City mulls plans for new shelter
Organizations consider proposal for construction of homeless facility
By: Paul Bowers
Posted: 10/8/08
Bobby Moody has lived in Columbia all of his 60 years, but the past few months have found him homeless.
"The forefathers said long as there was the world, you gonna have poor people," he said over the rumble of buses at the CMRTA Transfer Center on Laurel Street. "Jesus didn't go to no rich man - he went to the poor man."
Moody, who has stayed in several area shelters, is one of the people whose well-being hangs in the balance as city officials and community groups hammer out plans for a new homeless services center.
The primary question at hand is location. During the summer, the Midlands Housing Alliance - a non-profit advocacy group composed of local business and service leaders - proposed that the current Salvation Army site at the intersection of Main Street and Elmwood Avenue be torn down and replaced with a comprehensive care center, complete with transitional housing and space for care providers.
City Council responded with its own proposal for a similar center at the current site of Columbia's temporary winter shelter, an out-of-the-way riverfront clearing.
City Councilwoman At-Large Tameika Devine said this wouldn't be a good choice.
"It's on a major corner as a gateway into our city," Devine said. "I don't believe that a homeless assistance center on that corner would be the best and highest use of property."
From the start, there was discord in surrounding neighborhoods. Peter S. Korper, president of the Elmwood Park Neighborhood Association, first heard of the Main Street proposal at a joint meeting led by MHA Chair Cathy Novinger and another MHA representative in September.
"They studiously avoided answering any questions, and for that reason, the meeting became more and more dysfunctional," Korper said.
Failure to communicate has hamstringed the project since.
"I wish they had come to the table with that six months ago," Novinger said of City Council's riverfront proposal.
She confessed that there was silence on both sides, though.
"We did not ask them to come to the table, nor did they ask us," Novinger said.
The Salvation Army obtained permission from the city to house overnight guests in 1999, but in recent years it has had no rooms available due to mold infestation. Even before the rooms were deemed unfit for habitation, the shelter sometimes turned people away due to space and behavior restrictions.
"They come into our neighborhoods, and they're pissed and they're down on their luck and they feel sad and they're dejected and disenfranchised," Korper said of homeless people who had been turned away.
Elmwood Park has seen a good deal of loitering and panhandling, a number of break-ins and an attempted rape in recent times, he said.
Korper believes the same trends would continue if a new service center opens at the Salvation Army site.
"We don't want people being attracted to a small site with limited facilities and being turned away," Korper said. "Because when they are turned away, they'll come back into our neighborhood."
Space and money could prove to be restrictive elements if construction begins on Main Street.
Susie VanHuss, president of the Central Carolina Community Foundation, said it would be more cost-effective to build at the riverfront site due to pricey design and review requirements in the downtown area.
"I think they would have a little more land there and could have a larger center than they could on Main Street," VanHuss said.
Her foundation has been active in raising funds for the project since the MHA made its plans publicly known and is officially ambivalent as to the shelter site "as long as it meets the needs of the homeless of the city," she said.
The Knight Foundation - founded by the Knight family, whose Knight-Ridder media company once owned The State newspaper - has been a heavy financial hitter in the project. The foundation's $5 million challenge grant, contingent upon matching funds from Columbia area donors, helped bring the shelter proposal into the spotlight.
Among MHA Chair Novinger's chief concerns is that the Knight grant's Nov. 15 deadline for a plan and funding is fast approaching, along with earlier deadlines for grants from the United Way and South Carolina Housing Authority.
Novinger said the Main Street site provides a ready plan that would meet such cutoff dates.
"If this fails and we do nothing, just imagine what homelessness is going to be like in Columbia in two years," Novinger said.
According to the 2007 South Carolina Homeless Count, Richland County has 743 homeless individuals, including 172 unsheltered.
The city eliminated its own Beth and Lou Holtz Shelter on Hampton Street shortly after establishing it in 2005. Last year, the city opted to maintain a temporary winter shelter in lieu of building a permanent solution.
David Appleby, who has been volunteering at Columbia's Salvation Army for six years, said this added to the homelessness.
"When we closed up, that put another 100, 120 people out on the streets that were depending on this," Appleby said.
Despite the shutdown of its residential facilities, the organization continues to offer counseling, housing assistance and addiction recovery programs from the Main Street center.
"The sudden community objections to it being revitalized and continuing at use seem a bit unrealistic," Appleby said. "It isn't that suddenly ... a new thing is going to be happening to this property."
City Council has issued a unanimous letter to the MHA requesting that they consider the riverfront proposal.