David Patterson, director of UT’s Doctor of Social Work program, is the founder of the Knoxville Homeless Management Information System, or KnoxHMIS. The annual report was cited in a recent Knoxville News Sentinel editorial about the retention of Knoxville’s homeless placed into housing. The report states that 1,951 people were placed in housing in 2015, which is up 2 percent more from 2014. An impressive 97 percent of them stayed housed without returning to emergency shelters.
Patterson said earlier this month that new programs designed to get people rehoused more quickly cut the time people were waiting for housing by more than half.