DO THE MATH
The less you rely on smoke and mirrors, the less you will have to put out fires (“Tiny houses, big controversy,” Sept. 26). The total project includes 18 tiny 540-square-foot homes and a 1,200-square-foot learning center. The total amount requested for the project is $5.2 million, $400,000 from the city of Springfield and $4.8 million from Illinois Housing Development Authority.
This amount of money is enough to purchase 348 three-bedroom, one bathroom, 800-square-foot prefabricated homes that retail for $14,500. Purchasing 18 of these would only cost $261,000.
Additionally, the Springfield Housing Authority has funded 18 vouchers to be renewed annually. This means SHA will be issuing a monthly payment for the homes for what seems to be an indefinite amount of time. Who will the payments be made to?
Veterans do not need a learning center to train for a career. Their career gave them post-traumatic stress that now needs to be healed. The existing support for veterans, especially homeless veterans, is overwhelming. There are several wonderful organizations that offer support to veterans and their families. We have to stop funding projects of this magnitude when there is no understanding or plan.
Kendra Barlow-JohnsonÂ
Springfield
MUCH NEEDED
If it’s specifically housing for veterans, I don’t see what the problem is with rent versus own. Depending on their age, the veterans might have to transition to a nursing home after a relatively short stay in the development, so the flexibility of a rental or subsidized stay makes more sense in those cases. How can we deny them a roof over their heads while saying we thank them for their service? Wherever they choose to put it, it’s needed.
Mark Suszko
Via Facebook.com/illinoistimes
WORK TOGETHER
Did the veterans that will be living in these tiny homes ask, “What area of town do you live in?” when they went to war? Come on, people! Any project can be as good or as bad as the community wants it to be. When people come together and work together, it can happen, and the entire city can be proud of it.
Karen LeSeure
PUT IT OUT WEST
The city council has been extremely willing to allow Corky Joyner to build any amount of housing he wants over in Ward 10, so why not put these tiny homes over there next to his developments? There is more than adequate space.
Arthur Dunkin
HAVE A PLAN
Why is homelessness such a bad word, prohibiting us from working together as a community? Every time it comes up, the five-alarm fire goes off and people start dividing into their camps. In the meantime, people die on the streets, our town further unravels and we all lose. A vetted plan for homelessness, our veterans and overall poverty needs to be clearly spelled out, and I’m willing to be part of the solution. Who else is on board?
Aaron Graves
Via Facebook.com/illinoistimes
VETERANS DESERVE SERVICES
Why is it always the east side? That is a good question. I would think the reason is it’s far easier to get something that is of a social services nature passed on the east side of Springfield, but in recent years we have found that not to be true. NIMBY is a term we are familiar with. While I don’t agree that everything social-service related should land on the east side, I am even more opposed to tiny houses for anyone homeless seeking housing.
It segregates people, and we should be integrating them in all neighborhoods so churches and neighborhood associations can reach out and extend a friendly hand to welcome people. We see videos every day with people of different colors, nationalities, religions and many other diverse life aspects making friends with one another. Why can’t we put that kind of plan into action? This city has four huge medical facilities (Springfield Memorial Hospital, St. John’s Hospital, SIU School of Medicine and Springfield Clinic) that should be allocating dollars to mental health care, long-term case management and other services so that we don’t have to group people with problems in one place and isolate them from the rest of the community.Â
This community uses the services of those facilities. It’s time they gave back in ways other than just delivering babies, healing hearts and broken limbs, treating stroke patients and treating cancer. Our veterans deserve services, and we should continue to make those services better and more available.
Julie L Benson
Springfield
This article appears in Finding a way forward.
