Tasha Lemley

“For all intents and purposes, he’s been gone since I was 2,” Casey said of his father. “Whenever I quit blaming him for everything, he quit being a factor in my life completely. … But, if this man’s killing three people is deserving of death, why would anybody think it of any benefit to go and watch the state do the same thing to him?”

In this feature I was assigned and produced, we hear from three individuals personally affected by violent loss — including the death penalty. 

This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU in Kentucky and NPR and includes content from my long form interview with Casey Smith on This Is Nashville.

In My Place is a special series of 1-hour episodes on WPLN’s This Is Nashville that educates listeners on what communities like Nashville can do to prevent and end homelessness — while caring for neighbors who are still unhoused.

In season 2, we walked through the steps from homelessness to housing with people who have done it — often more than once. 

I hosted most episodes this season and, in this one, you can get a sense of my tone and sensitivity for guests at wildly different comfort levels on the mic.

Residents of Berkshire Place Apartments in East Nashville are finally moving — years after they were first told their units would need to be vacated and either renovated or torn down.

Last summer, they say they were asked to pack their bags to relocate to Birchstone Village — a brand new, 228-unit affordable housing property 7 miles away that’s been in the works for roughly four years. Because of the pandemic, a complicated mix of a half-dozen sources of funding and tax credits — plus applications and waiting periods — developers say finalizing the project has been a juggling act.

But it went live in early February.

Pastor Glenda Sutton says, "can you imagine what it's like — how hard it is for people inside of a housing community to watch things change all around them? You pull out of the gate and you see the beautiful new house built across the street. You see all the pretty new apartments and things that are being built all around you.

There's an opportunity for a mama who's sitting in her apartment down there with babies, just looking out of the window, to now look out and see something different, to be a part of something different."

I pitched, interviewed, produced, and photographed this piece.