Richard Winham

Richard Winham shares a session from Alan Shikoh, recorded live downtown at The Chattanooga Public Library.

Richard Winham shares a session from Katrina Barclay, recorded live downtown at The Chattanooga Public Library.

Richard Winham shares a session from Randy Steele and High Cold Wind, recorded live downtown at The Chattanooga Public Library

In this first half of a two-part episode in our continuing series On The Outside in Chattanooga, titled Housing First, we’re talking about a policy that everyone we spoke to helping the unsheltered told us was the only place to start.

Life on the outside in Chattanooga is a daily challenge for single people, but for parents with young children, it can be devastating.

Living on the outside in Chattanooga is always a challenge. On 11th Street, those daily challenges are further exacerbated by very potent drugs. For many people living on 11th Street, it’s hard to resist a drug that promises to ease their daily pain. Fentanyl—an analgesic 50 times as potent as heroin and 100 times as potent as morphine, according to the DEA—is everywhere on 11th street.

For the past 18 months, Mal O’Connell and I have been talking to people living on the street in Chattanooga along with the army of professionals working to help them. For most of those 18 months, we were very much like the blind men and the elephant trying to grasp the enormity of the problem.But over time we began to understand that it’s not one problem or one person, but a huge shifting population of people each with their own unique perspective. Realizing that helped us to begin telling the story one topic at a time.

Richard Winham shares a session from Michelle Malone and Sarah Peacock, recorded live downtown at The Chattanooga Public Library.

Richard Winham shares a session from Michelle Malone and Sarah Peacock, recorded live downtown at The Chattanooga Public Library.

Richard Winham shares a session from Milele Roots, recorded live downtown at The Chattanooga Public Library.