments is $25 million toward affordable housing gap financing. Unlike the Barnes Fund — a trust fund dedicated to providing nonprofits with grants to develop more affordable housing in Nashville — this $25 million will be
made available through loans to for-profit companies building affordable housing, with the intent of moving faster than Barnes Fund projects. The plan also specifically addresses units for households making 30 percent or less of the area median income — crucial for housing people experiencing homelessness. AMI is a metric used to determine what is affordable in a given area. “That is one of the biggest gaps for housing we have in our community,” said Pungarcher. “It’s just really hard to build and subsidize, so we’re really excited that there’s an actual program.” Making units available to chronically homeless individuals — people who have ongoing struggles with homelessness inflamed by disabling conditions — on the private market is a challenge. And while there are still concerns over how effective it will be, this bill provides incentives to private companies to build those affordable developments. “We’ve talked a lot in this conversation about the chronically homeless, and forprofit developers are not traditionally eager to create space for those >> PAGE 3
BY HANNAH HERNER
On her visit to Nashville Wednesday, First Lady Jill Biden went to St. James Missionary Baptist Church in North Nashville to visit a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic there. Biden encouraged the roughly 100 in attendance to stay updated on their COVID-19 vaccinations, including the most recent bivalent vaccine, designed to protect against the Omicron variant. The new formula was approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in early September. The CDC also announced Wednesday that the bivalent vaccine is available to kids as young as 5 years old, down from the previous limit of 12 years old. Pastor George T. Brooks said that the
congregation had offered vaccines in its space at least once a week since March 2021, in partnership with Metro Public Health Department. “The church is so behind all good things,” Biden said at the event. In Davidson County, 35,000 people have gotten the bivalent shot thus far, according to MPHD Medical Director Gill Wright. Wright added that the number of vaccines is often under-counted and that the department is encountering more vaccination fatigue than vaccine hesitancy. After the vaccine event, Biden attended a private Democratic National Committee fundraiser at a home in the Hillsboro-West End neighborhood. Democratic >> PAGE 3
PHOTO COURTESY OF MAYOR’S OFFICE
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