Unwelcome Mat Comments, Part V

This commentator recommends checking out Haven for Hope:

Please check out http://www.havenforhope.org/

These folks are taking the right approach and treating the homeless as real people.

Haven for Hope is a really good facility in San Antonio, but it doesn’t provide permanent supportive housing. Instead it’s the equivalent of The Bridge here in Dallas, a service and intake center for people who are homeless.

The confusion between different types of facilities for homeless people is pretty common (and pretty understandable—I can’t tell one type of car from another; it’s not my job and I’m not that interested). I think it’s important to try to make distinctions between different types of facilities, though, because they have wildly different impacts on neighborhoods.

Service centers or resource centers like The Bridge and Haven for Hope are designed to attract and serve large numbers of homeless people. They are the center of a city’s homeless programs, and although usually run well and professionally (like The Bridge and Haven for Hope), such centers have an unavoidable impact on an area because of the number of people who visit them. These facilities belong in the downtown area, not in a residential neighborhood and typically there is only one such facility in any city.

Shelters usually provide dormitory-style sleeping arrangements for one night only at a time. They often have a significant impact on a neighborhood because their patrons have to leave in the morning and then return in the evening. That practically guarantees a number of people will spend the day wandering around until they can return to the shelter again.

While necessary, so long as we don’t have any alternatives, shelters don’t help someone put their life back together by providing a permanent place to live and, personally, I hope someday to see shelters reduced to a bare minimum—just enough to provide a place for people for a night in an emergency situation.

Permanent supportive housing is what we build, so naturally I think it’s the best solution (why would we be doing it otherwise?). It provides an apartment to people that have been homeless and a platform to begin putting their life back together. People have their own place, so there is no reason to wander the streets (like shelters encourage) and they don’t provide services except for the people who live there, so they don’t attract crowds (like The Bridge or Haven for Hope).

If you visit permanent supportive housing projects, then you wouldn’t know that the people that live there were formerly homeless until you take a close look. Every study shows that they don’t negatively impact neighborhoods.

I believe that permanent supportive housing is the best solution to homelessness and that it can make our cities better, more pleasant places to live. We need not to confuse them with shelters or resource centers, which have significantly more impact on their surroundings.

My Christmas Wish List for Central Dallas CDC

BY KEVIN FLAGG

I recently heard a wonderful Christmas story. There was a father who was not able financially to provide for his family the things they wanted most for Christmas. He decided to find pictures of the gifts he would purchase his family if he were in the position to do so. He found a picture of a big red bicycle for his son. He found a picture of an elegant evening dress for his wife. He found a picture of a diamond necklace for his daughter. He wrapped all the pictures in beautiful wrapping paper and placed them under the tree. On Christmas Eve when the family unwrapped their presents, no one was disappointed – they all understood the significance of the pictures.

Years continued to go by and the family held on to their pictures. And then the miracle happened. The father won the jackpot and was able to purchase the items on the pictures for his family for Christmas.

This story inspired me. I asked myself, “What would I purchase for my new co-workers at Central Dallas Community Development Corporation?” It has been said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” For John, I would purchase a fully occupied 511 N. Akard building by December 31, 2009 that would include a 7-Eleven convenience store. For Johnice, I would give a copy machine and printer with no interruptions. For Naquanna, I would give a store full of resources for the residents, food pantry, toiletry supply room, and funded CityWalk studio home packages. For Lori Beth, I would give a quiet place to work for eight hours.

The MIRACLE of my presents is real. All of my gifts will come to fruition. They may not arrive by December 25, 2009, but they are sure to come.

Unwelcome Mat Comments, Part IV

Today let’s take a quick look at one of the best arguments in support of permanent supportive housing:

“Price said that investing in housing and mental health care can save taxpayers money.

You’ve got to get people to understand that if you don’t, it’ll cost you. It’s like the old adage of ‘pay now or pay more later….”

Investing in proper health care can save money, and prevent more pain and suffering. See http://tinyurl.com/ydsatd4

It’s very important to always remember and to inform people that don’t know that we aren’t talking about spending more money. We are already spending enough money on helping people who are homeless—we just aren’t using it very well.

If we’re going to spend the money, shouldn’t we spend it in a way that actually helps people? I think that’s an argument that most people would agree with. The disagreements don’t really start until you get to a specific project.

Unwelcome Mat Comments, Part III—A conversation with Dr. James Baker

Dr. James Baker is the CEO of Metrocare Services, the largest provider of mental health services in the Dallas area (here’s its website: http://www.metrocareservices.org/). He must have been following this series of blogs, because I got a question from him yesterday. That question led to the exchange below, which I am publishing with his permission:

Are you going to respond to the below comment from below Kim Horner’s article online?
-j

“DO THE MATH: on trying to convert a hotel into an estimated two hundred rooms that are 350 sq foot boxes to house these folks: At $25,000,000 of a ‘proposed’ budget – that’s about $125,000 per apartment, and on a ‘leasable square foot basis’ (a common metric many developers use to budget multifamily projects), that weighs in at about $330 per foot of living space! CAN YOU SAY the ‘W’, or the Belagio in Vegas? And again, you and I are paying for most of it in taxes. Compare this ridiculously expensive number to Class-A market rate apartments in upscale parts of Dallas which are usually built for a total of $120-150 per leasable square foot – For about a third. Something smells funny here.”

My response:

I don’t know, because it isn’t an apples to apples comparison and you really have to be a geek to understand why. There are actually 246 units and the average size is slightly larger, and there is a whole bunch of extra space for offices and amenities. High-rise construction and the dirt under it are more expensive. Tax credit deals have a whole bunch of extra costs that you can’t avoid–consultants and attorneys mostly. Then you have to have a security system well beyond what any garden apartments have.

Also, the cost of bathrooms and kitchens is the highest per square foot cost in an apartment and you still need at least one of each whether the apartment is 1200 or 350 sq. ft. In addition, you have to build PSH to a very high standard of durability and furnish the units as well. Those add more costs. In the end you’ll find that building small PSH units is only maybe 20% cheaper than building other units that are twice as large.

But as a developer of PSH, I don’t really care about the cost per square foot, but the cost per unit–can you imagine the screams if we built big ritzy units for homeless persons (I may do that someday, though, just for the fun of irritating people like the one that wrote the comment). It’s more practical to build smaller units that are more per square foot but less per unit.

In the real world, you can build a nice 750 sq. ft. class B apartment unit for about $120,000 in an area near downtown. You can build a 350 sq. ft. PSH for $100,000. Big square foot difference, but so what?

The even larger problem, though, is that PSH units don’t make any money. So how are you going to finance them if you don’t use tax credits? You can’t carry any debt. So you end up paying the overhead for tax credit units to avoid debt.

In Seattle, the PSH units they are building (which aren’t any larger than ours) cost $250,000 to $300,000 per unit. Both the Hamiltons and I can bring PSH units in at about $100,000 per unit. I don’t know if someone else could do better, but I doubt it.

If I thought anybody would really listen, then I might sit down and work this all out with references and everything. But it’s a lot of work and I don’t think anybody is really listening. I’ll think about it.

Dr. Baker:

No, I think your point is well taken: that nobody is listening at that level.

[I can’t resist adding a postscript. This is a common problem in dealing with complicated public policy issues. I can explain why a PSH unit costs what it does; why they are built the way that they are; and why those of us working on ending homelessness approach the problem as we do—but it’s not a conversation that fits into an Elevator Speech and doesn’t even really lend itself to a blog post. If you really want to understand, then we’d need to sit down for an afternoon and go over cost estimates, review the spreadsheets we’ve developed, know the relative costs and advantages of various financing strategies and understand the varying predilections of the public and private foundations that support our work.

It would be a lot of work and it’s only interesting to numbers geeks like me. You very likely would lose interest and I don’t have time to make the explanations to very many people.

Criticism is easy; progress is hard. If you think you can do better, then I would welcome you with open arms into the effort to house the homeless. If you think we are making a fortune doing this work, then come look at our offices, or review the public information about us on the internet.

All of us, myself, Dr. Baker, my staff, his staff, everyone involved in the effort, do this work not because it’s easy, not because it makes us popular, not for the money, but because we feel we have to do it. It’s a duty we owe to our fellow Americans, our fellow human beings and to the image of God within them.]

Unwelcome Mat Comments, Part II

(continuing responses to the Dallas Morning News article from last Sunday, which can be found here: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/121309dnmethomeless.4003d95.html?ocp=8#slcgm_comments_anchor)

The comment below repeats a common objection to permanent, supportive housing projects:

The problem with the Plaza development is its viability. The size and physical layout of the building would create a huge management undertaking, one that few developers of low income-specific needs housing such as this, adequately plan for. Support services aside, to provide a safe, decent and secure place for a homeless transitioning population to live, you MUST be able to “control the night” and manage the property and tenants 24/7. The qualified staff to make this happen at the Plaza would be significant.

When you first read a comment like this it seems entirely reasonable. Permanent supportive housing projects are not easy and do require a significant management effort. As far as I know, this commentator may be only pointing out a reasonable concern.

On the other hand, if you’ve been working in this area for a few years, then it’s hard to accept such comments at face value. Most of the time the people making the comments aren’t raising reasonable concerns that can be satisfied, because as soon as one issue is resolved they raise another objection—then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, continuing on into infinity.

I find it hard to believe in the good faith of a commentator like this for a couple of reasons. First, the size and physical layout of the Plaza is perfect for a permanent, supportive housing project. The hotel has the right sized rooms and a front desk area that controls the only entrance into the building. That’s exactly what you want for a permanent, supportive housing project. The Plaza also has a fully fenced and controlled parking area, which gives you even better control of the premises.

In short, the Plaza would be one of the easiest properties to control that I’ve looked at.

Second, I think I’ve seen all the plans to provide services and management at the Plaza, and I’ve had input into most of them, and all the plans call for a very substantial management effort, including a secured building, 24/7 front desk coverage and at least one case worker for every 20 residents.

These projects have been successful everywhere else. I’ve personally visited developments in San Diego, Houston, Austin, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. No one is inventing anything new here, and I refuse to believe that we can’t do in Dallas what people in every other city in the country seem to be doing successfully.

Unwelcome Mat Comments, Part I

This first comment is one of the most rationale out of the whole group. This person is clearly thinking about the problem of homelessness and how it might be solved:

Time to spread them out across the Dallas Fort Worth Metropolitan area, so the people can get their hands on them. Small nodes next to churches would make the most sense. Homes and apartments supervised by neighborhood churches who can also find them work, work on their vices and afflictions, and generally remove them from the group-think that causes recidivism. Warehousing them downtown and within a far more dense population harms more than helps, and it is not fair to load up such a small geographical area as downtown Dallas.

The only reason why it has unfolded this way is because of NIMBY, and the fact that downtown Dallas does not have a voter base to protect it.

The problem is this solution, which I have heard proposed many times, doesn’t really work. Churches don’t have any special competency in dealing with the problems of homelessness. You really can’t depend on volunteers. The building needs to be staffed 24 hours, seven days per week. Very few churches could sustain such an effort over the long-term.

Small projects are very difficult to run. All economies of scale are lost. Remember, a project designed to house the homeless has to pay not only the capital costs of the building, but ongoing costs of services, operations and maintenance. I’ve talked with the developers of permanent supportive housing all over the country, and almost nobody will build a development that houses less than 80 to 100 residents. The numbers just don’t work.

In short, nice as it would be to think that you could build many small homes scattered all over the city to solve the homeless problem, experience shows that it is just not possible.

Unwelcome mat out for project to house chronically homeless

Sunday’s Dallas Morning News had an insightful article by Kim Horner on the difficulties in building housing for the homeless. Here’s a bit from the opening:

“Developer Larry Hamilton has been working for months to turn the empty Plaza Hotel south of downtown Dallas into homes for the homeless. But it’s been much tougher than he imagined.

“Hamilton and other developers complain of roadblocks even as they try to carry out the city’s goal of opening 700 apartments for the homeless by 2014. The housing, which would come with mental health and addiction services, is considered the most effective way to clear the streets of the hard-core homeless.

“But Dallas has lagged behind other major cities in creating the units. Public financing, neighborhood cooperation and political will are all in short supply in a city that has been able to raise millions for arts projects, a convention center hotel and Calatrava bridges over the Trinity River.

‘They have this aspiration to do 700 units, but I think it’s going to be hard to do any,’ Hamilton said. ‘I don’t see how it’s going to get done.’”

You can read the rest of the article, and should if you are interested in the problem of homelessness in Dallas, here: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/121309dnmethomeless.4003d95.html.
I’ve been going through the comments, and they are a pretty interesting indication of what people in Dallas are thinking about the homeless. The next couple of days I’ll probably spend some time discussing them, but I’ll warn you that I find them discouraging.

CityWalk’s Christmas Wish List

BY NAQUANNA COMEAUX

As CityWalk nears its opening, we’re so thankful that donations and requests for volunteer work have started to come in. It’s important that our low-income and formerly homeless residents have food and toiletries available to them upon move-in. We want them to be able to transition into their new home as smoothly and as comfortably as possible, lacking nothing.

A month ago today, I blogged about the CityWalk Home Package needed for our 142 studios that can be purchased in honor of your family, church, business or organization (http://citywalktalk.blogspot.com/2009/11/creating-lasting-legacy.html). Several churches have already made commitments to purchase a CityWalk Home Package for one or more of our studios, but we still need to hear from more of you in the community.

Can you purchase a CityWalk Home Package and/or host a donation drive for food or toiletries? This is a wonderful opportunity for your sorority or fraternity, bible study group or youth group, or little league team to come together and “give back” during the holiday season.

Whatever you can do, whether it’s all at once or a little at a time, please know that it is greatly needed and much appreciated. To make a donation, go to citywalkatakard.com and click on “DONATE” or contact me at the Central Dallas CDC office at 214.573.2570.

We look forward to hearing from you!

It’s Christmas Party Time!

BY NAQUANNA COMEAUX

All around the country, companies are either gearing up for or have already hosted their employee Christmas parties. Some people dread them and some folks look forward to them. As a new employee, I was definitely looking forward to the Central Dallas Ministries holiday party, which took place just this past Friday.

I really didn’t know what to expect. Would it be boring, silly or just plain forgettable? Well, it was definitely none of those things. In fact, it was fun and entertaining, and the food was great. (Kudos to the planning committee!) Kevin Flagg and I attended together and we had a blast.

One of the best parts of the celebration was the presentation of the employee service awards. CDM president/CEO Larry James and the executive management team – Keith Ackerman, Gerald Britt and Steve Palma – showed their appreciation by passing out certificates and gold pins. There was a lot of cheering and shouting throughout the room as each name was called. The big one – Employee of the Year – went to “The Voice” of CDM, George Padilla.

The party culminated with drawings for tons of great prizes that included everything from gift cards to jewelry to cookware to DVD players. I had a good feeling that Kevin and I would both win something – I mean, the prize tables were overflowing with goodies – but neither one of us did. We did, however, get to witness An of the Technology Learning Center, who was sitting right next to me, win a really pretty glassware set that I wanted and a $50 gift card from Target that I also wanted. I was happy for him. Really, I was.

But more important than the delicious food and the cool prizes was the camaraderie that could be seen and felt throughout the room. Everyone seemed a lot less like coworkers and a lot more like family. And I was glad to be a part of it.

A New Beginning

BY JOHNICE WOODS

From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, there is a constant flow of potential tenants coming into our office to be interviewed by our wonderful outreach coordinators, Naquanna Comeaux and Kevin Flagg. The interview process brings forth many stories from those who are currently homeless to those who are part-time college students and employees.

Once potential tenants complete the interview, they are directed to Pinnacle Realty (our property management company at CityWalk) to start the application process. The application process includes criminal and credit screenings and filling out a great deal of documents required by the management company and the state of Texas. Many fail to meet the criteria and are denied because of their criminal or credit background check or both. Of course, those who receive this news are very disappointed. I have heard many stories and I am sympathetic because I know there is a lack of affordable housing, especially for those with a criminal past.

One rainy day, a young man whom I will call “Daniel” to protect his identity came in for his interview. He was scheduled to interview with Kevin. As the interview ended, Kevin informed Daniel that his criminal background would probably disqualify him for the application process. Not knowing his story, I was initially impressed that Daniel rode the bus and was an hour early to his appointment on a rainy day. Kevin took Daniel to meet with Pinnacle and they confirmed that due to his criminal past, he would be denied residency for CityWalk.

Kevin came to me to see if I could offer Daniel any other housing options. I started to give him my usual response, which is, all of our properties were filled and the waiting list is about a year out and the other affordable housing properties I know would have the same criteria. I decided to sit down with Kevin and Daniel to see if I could help direct him. Daniel told me that he had served time in the juvenile detention system for possession of a controlled substance. He had served his time and his probation term. To date, he had no other legal issues and has a part-time job at a restaurant as a cashier. He has even enrolled in El Centro Community College and was awarded financial aid to pay for his entire year of school.

Daniel said he was determined to make a new start in his life. He did not want to return to his hometown in East Texas, where all of his criminal troubles began because he could not find adequate housing. He said he had heard about CityWalk from a caseworker at the Texas Workforce Commission and thought it would be an ideal place for him since it was located in downtown Dallas where he would be attending school.

I guess what touched me most about Daniel was the fact that even though he was denied for CityWalk, he still maintained a positive outlook that something “good” would work out for him. He possessed a rare spirit of hope and humbleness, something that I don’t see often in people who have struggled as Daniel has. I made a call to my property manager at our apartment complex located in East Dallas to see if we had anything available. She stated that a unit had become available due to a recent eviction. I asked Daniel if he was ready for some good news and, of course, he was open to what I had to tell him. I told him about the opening and asked if he wanted to take a look at it. He was totally speechless. He had been accustomed to hearing “no” and he could not believe that there was a possible “yes” in sight.

Kevin and I drove him over to the apartment to meet with the property manager and see the unit. I told him if he liked the apartment, I would like to have him as a tenant. Daniel was speechless and in total awe. I told him that all we needed from him was that he be a good neighbor and a responsible tenant. He said he was ready to be both. He was so grateful for the new opportunity. I was grateful to be a part of his new beginning.

(Update – Daniel has paid his deposit and has received his January school schedule. He is in search of furnishings for his new apartment.)

« Previous Page — Next Page »