Knoxville council hears Office of Housing Stability update: warming centers, long wait lists and plan for new Continuum of Care board

Erin Reed, executive director of the Knoxville Knox County Office of Housing Stability, told the City Council workshop on Feb. 27 that warming centers and coordinated services helped hundreds this winter but that long housing wait lists and limited case-management capacity are trapping people in homelessness.

“On an average day, we have about 2,300 individuals accessing homeless services,” Reed said, noting the daily count has risen from about 1,000 in 2018. She told council members warming centers were open 32 nights between Nov. 29 and Feb. 22 and that “over the course of the entire 32 nights, warming centers provided over 7,600 bed nights.” Reed said the warming centers’ busiest night, Jan. 21, sheltered 387 people in addition to the roughly 370 beds at CARM.

The strategic-context nut graf: Reed described system-level shortages — available housing units, case managers and outreach capacity — that drive a backlog in the city’s coordinated-entry list and slow exits from homelessness. She said that until the city and its partners increase housing and prevention resources, faster case management mainly expands waiting lists rather than shortens them.

Reed summarized system modeling from the Homeless Management Information System and the CHAMP coordinated-entry tool. She said the current CHAMP waiting list would require…