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On The Outside In Chattanooga

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.

Latest Episodes
  • This month, Preserve Chattanooga sold its portion of the Terminal Station complex on Market Street. The sale to Northpond Partners also protects both the complex’s interior dome and its exterior facade from demolition or “inappropriate architectural changes.”
  • On the Outside in Chattanooga - an ongoing conversation with the men, women and children living on the street in Chattanooga and the people who are daily doing all they can to help find them a home - has expanded to an hour. In this first hour-long show, we talked to some of the people who daily criss-cross the city and the county, offering solace and support to the homeless.
  • In this second part of a two-part look at the fundamental issue facing both the city and the unsheltered--finding an affordable place to live, we talked to Casey Tinker, the manager of The City of Chattanooga’s Office of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
  • 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.
  • People trapped On the Outside in Chattanooga, like many of us, find daily life a struggle, but for the unsheltered on 11th street (the population of which is divided roughly evenly between men and women), there is also the ever-present threat of casual violence.
  • In part 3 of On the Outside in Chattanooga, we talked to Joe and Dr. Moyer about the satisfaction and the frustrations of the work they do every day.
  • It’s hot Records have been broken. It’s the story of the Summer. We’re all wilting, but most of us can escape into air-conditioned offices and homes. For the unsheltered, there is little if any relief. The Salvation Army and The CHATT Foundation offer shelter during the day, but at night the only option is The Mission with 75 beds for men and women.In part 2 of On the Outside in Chattanooga, we are talking about surviving the solar onslaught on the 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.