During a public meeting last month, Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp mentioned the idea of transforming a portion of the former Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts building in East Brainerd into a low-barrier shelter tailored for students and families experiencing homelessness.
It’s a suggestion homeless advocates say could help bolster the county’s limited shelter capacity, but officials say it’s a preliminary proposal.
“At this point, we are in the very early exploratory phases of determining whether it would be feasible to use the old CSLA facility for this purpose,” Hamilton County Schools spokesman Steve Doremus said in an email Tuesday.
Doremus said Superintendent Justin Robertson has had many conversations with the mayor about a number of issues, including ways to serve the growing homeless population. Last month, he said, the idea of using the old CSLA facility was mentioned in one of those discussions.