NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (TDMHSAS) is releasing $5.2 million in grant funding to create safe, quality, affordable housing for people living with mental illness, recovering from substance use disorder, and reentering communities from incarceration.
TDMHSAS awarded grants from the Creating Homes Initiative (CHI) to 12 nonprofit agencies across the state. In total, the agencies committed to create 101 new beds with the funding.
Since 2000, the CHI has leveraged more than $1.3 billion in federal, state, local, foundational and other funding sources to create more than 36,000 housing opportunities. The CHI takes seed money from a recurring state investment and creates a system for writing grants and leveraging additional sources of funding to create housing for people living with behavioral health challenges. The initial model serving people with serious mental illness proved so successful that Gov. Bill Lee expanded it twice to support the housing needs of people in recovery from substance use disorder and reentering the community after incarceration…