On a cloudy overcast day, construction workers are busy controlling traffic in downtown Knoxville stretching across each side of Gay Street. A swanky urban side of town, this area is full of prominent businesses, restaurants, and upscale lofts.

Yet, towards the end of the street Robert Clark, a military veteran, is modestly living in a one-bedroom apartment just above the Volunteer Ministry, where he is also employed as the residence manager. Originally from Virginia, Clark bought a one-way ticket to Knoxville 10 years ago, arriving as so many other homeless, out of work and on a desolate road towards destruction. Motivated by his mother's illness, Clark walked into the ministry with determination to better his situation.

Not alone, many follow the same path as Clark to homelessness. But only a few travel the distances from one city to another.

As director of the Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, Jon Lawler says the belief that one city sends their homeless to other cities is an urban myth. 

The amount of homeless individuals on a per capita basis in Knoxville is the same as other cities such as Atlanta and Dallas, said Lawler.

However, Ginny Weatherstone, CEO of the Volunteer Ministry, does remember one occasion when a hospital in Charleston bought a bus ticket for a homeless person to travel to Knoxville. She says these are "isolated incidents." Yet, she believes since Knox County is a donut for surrounding counties, but when individuals leave other counties in search for a job in Knoxville comes up empty, they happen to end up homeless.

Whatever the reasons may be, Knoxville is now seeing a change in how homelessness is handled. 

Almost two years ago the East Tennessee Coalition to End Homelessness partnered with Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam and Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale, because they believed the attitude toward homelessness was allowing its continuance instead of its termination. So the dawn of the Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness came into existence.

"What it isn't is a plan to end all of homelessness," said Lawler.  The plan focuses on the chronic homeless person. This is someone who is a disabled individual, has been homeless for more than a year, or has had four cases of being on the streets within three years.  The majority of tax-paying money is spent on the chronic homeless, who make up 20 to 25 percent of the homeless population. It is estimated that tax-payers spend $37,000 a year on a chronic homeless person, said Lawler.

"We have a current system that takes care of homeless people, we are going to take that system, change it, and redefine what success is, not just managing homelessness but ending it," said the director. He believes to stop the cycle you must immediately get a homeless individual into housing and "connect them at the hip with a case worker."

This is where the Volunteer Ministry comes into play. Founded in 1987 by downtown churches, the Volunteer Ministry assisted 77 homeless individuals into housing in 2007.

Before the ministry, there were approximately four shelters that provided individuals a place to slumber during the night, but not stay during the day. Another predicament was the process of the deinstitutionalizing of mental institutions, such as Lake Shore Mental Health Institute. This allowed many people suffering from mental illness to roam the streets without proper medication, which is a problem of many chronic homeless individuals, said Weatherstone.

On a daily basis the ministry may witness 100 to 200 people stagger through their doors.  It depends on the time of the month, whether they received a disability check or not, and the weather. The shelter offers a day resource center, a refugee program, a clinic, and apartments. More importantly it is a prime example of the transformation the plan is taking toward homelessness.

"It has allowed us to change our thinking...we no longer consider ourselves providers of meals and clothing and come in and stay as long as you want. We wouldn't say that anymore, we now have time limits in place," said Weatherstone. The plan raises the bar for accountability and the personal responsibility of the homeless. 

However, the plans' philosophy has come into conflict with the ideology of some local churches and organizations. The plan discourages supplying food, clothing, and shelter to the homeless without having expectations from them in return. "To do that without expectations can enable someone to remain homeless," said Weatherstone.

Being in the Bible Belt, the churches' role in the community is influential. Yet some churches still say that they need to give without asking questions, says Weatherstone. But other churches are recognizing the plan's call for a culture change and are answering it. 

"It's hard for the churches to begin thinking different about this," said Lawler. One strategy of the plan is to integrate the faith base community. 

"If everybody in this community, if we all agreed to not give to pan-handling that would mean pan-handling won't work, that would be a huge step," said Weatherstone. She also advises to institute a transformation starts with people educating themselves about the causes of homelessness, to speak up, and to become involved. 

"There are a lot of people in the community who just kind of have no knowledge about homelessness as an issue or what's going on," said Weatherstone. But one reason behind this might be the lack of the issue in the public eye. 

"We have been real strategic not to be really public about it until its ready to develop in a big way," said Lawler. He believes people do not want to hear about building the system, but they want to hear about results.  Some results should be revealed by the next fiscal year when the data study by Dr. Roger Nooe, a retired social work professor at the University of Tennessee, will report how the plan is functioning. 

Presently, the plan is facing the problem of accuracy with numbers associated with homelessness, because of the information system utilized. Lawler says he is 60 percent confident in his numbers, but hopes in a year it improves to be 95 percent. Also more affordable housing is needed, because the Volunteer Ministry has less than 20 apartments available. The development for housing is slow, and it will take 18 months for the first chronic homeless person to be housed. 

"We hope 10 years from now, the culture has been changed and homelessness as a whole has been ended in Knoxville," said Lawler.