05/17/2026
Chattanooga Police Department email roils homeless outreach groups
by Siena Duncan
Staff file photo by Seth Carpenter / Drew Offutt rings a bell while Kacy West reads out names during a memorial service at the Chatt Foundation, honoring 48 homeless Chattanoogans known to have died in 2025. West works with an outreach group as an employee of the Chatt Foundation.
For years, groups of church volunteers and nonprofit staffers have provided food, clothes and other supplies to Chattanooga's homeless encampments -- most on private property.
According to an email sent by a Chattanooga police officer in late April to a handful of county and city employees, those outreach groups can have legal action taken against them for trespassing if they don't alert the property owners they will be there. People who do homelessness outreach work in the city say the email has sent ripples through their community, since it's new rhetoric they say they haven't heard from the Chattanooga Police Department before.
The email, obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, was sent by officer Brandon Watson on April 29. He's part of the Police Department's crisis co-response unit (https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2023/jul/16/chattanooga-polices-crisis-co-response-unit/), meant to respond to calls when residents appear to be in a mental health or substance abuse crisis.
He's been responding to a lot of calls about suspicious vehicles across the city that are likely outreach groups driving toward homeless encampments, either on or through private property, Watson wrote. The callers are often property owners, he wrote.
"I will state this clearly so that there is no confusion: should PD respond to a private property call for a trespass enforcement, everyone located on said property will be trespassed ... by order of the property manager/owner," Watson wrote in the email.
He also wrote that frequent outreach activities can bring attention to encampments, speeding up the process of their "decommission" by the Police Department. Outreach groups should let property owners know that they want to deliver supplies on their land, he wrote, so the groups won't get targeted by suspicious activity calls to the police.
"From a community safety standpoint, I highly recommend limiting outreach activities to daylight hours and to a coordinated meeting place with consent from the owner," Watson wrote. "This is not a request to stop. It's a request to stay lawful, reasonable and considerate to the property owners as well as the individuals that are being helped."
In the email, Watson asked for the city and county employees copied to spread the message to everyone they know in outreach networks.
A spokesperson for the Chattanooga Police Department said Chief John Chambers will discuss Watson's email in an interview Monday, but the department would have no comment before that.
In Hamilton County, homeless population numbers dropped 7% from 2025 to 2026, according to point-in-time count data, which tracks how many people are homeless on a single night in January.
However, the county's unsheltered rate -- which accounts for how many people are sleeping on the street versus in a shelter bed that night -- jumped 8 percentage points, from 62% in 2025 to 70% in 2026.
A Chattanooga Times Free Press analysis found that the region's unsheltered rates for the past couple years have been double to triple the rates in other major Tennessee cities, including Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville. The analysis also found that Hamilton County, as well as the Southeast Tennessee region, has about three emergency beds for every 10 homeless people.
Advocates have said Chattanooga needs greater investment into homeless shelter capacity as the Police Department continues to respond to calls to clear, or decommission, encampments.
For Kacy West, who visits encampments as an employee of the Chatt Foundation, Watson's email came as a threat, she said in an interview.
She knows she and her fellow workers in the Regional Outreach Cooperative, a group that goes out in a large white van to different encampments during the week, are trespassing on private property every day, she said. They will pull off the side of the road and traipse through thick greenery to find where people have set up tents. They meet homeless people where they are to deliver supplies, she said.
They've been doing so since the cooperative was formed four years ago, she said, and she's never received a warning from police officers that she could be arrested for it until now.
"Every day when I go out to work, I'm breaking the law," West said.
She didn't used to be so concerned about the implications of that, she said, until the email went out. Now, she wonders whether a police officer will be waiting for her when she comes back from handing out water, snacks and bandages, she said.
"When I go to work, I wonder if I'm going to make it home," West said. "Every time I get out of the van and step on someone's property, I wonder if I'm going to end up in jail."
The system that Watson outlines in the email -- ask property owners beforehand -- doesn't work for homeless outreach activities, West said. Often, trust between homeless people and outreach workers is fragile, she said, and part of the cooperative's code of ethics says that workers must try to prioritize keeping camp locations anonymous.
If you let somebody know that homeless people are camping on their property, the likelihood is pretty high that the person calls the police anyway and the camp gets cleared (https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2026/jan/05/chattanooga-police-clear-homeless-camp-with-about/), West said.
That disrupts the careful process of earning a homeless person's trust and eventually getting the individual housed and moved off of private property, she said -- and sometimes, those camp clearings can indirectly be deadly for homeless people.
Healthcare is a big part of outreach work, West said. The cooperative often takes a pro bono doctor to help treat wounds and illnesses.
Once a camp is cleared, outreach workers can sometimes spend months trying to find a specific individual again, she said, because that person usually doesn't have access to a phone or some other way to communicate with an outreach group. If that individual has a serious health issue like an infection, those months can mean the difference between keeping an infected limb or having to amputate it, West said.
(READ MORE: Chattanooga officials clear homeless encampment on city property (https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2026/feb/25/chattanooga-officials-clear-homeless-encampment/))
"None of us want to get arrested," she said. "We're not going to stop doing what we're doing, because what we're doing is right. And so if that means we get arrested, then that's what it means. But none of us want that to happen."
Daniel Lyvers is the minister of First Christian Church, where the cooperative West works with has its headquarters. The Chatt Foundation rents space from the church for a small office and a room to store supplies.
He does hope the Police Department has good intentions and is not trying to threaten or intentionally target any of the outreach workers, Lyvers said in an interview.
When asked whether he would have any concerns about supporting a group that could get into legal trouble, he said doesn't worry about that.
He's more concerned about what happens if the cooperative isn't able to provide healthcare, food and water to people who don't have shelter, Lyvers said.
"We have outreach workers who are trying to ease the burden for other folks," Lyvers said. "On my end, I think I'm probably always going to be OK with supporting folks who are trying to help others. If that means taking some risks that stretch the boundaries, they would not be the first in history -- especially in the Christian tradition."
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Contact city and county reporter Siena Duncan at mailto:[email protected] or 423-757-6354 (tel:423-757-6354).
Siena Duncan (https://www.timesfreepress.com/staff/siena-duncan)
mailto:[email protected]
For years, groups of church volunteers and nonprofit staffers have provided food, clothes and other supplies to Chattanooga's homeless encampments -- most on private property.
