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Town hall explores how homelessness, affordable housing overlap

The meeting included a panel of drug abuse counselors, specialists, city officials and concerned community members.

Saturday's town hall in South Knoxville was part of a five part series put together by I Am a Voice of the Voiceless. It was held at Flenniken Landing, a permanent supportive housing development in South Knoxville.

Matt Tillery is an assistant director at Flenniken and said the idea is to look at each case on an individual basis.

"All of these are people are in our community, these are homeless knoxvilians and people first," Tillery said.

The meeting included a panel of drug abuse counselors, specialists, city officials and concerned community members. Many raised points about contributing factors to homelessness such as mental health, domestic violence and substance abuse.

Tillery said these ideas are all the more reason to talk about housing issues with a broader scope.

"If we don't have the conversation with the people who are actually involved in their own community then we never get to a solution," he said.

City Councilwoman Seema Singh-Perez also helped facilitate the event and took time to push people to think outside the box.

"If there was an easy, simple solution, it wouldn't be going on all over the country, this is not a Knoxville problem," Perez said.

Community members agreed providing people with more access to resources and information would serve as a good start but not a long term solution to people's challenges.

The next meeting will take place on December 1.

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