Mayor Scott Conger shares update on Hub City homeless shelter

February 4, 2025

Ryan Hodges,

JACKSON, Tenn. — The City of Jackson held their regular monthly meeting for the city council Tuesday morning.

It was a relatively quick meeting, only lasting 18 minutes. However, we wanted to speak with Mayor Scott Conger to get more clarification regarding the potential homeless shelter after he said this in a recent livestream.

“We will not be pursuing airways motel. Sometimes you have to try things. Sometimes they don’t work. If you don’t try things and you don’t fail at things and things don’t work out then you’re not trying. So sometimes you try things that don’t work.”

He went on to say that the Airways Motel simply would not be a good investment for the city.

The plan now is for Tennessee Homeless Solutions to purchase a building to turn into a homeless shelter. The City of Jackson would donate the money to them for this purchase.

“We did something similar to that in whatever year it was. Whenever the Dream Center was raising money for that the city made a donation for that as well,” said Mayor Conger.

Mayor Conger also said in the livestream that this change is expected to be cheaper than originally planned, meaning the extra money could go into other uses.

“Instead of the $7 million for street resurfacing we are at $9.32 million. So that was from the remainder for the homeless shelter,” said Mayor Conger.

One item of note that was on the agenda during Tuesday’s meeting was the approval to pay for the city’s new paving machine. They still need another part to come in and then training needs to be done before it is put to use.