Homeless for seven years, Nancy has spent much of this
winter huddled under blankets on the front porch of a derelict building in
downtown Springfield.
The semienclosed wooden porch offers some shelter from
the wind and snow, she says. And it’s conveniently located across the
street from St. John’s Breadline, where she takes two meals a day.
Nancy is often seen rummaging on the downtown streets
for aluminum cans, which she cashes in for 52 cents a pound. She spends
most of her earnings on hot coffee and cheap cigarettes.
“My only addictions,” she says, with some
pride.
But Nancy, who keeps all of her possessions packed in
a half-dozen grocery carts, is searching for new digs.
Since Friday, a bulldozer has sat outside the
abandoned brick buildings at 437 and 503-505 N. Fifth St., which are said
to house as many as two dozen homeless people nightly.
The buildings have long posed problems for police, who
have received nearly 20 complaints in the last 12 months ranging from
burglaries and thefts to fires, according to Sgt. Kevin Keen, a Springfield
Police Department spokesman.
In November, a few days before Thanksgiving, a
homeless man went into cardiac arrest while sleeping in his usual spot
between the two buildings. George Oppegard, a middle-aged man from the East
Coast, later died at St. John’s Hospital.
Dr. Robert Posegate, a local ophthalmologist who has
owned the properties since 1998, says he stopped renting out apartments
last spring after tenants complained of vandals, trespassers, and
intimidation by vagrants.
Since then, the buildings have served as a temporary
shelter for some of the city’s neediest citizens.
Getting in is a cinch. Not only are many of the
windows broken, but the front doors are also left unlocked.
Inside, the scene is that of a party spun out of
control, with mounds of cigarette butts and ashes piled high on the floors,
hundreds of empty malt-liquor bottles scattered throughout, and bare
mattresses strewn across rooms on the upper floors.
Posegate says he wants to level the buildings
immediately. He may then sell the properties or pave them for use as
parking lots.
“They’re an invitation to homeless people,
and I need to get rid of them,” says Posegate. “I hope to have
the buildings down this month.”
But that seems unlikely. Jones-Blythe Construction
Co., which was contracted to demolish the structures, has only recently
completed asbestos removal. The company has not applied for demolition
permits, according to a spokesman for the city’s zoning department.
Still, many of the buildings’ squatters have
been turning in early and expect to be awakened by the wrecking ball any
day.
Nancy, who refuses to stay at shelters because
“they’re too dangerous,” has already begun to scope out
some new places to crash at night.
“It just seems like we’re getting pushed
further out of the city,” she says.
“I don’t know where I’ll go to
next.”
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2005.
