A New Way to End up Homeless

During the decade I’ve worked at Central Dallas Ministries and Central Dallas CDC, I’ve met a lot of homeless people and heard a lot of different stories about how someone became homeless, but an article from Reuters in the news today showed me a whole new idea about how to end up in a homeless shelter tonight—just get married today!

Couple marries, wants divorce on same day
Pair had a huge argument right after civil ceremony, wanted annulment

BERLIN – A Polish couple living in Germany fell out after tying the knot and decided to end their marriage on the same day.
“He said he never wanted to see her again and wanted an immediate annulment, and she said the same thing,” a spokesman for police in the northern city of Hanover said Thursday.
Right after the civil ceremony Wednesday, the 50-year-old man began rowing with his bride and tried to cut her hair with a kitchen knife, police said.
The 34-year-old woman called police, who issued the man with a restraining order, which he readily accepted, police said.
Two attempts at a rapprochement later that evening by telephone ended in more shouted exchanges before the man went to spend his wedding night in a local shelter for homeless people.
That’s not my idea of a honeymoon, but you have to admit, it would be hard to forget!

White Roofs

Call and Response, Part II

Today I’m posting my answer to the email I posted yesterday.

Ms. ________:

Unfortunately, as you have found out, the safety net that should exist to help people in your circumstances is full of holes. Although I run Central Dallas CDC, I am no better than third out of a four person staff in my knowledge of the various programs that exist to provide housing for people in circumstances like yours. I will ask the people on my staff with the most knowledge to see if they have any ideas where you may go for help.

Central Dallas CDC owns or manages a little over sixty units of housing and we have another 200 units that will become available in the next few months. Some of our projects have housing units that might be affordable for you, but all of our developments have waiting lists. I will ask that you be put on the waiting lists, as well as _________, unless she prefers not to be placed on the waiting list, but that is unlikely to provide you with any help over the short term.

I will also give you some advice, which you may or may not find helpful. It appears to me that you might advantageously think of your problem in two parts: short term and long term. In the short term I think it would be best if you took the steps necessary to remain in some type of housing, regardless of the cost. In that regard, I do not think you can afford to pay over $400 per month in storage fees. If I were in your shoes, I would remove any item of purely sentimental value from storage and sell, donate or, as a last resort, throw away the remaining items. I do not know what items you have in storage, but it may be that the value of those items, when combined with your savings on storage fees, is sufficient to keep you in housing for at least some time.

If you can find a source to pay a month’s rent or so (we don’t provide any monetary aid), I also think you should take advantage of that opportunity. It is much harder to become housed than it is to stay housed.

For the longer term, I cannot recommend much beyond what you are doing. If you have not, I would contact the Plano Housing Authority about receiving a Housing Choice Voucher:

Plano Housing Authority http://www.planoha.org/

1740 Avenue G
Plano, TX 75074
(972) 423-4928

The waiting list may be long, I know it’s impossible in Dallas, but the earlier you are on the list, the better. There are also some funds set aside to prevent homelessness in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that was signed into law in February by President Obama. Those funds have not yet reached local agencies, but should reach them in the next several months. When those funds become available, then there should be at least a short period of time when housing assistance for people in your situation should be more available. I think that’s another reason to remain housed, if you can do so, even if only on a temporary basis. Finally, if any other organizations have waiting lists for housing assistance, I would ask to be placed on those lists. The more possibilities you have open to you, the better the chances that something will turn up.

I also have a request. If I remove the identifying information from your email, may I post it on my blog? Your statement of the problem is elegant, and we are always looking for ways to bring home the problem with housing to people.

Once again, I will have my staff look into what may be possible, and if we have any ideas someone will be in contact with you.

Until then, may God bless and protect you.

John P. Greenan
Executive Director

Central Dallas Community Development Corporation
2814 Main Street, Suite 102
Dallas, Texas 75226-1551

Telephone No.: 214.573.2570
Cellular No.: 214.681.5648
Facsimile No.: 214.573.2575

I haven’t received any response to my email, but I took silence as acquiescence to posting the substance of this email exchange here. Every case is unique, but a number of the issues that this person has are typical. Illness and medical expenses are a common cause of homelessness—while many homeless people have substance abuse problems (but not all), sometimes it is the result, not the cause, of homelessness. Some people that never had substance issues find that once they are homeless, any escape looks good.

People are also amazingly resourceful. Find a roommate, combine resources and stay housed. But people can also be amazingly slow to adjust to changes in there circumstances. Why keep paying storage fees? My guess is that because letting all the items you’ve accumulated during your life go is an admission that you will never again have what you once had. That’s hard for any of us.

Call and Response, Part I

Every day we receive telephone calls from desperate people with no place to stay and no money to pay for one. Most of the time those calls go to our property manager, Judy Lawrence who does her best to help people, but she was out on vacation last week, so I had to take some of those calls. I don’t know any way to convey to you either the caller’s distress or our frustration about our inability to help.

I also got the email below, however, and it gives you a better idea of what people go through when they are threatened with losing their place to live. This is the email as it came to me, but with all identifying information about the individual deleted.

Dear Mr. Greenan:

My name is ___________, I am 55 years of age and live in Collin County. I have been on Disability since 5/05. I live at the __________. I have lived here with a friend/roommate/caretaker for over two years. We have never been late on rent.

On April 6, I became ill and was taken to the ER unit at ___________ where I then had a gall bladder removal. It went well and I went home within 3 days. Two days later I became very ill and was taken by ambulance back to Plano County Hospital where I was tested for two days before they discovered I was in renal failure and then I developed double pneumonia. After treatment there I was sent to _____________ for the remainder of my recuperation. In total, I was hospitalized for almost six weeks. I returned home on May 18th.

My roommate/caretaker _________, 56 years old was laid off her job
with ___________ in January and has been trying to find a new position since. She is working with WorkForce and was NOT eligible for unemployment. So things have gone downhill as my income is just under $700 a month before medicare is taken out. I also have a $230 monthly storage fee I pay that holds all my belongings. I have been paying that the last four years.

In May, the apartment complex extended a “Plan” to many of it’s struggling rentors where May’s rent would be deferred and pro-rated over the following four months on top of the regular rental fees. We were unable to pay the rent and May’s portion by the 3rd when we normally pay.

On June 12th, my room mate and I were given a “Notice to Vacate” form saying we had to be out by the following monday evening. Without resources over the weekend all we could do was panic and pack. I have no relatives or children to help. Carla has a brother who just went through triple bypass surgery who is able to lend us $600 in order to get our belongings into storage. From there we have no idea where we are to go. I have called legal-aid and have been informed of the process concerning eviction and what we should expect.

Our landlord just called this morning and said she will be going to court today and serving us. She also kindly said that if we were to vacate by the date stated in the eviction notice she would not pursue the eviction so that it would not be on our records. Which we appreciate and she is happy to do.

At this point, we have one income… my $645, which $410 will automatically be deducted to cover our two storage spaces. We have two small dogs and one car between us. We do receive food stamps thank God. I have checked the internet and made over 80+ phone calls to 211 and
other organizations seeking assistance and housing or temporary shelter with no success.

Where do people in our circumstances go or what can we do. Getting a month’s worth of rent really isn’t the answer as the following month we would be in the same place needing financial assistance. We are at our wit’s end and feel we are not mentally at our best and overstressed to
say the least. It seems seniors with other special circumstances, i.e., Katrina victims, Veterans, Physically Incapacitated, etc. have programs to assist them. What about the majority of us who have worked all our lives, have suffered losses and trauma not within the bounds of these programs… where do we turn? A sound voice and grounded guiding light would be a Godsend. Is your organization in a position to help us figure our futures out?

Respectfully

Tomorrow I will post my answer, which I’m afraid wasn’t much help.

Re:Vision Dallas, Selection of the Design to Build

For those of you following the Re:Vision Dallas project, here’s a copy of a letter I wrote to the three winning designers that sets out how we’re going to conduct the process of determining which design to build.

June 23, 2009

Mark Hogan, LEED AP
david baker + partners, architects
461 Second Street, loft 127,
San Francisco, CA 94107
v.415.896.6700 x119
markhogan@dbarchitect.com
dbarchitect.com

Antonio Louro
MOOV – ESTÚDIO DE ARTE E PROJECTO, LDA
Rua dos Fanqueiros Nº 286 3ºF 1100-233 Lisboa PORTUGAL Office: +351 21 0150837
Cell: +351 919673148
moov.email@gmail.com
http://www.moov.tk/

Bradley Bartholomew
Little
5815 Westpark Drive
Charlotte, NC 28217
bjbartholomew@littleonline.com
646-319-6685
http://www.littleonline.com/

Re: Re:Vision Dallas Winning Designers

Gentlemen:

First, I want to congratulate you all on winning the Re:Vision Dallas competition. The quality of the entries was extraordinarily high, and emerging as one of the three best designs out of one hundred entries and dozens of extremely fine designs is a significant accomplishment of which you can all be proud. I was honored just to have the opportunity to review your entries and watch the jury deliberate as it chose the winning designs. I am extremely pleased with the designs chosen by the jury—your designs—and look forward to moving forward to complete the project.

Second, let me apologize for not contacting you sooner. I know you are as eager to get started on this project as I am, but it took us a little longer than we had expected to complete the transition from Urban Re:Vision running the design contest to Central Dallas Community Development Corporation starting work on the actual development.

Third, I know you are all anxious to know where we plan to go from here, so let me explain the process as I expect it will unveil from now on. The Real Estate Council of Dallas (“TREC”) (http://www.recouncil.com/) has agreed to work with us to conduct a thorough evaluation of the winning design to make sure that we understand your designs as fully as possible. The different experts that TREC will make available to this project should allow us to make a more sophisticated analysis of the different systems and costs embedded in your designs than we could perform on our own, and help make this a project owned not just by Central Dallas CDC but by the entire City of Dallas.

As I’m sure you know, summers in Dallas are hot and many people leave for vacations, so putting the review teams together has taken a little longer than we anticipated. We expect to start the review work early in July and spend four to six weeks in the process. It is likely that we will be in touch with you during this process to obtain clarifications or explanations of your designs.

During this process, I will serve as your main contact, and I will try to let you know in advance if someone other than me will be contacting you with questions. In the same vein, unless you let me know otherwise, I will direct any questions we may have through you.

The review process should be completed sometime in the first half of August, and at that point we will schedule interviews with each of you to discuss your designs more fully. I will try to let you know in advance if there are particular issues that we want to address—as beautiful as your designs are, there will always be changes between the early conceptions and the final product.

Our goal is to make a decision and be ready to start on the design work by early fall. We expect to have a showing of the competition entries at Dallas City Hall at that time. As competition winners, all of your designs will be prominently featured, and we hope to schedule a number of talks and panel discussions concurrently with the show. I hope that all of you will be able to attend and participate in the presentation. We will try to get the schedule set fairly quickly. In particular, I hope that a representative of the design we are going to build will be here to accept the award and answer questions, because interest in the project is very high here in Dallas.

Once again, congratulations on authoring a winning design. I am always happy to answer questions. All my contact information is available in the email to which this letter is attached. I look forward to getting to know each of you. Thank you.

Respectfully yours,

John P. Greenan
Executive Director
Central Dallas Community Development Corporation

Going to Seed

One custom that has pretty well passed away by now is saving seeds from your garden. Of course most people don’t garden for sustenance these days, and if you do garden, then most of your seeds are probably hybrid seeds that don’t come true-no point in saving them. In fact in many cases, farmers don’t even own the seeds they plant—Monsanto does: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MonsantovsFarmers.php.

But that’s another discussion for another day.

If you do garden, then sometime let one of your plants go to seed rather than pulling it up when it’s quit producing, and you will see something interesting. (Don’t save any seeds that belong to Monsanto, of course) Common plants like radishes or carrots will sprout amazing flowers.

This year I let a radicchio go to seed. If you know radicchio, then you probably know it as the trendy red leaf crop with a bit of a bitter taste that cost you an arm and a leg at the grocery. Botanically, however, radicchio is a chicory, one of a large family of garden crops. Both the leaves and roots are eaten (different varieties) and the roots are ground and added to coffee or used as a coffee substitute—it’s especially popular in coffee in New Orleans.

Chicory has gone feral over much of America. Growing up in the Midwest, the roadside ditches were filled with the beautiful blue flowers of chicory, and some people collected the leaves or roots to eat. Until I let a radicchio go to seed in my garden, I had forgotten how beautiful the flowers of chicory are. It feels good to be reminded.

Re:Vision Dallas – Media List

The Re:Vision Dallas project has been receiving a lot of attention from commentators on the web. Here’s a sample list of sites that talk about the Re:Vision Dallas project so you can keep up with the conversation:

http://gapblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/06/gap-rap-9.html

http://konstructr.com/dallas-revised-ep-36

Art – http://blogartscenter.blogspot.com/

Larry James’ Urban Daily: Update on Re:Vision Dallas

Dallas – Unfair Park – Courtesy Re:Vision Dallas, Six Visions of a …

Re:Vision – Dallas announces Winners World Landscape Architect

taurus rising: a cool first
URBAN RE:VISION, DALLAS Design Ecology Blog
URBAN GRAMMARS: Urban RE:Vision

Re:Vision Dallas: Standard’s Co-op Canyon Receives Honorable …
Forwarding Dallas / Atelier Data + MOOV ArchDaily

Who greened JR?

Urban Re:Vision intends to build America’s ‘first fully …
Dallas – Unfair Park – The Grand Co-Op Canyon: Another in a Series …
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It’s Dallas, Not Denver!

CityWalk: 106 People Working

Yesterday we set a record at CityWalk. We had 106 people on site and working at the same time (it would have been more but the steel subcontractor wasn’t on site and we had only five painters). In the next week or two we expect to top 125 people as we reach the height of activity before we start winding down a little bit as the project nears completion.

What are all these people doing? Project superintendent Randy Allen was kind enough to send me a list of the tasks that people will be working on next week, and that gives you an idea of the type of work being done:

1. Installing the cooling tower;
2. Demoing the 3rd floor storefront for replacement;
3. Installing the outside air unit;
4. Putting the boilers in the basement;
5. Installing the walls on the 14th floor (that means everything through 13 is done!);
6. Sheetrocking the electrical rooms;
7. Installing the electrical meters in floors 10-13;
8. Installing the electrical panel in floors 9-12;
9. Prepare for ceiling inspections on 4 & 5;
10. Sheetrock double sided on floors 7-10;
11. Tape and bed the walls on floors 6-9;
12. Waterproof south windows on floors 10-15;
13. Lay in around windows on the second floor;
14. Replace outside brick where it’s spalled;
15. Install sprinkler system on first floor;
16. Set the tubs on 14th floor;
17. Install house keeping pads;
18. Infill holes;
19. Paving begins on east and west parking lots;
20. Install fire pump system in basement; and
21. Install light fixtures in apartments on floors 4-5.

Each week has a similar number of tasks to be completed, so you can see why we need over 100 people working on the project. The tasks change each week—each day really—so you can also see why Randy and Bobby, our superintendents, have their hands full scheduling everybody and making sure tasks get done in the right order.

Re:Vision Dallas, Interview on Konstructr

Vic Duggal runs the interesting podcast Konstructr. He interviewed me last week and now you can listen to the interview here: http://konstructr.com/dallas-revised-ep-36/.

The interview runs over twenty minutes, so you have to be prepared to spend a little time to listen to it, but in my (totally unbiased of course) opinion, it’s worth it—at least as much so as watching a rerun of The Nanny.

Vic does a great job of keeping the interview moving, and as for me, it’s good practice, right?

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