The latest results of a city-wide survey and community engagement effort asking residents about their experiences with community safety were presented to the Community Safety Task Force last Thursday.
The city hired consultant Kia Jarmon to organize the survey and carry out listening sessions with residents in various neighborhoods. Jarmon also partnered with organizations such as The Village, Stand Up Nashville and Raphah Institute.
During the meeting, Jarmon shared some of the concerns that have arisen about the community input process so far — including a lack of social media engagement and shared information about the Community Safety Plan.
Jarmon said she’s received 533 responses to her community engagement efforts, in the form of survey responses, texts, comments and more. So far, 51 people have filled out the survey, some incompletely. Out of 28 respondents, 50 percent of residents said they feel somewhat safe in their neighborhood and 32 percent said they feel very safe. Four percent of residents said they feel somewhat unsafe in their community.
“Residents define safety as more than just the absence of crime or physical violence,” Jarmon told the task force. “They define safety as access and dignity, stability, healing, trust and the ability to move freely through their communities.”
The top three safety concerns residents reported were behavioral or mental health needs, gun safety and housing instability. Affordable housing, neighborhood infrastructure, youth safety programs and mental health services were the top community resources residents felt would improve their safety.
Residents said the strengths in their communities included social cohesion, visible security and law enforcement, physical safety measurements and community-based resources.
Additionally, Jarmon’s team surveyed 139 seniors from Antioch High School. Forty percent of those students said they feel very safe, while 32 percent feel somewhat safe. Three percent of students said they feel very unsafe. Their top three safety concerns were traffic safety, youth safety and a lack of community resources.
The findings from Jarmon’s three city-wide listening sessions at the Napier, Southeast and Hadley Park community centers echoed surveyors’ concerns. Residents asked for resources that are trauma-informed and healing-centered to acknowledge layered forms of trauma, in addition to compassionate substance abuse programming and safe spaces for youth to spend time after school and during the weekend.
Some residents expressed the need for improved infrastructure and accessibility, such as city-wide Wi-Fi, which would help those who have to decide between which bills to pay amid the increasing costs of living. During the meeting, Jarmon mentioned a conversation she had in one community where residents asked for more investment and beautification in public housing facilities, along with stronger accountability from public housing leaders and property management enforcement.
Jarmon said residents wanted more transparency from city government on the whole, and suggested the task force consider creating guiding principles that center the community voice throughout its processes.
“[Residents] want stronger feedback loops. They want [the] community voice to be more than just a checkbox considered [and] really want to be able to be a co-partner in the conversation and govern some of how the power structure works,” she said.
Additionally, residents asked for gun safety interventions, better policing and the creation of opportunities for non-police community safety responses. Some raised questions about ICE presence and enforcement in the city and how that would be managed.
Jarmon’s recommendations for the task force included building community-led neighborhood stewardship networks, organizing resident-led beautification and clean-up efforts that are supported by the city, and designing hyper-local community safety zones that would allow residents to access any care they need within five to 15 minutes of travel. The zones would offer a range of resources, such as food, healthcare, mental health services, safe public spaces, childcare and workforce support.
Zone mapping neighborhoods could also help inform the city on the resources that are needed in each community. Jarmon said the community safety zones could be categorized by neighborhood or zip code and overlay crime data, health outcomes, transit access and economic indicators, allowing the city leaders to define high-priority safety zones.
The city is collecting public input through June. Over the next few months, the task force will continue to create recommendations and draft the city’s Community Safety Plan. Their next meeting is scheduled for 4-6 p.m., June 10 at the Madison Branch Library.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.