“There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.”

— Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Nobel Prize Winner for Economics

{transparency_platform}
Metro Nashville's Office of Homeless Services, Unofficial Community Audit

Facilitated by Intelechia

BEST VIEWED ON DESKTOP

Why We’re Publishing This Information

Well functioning systems require healthy feedback mechanisms to learn about what is working and what is not. For several years now there has been vocal feedback about Metro Nashville's engagement with the unhoused that has not been demonstrably absorbed by those with positional power to alter its processes.

Some of the feedback has been about the policies, workplace culture, and overall effectiveness of Metro Nashville's Office of Homeless Services. But this platform of launching a "community audit" is primarily directed at the financial activities of OHS.

The Office of Homeless Services (OHS) plays a critical role in allocating public funds to address housing instability and homelessness in our city. Through public records requests, community members have obtained extensive financial documentation that raises concerns about how some of these resources have been tracked, spent, and managed.

Rather than gatekeeping this material, we are sharing it openly so that the broader community can collectively examine the evidence, ask informed questions, and come to its own conclusions about whether these funds have been used appropriately.

This review is not about assigning blame—it's about transparency, accountability, and honoring the intent of public funding for housing justice.

Our Bona Fides, or lack thereof.

We are not auditors, lawyers, or investigative journalists—we're simply community members committed to transparency and informed participation. That is why we are performing little to no analysis of the underlying raw content and providing it in full for more formal analysis.

AI DISCLOSURE: There are places where we had to use AI to read hundreds of documents and categorize them. We've noted those places, and those should have any conclusions drawn from them only come after a manual review of underlying material. This emoji 🤖 will be used where there is AI used to process the data.

We share this material so that others can independently verify, ask questions, and advocate for funding practices that are just, lawful, and aligned with the needs of our unhoused neighbors.

This is the community's money. How it is spent is for the community to decide.

Raw Data that generated the contents on this site are found below.

Headline Topics
Strobel House • Temp Staff 🤖 • Expenses FY24-FY25 •
Credit Card Statement • COVID Relief (ARPA) 🤖

These are some topics which community members may want answers about regarding OHS expenditures. There may be satisfactory answers to some of these observations, but taxpayers are entitled to transparency on how their funds are used.

Strobel House Vendor Contract and Billing

The primary vendor operating Strobel House, DePaul USA, appears to have continued billing for services after their contract expired, including submitting retroactive invoices. The amounts billed also appear to exceed the maximum authorized in their original agreement. DePaul appears to only have been contract between the dates of 5/8/2024 - 9/30/2024 for a total of $500,000. Yet is appears to have billed $1,068,923.86, citing that same period of service for invoices in January thru May of 2025.

Temp Staff | $194,096.87 | (12/10/2023 - 11/17/2024)

Metro Nashville's Civil Service Rules explicitly state that temporary status "is not to be used to fill vacant Civil Service positions except on a temporary basis" and that temporary employment cannot exceed 12 months. Additionally, the rules prohibit circumventing these restrictions by stating "Once appointed to a non-Civil Service status, subsequent appointments of the employee may not be made to other non-Civil Service statuses, which circumvent the time limits prescribed."

Questionable Temp Coding | $65,577.00 as "Landlord Engagement"

Landlord Engagement is a fund used to incentivize property owners to make their units available without barriers for people in need, a program called the Low Barrier Housing Collective. This fund was reported to have $500k "missing" from it. None of the nine temporary employees that appear to have been billed landlord engagement were recognized by a former staffer who had a leadership role with the Low Barrier Housing Collective.

At least $29,951 was for an employee that has been identified as an admininistrative assistant to Director Calvin.

Classification of Expenditures

Numerous contracts are categorized as “temporary services,” even when they involve goods, long-term programming, or case management work—raising questions about financial coding and procurement oversight.

Significant Ledger Editing

Accounting Software tracks not just what is added and subtracted, it shows how things are edited over time. This is a common occurance, things need to be reclassified for lots of reasons, and a department with many funding streams may need to do this. Analyzing a ledger’s audit trail lets forensic accountants build a timestamped map of each change—showing who did what and when—so suspicious edits, control gaps, and financial impacts surface quickly and stand as tamper‑proof evidence in court.