You don't need to look at people as being homeless you do look at them as a soul.

You don't need to look at what they have on or where they've been or necessarily what they've done.

But you need to give every person you meet a chance no matter what they look like.

I think people have a really hard time empathizing.

I might be completely wrong, but the way I see is they don't.

They're not able to shift their brain back those few steps that could maybe put them in that same situation.

You know, take it.

Resident had a great job and Amazon had a stroke.

That resident live paycheck to paycheck prior and so that resident was homeless then doesn't have family support.

Maybe you or I would be lucky enough to have somebody that would take us into it, got back on our feet.

Not everybody has that blessing and I think we tend to forget that.

And that's that's a problem.

So it is our it is our problem to help.

Since 2015 to 2020, the cost of a one bedroom apartment in Chattanooga went up by 80% in that same time period.

The average income of one individual only went up by 12%.

Right.

The federal government says that people should be spending no more than 30% of their income towards housing.

The reality is a significant portion of Chattanooga are spending at least 30%, if not more, of their income towards housing.

We would call those people spending more than 30% rent burdened.

And there's a direct correlation between the increase of people in your community that are rent burdened and the increase in our homeless population.

I guess we started working in the homeless community a couple of years before COVID hit.

Three years before COVID hit, I guess.

And not all of the organizations.

There's so many organizations that help.

But there was no real cohesion.

And there was something about when that happened.

All of the different organizing surrounding homelessness came together and there's everybody's talking now and we all have certain strengths, you know, and some of your government organizations and some of your nonprofit.

And there's a lot of people that are just, you know, like basic citizens like Josh.

Hello.

I'm Joshua Cappello, and I'm an advocate for homeless people in the city.

Unsheltered citizens of this community, this community, this this city of Chattanooga is full of great people.

Brett, back where he was, you got attacked by dogs.

His hand was infected and I brought him out of there.

I couldn't leave him as a wingman concept in the military.

There's another Marine right there.

We got two veterans right here.

We can do better, Chattanooga.

And I know that we can become the first city to solve homelessness, but we can't do it alone.

We work together and I will not stand by while my friends sit out there in the cold.

Today was probably the smoothest build we've ever had.

We've got level ground over here, reasonable access, so we can actually build.

We were able to stage our materials, have our tools centralized.

You don't have to be an expert out here to build one of these tiny homes.

Basically use hammers and nails and put it together in a way that's going to be suitable for people to live in, at least get through this cold, harsh winter.

We've still got snow on the ground.

We're building, you know, temporary emergency shelters out of pallets to keep people safe, dry and warm until, you know, the government or whoever can step in and get people out of tents and off the streets.

So that's primarily where our focus is, is to use the least amount of materials and spread out what we do have and build the safest, best structure we can as quick as we can, because it is a humanitarian crisis.

Hang on to this, James, just a minute.

I want to get one of the claws to.

When we were driving up here, there was a whole bunch of tents and they looked very flimsy and not so great.

These these are not so pretty.

But give people a sense of pride and you don't have to have a lot of red tape or bureaucracy.

You just stay in and do it.

It may not be pretty, but it's a lot better than they had.

And it gives them a sense of hope.

So cost is our primary constraint in building these homes since we just started out basically on our own with no funding, we just use what we had.

So pallets are free, they're strong, they hold up to 2,000 pounds.

And then the plywood is also part of a pallet that we take apart.

And so what we've been able to achieve is building a house in roughly 2 to 4 hours for about $200.

But that $200 includes a fire extinguisher, smoke alarm and CO2 detector, which essentially doubles the cost of the house.

And it's a critical part too I think the sense of security is the most important thing, because people can store their clothing, their belongings and food and protect what little they do have from other people and the weather.

Five of my friends that I've known have have died out there in less than a year.

So, you know, if you take that into a normal context, you would look look into that issue.

I think if people had friends like I do and they had five of their friends die, you might want to figure out why.

And if it was the same issue, they're sleeping outside in the cold then then there's no reason why we shouldn't be building.

My fear and our fear in the city is these these structures that are being built.

There's no oversight to who's going in and saying and people can be locked in and a variety of issues.

I absolutely get that the people who are on the streets need a safe place to go.

That provides them the stability, but the answers to do it in such a way that we're not inadvertently harming those people.

And we are literally, within days of the city opening up our own sanctioned encampment location.

And the plea really we have had with Josh is just just wait just wait a little bit until we can get this this up and running and we can do this the right way to set people up for success.

I totally understand where he's coming from.

He's got a really big heart and he's obviously a very compassionate person.

He's got a really big heart and he's obviously a very compassionate person.

You need to be open for compromise.

Yeah, I mean, compromise is really important.

It's hugely important.

And just knowing that there's so many different avenues that you can go, I think what's important is that we constantly reminding each other when we're working with others, like we're all after the same goal here.

The issues and the dangers that these structures present themselves is, you know, they're essentially a tinder box, right?

We're already having issues with fires in locations where there's not this kind of management.

There's oversight.

A lady that I know from my street outreach days was burned so bad in a fire in an encampment, she had to be airlifted to a hospital in Georgia.

I still don't know what has happened to her, honestly, and I think about her often.

I would challenge anyone who says that our houses are dangerous to go sleep on the sidewalk and then sleep in one of our houses.

They have fire extinguishers, smoke alarm and fire detectors, which most people's homes they probably don't know where those things are or could reach them Whether you have a house or not our job is to protect life and property.

you know we've we've had individuals where they've had small generators their storging gasoline inside these tents and and these structors.

We actually retrieved about 10 propane cylinders off of fork trucks that they use on loading docks and things of that nature.

Completely different way the gas is utilized in those.

Really and truely, that catches on fire they're not going to be able to get out of these things.

And this has happened mulitplue times down on 11th and 12th street.

Just got one more step and then you get to come home.

My pastor used to preach a sermon and in his sermon he said, you know, we complain to God all the time, right?

About like on my arm hurts or my leg hurts.

But think about the person who has no arms, who has no legs, you know what I'm saying?

And that person is not murmuring and complaining.

There's always somebody that's got it worse.

We have no more.

Some of us don't have family.

Some of us have nowhere to go, nowhere to turn to all we need, you know.

Oh, reach out, reach out, reach out.

You know, be there, reach out.

Oh, we're people just like anybody else.

And this is love right here.

The way y'all found me and honey.

I feel the love in there.

I feel the love in the air.

y'all are angels y'all are angels.

You are amazing person.

You are stronger than me and you inspire me to be a better human being.

So thank you for giving me purpose as a veteran.

I this is my mission is to care for people like you.

You're not forgotten.

You're just as important as anybody else in this world.

You know, we can thank you.

Thank God.

I tried, I tried.

We've had a lot of conversations with Josh.

We've had a lot of conversation with the fire marshal and Josh to really express our specific safety concerns about his structures.

If you if you look at them, they're just literally plywood with some framing.

They have a door that has an external lock on it and there's not really any oversight to these locations.

You know, they're Josh has just kind of made them and left them.

I get where he's coming from.

I get his heart again.

You know, like I've been in this industry for eight years now.

I've seen it.

I know these people.

I know their struggles.

But it doesn't mean that we can give them solutions that could be harmful to them.

Right.

The thing I always say is if someone's drowning, you don't want to throw them a life jacket that's faulty.

That could cause them to sink faster.

Right.

Like we as the people that are providing the help, must evaluate what we're doing to make sure it is safe and it is effective.

Essentially, I have been issued a no trespassing order for the encampment that's been set up where we've been working on the perimeter.

Again, these are temporary emergency shelters primarily for the winter to keep people out of the coldest elements.

Now we're in a sort of middle phase in here, here in spring.

So nobody's dying.

You know, I take all the credit and responsibility.

And, you know, at the end of the day, I think you have to stand up for what you believe in, right, wrong or indifferent, and do what you feel is right.

And, you know, I sleep well at night.

I'm not afraid.

And these are our people.

We love them like friends.

I mean, they're just as much my friends as they are anybody else.

So I think about them like family.

I know these people by name.

They know me, you know, they know my car.

I wave at them, you know, it's just.

Just brotherly love, sisterly love out there.

And you can't break that bond.

And no matter what they do, I guess, you know, we're still going to keep up the good fight.

But the mayor announced recently the $100 million affordable housing initiative.

Over the next five years, $33 million of that are coming from the city year one out of our upcoming budget.

And so that is going to be a fund that funds all kinds of different projects, not just for people experiencing homelessness, but for people who are living in poverty and middle income folks, too, that are looking for a place that is affordable for them to be a part of this community.

Really, it's part of this overall continuum of housing needs that our community has people experiencing homelessness, or just the very visible expression of a housing system that is not affordable for people.

But we in the administration want to create options for people over the wide range of income continuum for people in need in our community.

We really recognize how large a role the lack of affordable housing plays in homelessness, not just here, but globally.

We kind of started thinking bigger, like, what more can we do other than just give somebody some clothes or a tent or something?

What else can we do?

And so we started researching a lot.

Seattle was the first city in the United States to open a homeless encampment over 21 years ago.

So we just we thought that's where we needed to go.

So we've been there three times.

They created this kind of seamless, streamlined process, so to speak, into transitional living situations and to support a permanent housing.

And how to help that in Chattanooga since none of that exist.

The city reached out to us about a year ago in Chattanooga and asked us about some of our research and said that they had an interest in opening a homeless encampment.

What did we kind of figure out while we were there?

Would we be interested in writing a proposal?

And so we did.

And in May of this year we opened one.

I think the biggest thing the camp offers is safety and safety and security to carry their stuff with them anymore.

They're like that because, you know, most of the time they would have to take all their stuff, you know, even packed or tent up because it'll get stolen, you know, and they don't have to worry about that.

And they can sleep at night.

A lot of them were saying they had the first night sleep.

They had it in years.

As far as the camp goes, you know, they have their little dramas and their little spats and everything, but they're really learning to live in a community and gain skills.

You know, working in that way that that can only help.

And take on ownership.

That's been a beautiful part of the camp is seeing them just kind of take on ownership of that camp in their space.

There's constant reminders to us when we're doing this together and working together that this is what we're supposed to be doing right now.

So it's been a really beautiful process If you're a fan of Greater Chattanooga, support it!

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