Nashville will accept more than $1.5 million of coronavirus relief money to spend on the homeless.
The money, of course, comes through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
This, according to a news release that Nashville’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency put out this week.
As The Tennessee Star reported last month, The CARES Act is a $2 trillion relief package.
“What initially began as a bill designed to help the workers and families hurt by job loss or disruption caused by government measures to fight coronavirus morphed into an 880-page behemoth,” said Rachel Bovard, senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, last month.
No one at Nashville’s MDHA returned repeated requests for comment Friday about the $1.5 million homeless grant.
According to the grant’s action plan, officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the funding.
“These ESG-CV funds are to be used to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) among individuals and families who are homeless or receiving homeless assistance; and to support additional homeless assistance and homelessness prevention activities to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19,” the action plan said.
Nashville officials will use this CARES Act money for, among other things, housing, homeless prevention assistance, shelter operations, and mental health services, according to the action plan.
As The Star reported, MDHA officials launched a taxpayer-funded initiative in 2013 to end homelessness as we know it. The program, part of the “How’s Nashville” campaign, promised homelessness would end before 2017.
Back in 2013, the city’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency paired up with the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and announced 200 housing opportunities for the chronically homeless. They offered an unspecified amount of federal taxpayer money, via HUD Block Grant money.
MDHA officials did not comment to us in 2018 as to whether the program had, as promised, ended homelessness.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Homelessness is not a small business. It has become a huge business from which many in government have benefited.
MDHA is one of many Metro agencies that needs to be investigated . Metro Government’s own deep state is shameless and real.