Let’s keep working on this Salvation
Army issue. There has to be a better location for a homeless
shelter than the site the Army has picked, out by the airport. The
Salvation Army keeps saying that because homelessness is a
community problem, the community needs to find the shelter a home.
But even though the group conducted a survey for its needs
assessment study, the community hasn’t really been involved
in picking a shelter site. And it won’t get a chance to do so
unless the City Council rejects the proposed suburban location when
it comes up for a vote on Dec. 6.
Most people, when asked, say the best
location for a homeless shelter would be near the center of the
city, near other social services such as those provided by St.
John’s Breadline, Kumler Neighborhood Ministries, and
Washington Street Mission. Near hospitals, police, and fire
services. In fact, it should be near where the Salvation Army
currently is, at Sixth and Carpenter. The group’s own study
recommended that it find a location within a one-mile radius of its
current facility, but the site it picked is two miles away. During
a Nov. 28 three-hour wrangling session with opponents,
Bennett Krause, a Salvation Army advisory board member, said, in jest,
that the ideal location would be where St. John’s Hospital is. He
was being sarcastic, but he was in the right area. There is open,
available, undeveloped land in the area near the hospitals, between
Madison and Carpenter streets. This was designated a “future
development area” in the new Medical District comprehensive plan.
By designing a facility that would conform with the Medical
District’s “urban hip” vision, the Salvation
Army’s community center and shelter could become one of the
district’s “catalyst” projects, setting a progressive
tone for future projects. “Why are they going way out
there?” is the first question most people ask when they learn
the Salvation Army wants to move to the outskirts of town. The
reason is the same for sprawl everywhere: cheap land. Proponents
don’t say this is the best location. They say it is the best
location they can afford. The Medical District, they argue, has made
central city land expensive, which may be true, though we
don’t see it being gobbled up. The Salvation Army, and
Springfield, would do better to go for the best location, even if
it means buying less than the seven acres the Army wants, or even
less than the three-and-a-half acres it says it needs. It only
takes a look at the YMCA or the Hoogland Center for the Arts to see
that a spacious community center can fit on half a city block. The
Army has become enamored with its “Countryside Manor”
vision of open air and athletic fields, but perhaps it could be
persuaded that the population it serves is willing to forego baseball
and volleyball to be closer to town. Much as some try to portray opponents of the
site on the airport road as prejudiced, emotional homeless-haters,
they seem levelheaded to me, and they keep raising good questions.
Like, how are the homeless going to get there? The city bus route
stops at North Grand, and the Salvation Army says its clients can
walk the rest of the way, although they acknowledge there is no
sidewalk from North Grand to the site, and no plans, currently, to
build one. The new and nearly empty historic sites bus goes to the
Lincoln Tomb and war memorials, but veterans groups are trying to
avoid requiring shelter clients to walk through Oak Ridge Cemetery
and cross a busy highway. Neighbors say they aren’t worried
so much about the clients the shelter takes in as they are about
the ones it refuses to take in. Will they be left to wander the
neighborhoods? The Salvation Army says they’ll be offered
rides to other places that will help, but admits it has little
control over their movements. It would be hard to find a kinder,
gentler, group than the Oak Ridge Neighborhood Association. Their
concerns are legitimate. The Salvation Army has pointed out that the
federal Fair Housing Act has provisions to prevent zoning petitions for
homeless shelters from being rejected on purely emotional grounds, and
the lawsuit-weary city attorney says they might have a case. City
Council members seem swayed by her concerns, but dodging lawsuits is
not a good way to govern a city. It is not a bad thing to allow the
court system to interpret this vague federal statute. To be clear, the
Salvation Army has not exactly threatened a lawsuit, and has specified
that even if it went to court, that would be only for the purpose of
changing the zoning decision to its favor, not to take the city’s
money. Aldermen shouldn’t use fear of a lawsuit as an excuse for
siting a homeless shelter in the wrong place. The Salvation Army says nobody has come
forward with a suitable alternative location for its proposed new
facility, but that’s not quite fair. Opponents of the current
site have offered numerous suggestions, but the Army rejects them
all with the argument they don’t meet its criteria of
location, size, and price. The Salvation Army needs to change its
criteria. It can find a better location if it will go for less land
and a higher price in the central city. Yet it isn’t likely
to budge from its current proposal until the City Council votes it
down.
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2005.
