Homeless have a voice in shelter issue

Taken from the "THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER * SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS
Wednesday, November 30, 2005


I am not the least bit interested in getting in the middle of this Salvation Arm community center/homeless shelter debate, so don't even start calling or sending me letters. I do not have a dish at this potluck.
But on Tuesday morning, I visited the Washington Street Mission to find out what the homeless people think of all this. The mission serves free coffee and doughnuts every morning. But I swear that's not why I went there. It was just that we've heard from veterans groups, The Salvation Army, the politicians and the residents of the area on what they think of building the shelter on J. David Jones Parkway. But, as far as I know, nobody has asked the homeless.
"Its like an office manager buying new office machines and not asking the employees about it," one of them said. "And they're the ones who have to use them." All the people I talked to Tuesday asked that I not use their names. I respect that so I will use their quotes and not their names. They had plenty to say. Judging from their comments, most of them do not want the shelter to be on J. David Jones Parkway. It is for some of the same reasons we've already heard (loitering, undesirables, disrespect to the war memorials across the street from the proposed site) and some new reasons. "People are going to go over to that cemetery and drink," one man said, who told me he is living in a tent, said. "When its's cold and ther's no place else to go, they'll get a bottle and get drunk and find a place to stay warm. We're depressed anyway, and so we think we might as well." But others disputed that prediction or at least said loitering can be controlled. They know what's going on and what's being said about them. This message to the haves from the havenots. "Stop stereotyping us." There will only be a few bad actors, they said, who will cause trouble. "We're not homeless because we're bad people," one man said. "We're homeless because we're either uemployed or something has happened to us. We're just temporaily unfortunate." A veteran who served eight years in the Air Force in the 1980's added this: "They'stereotyping all of us. Put yourself in our shoes for a minute and think what that feels like." By the way, he knows four or five veterans who are staying at the shelter. It's the people at the shelter who are just out of prison or on supervised release who are the problem, they said. But, they added, The Salvation Army takes them because it is paid by the state for doing so. Though The Salvation Army has promised to not have Department of Corrections parolees at its new shelter, the people I talked to are skeptical that the organization can give up that money. (Typically, the facility would get $35 a day from the state per person for a maximum of 60 days.) But many of the homeless also don't like the proposed site because it's too far away from St. John's Breadline, Capital Township and social service agencies they need. It's a long walk fromJ. David Jones Parkway. If The salvation Army is planning a shuttle or free bus tokens, these guys haven't gotten the message. "But they want to get all of that stuff out of downtown anyway, because of the Abraham Lincoln Museum," one said. That was another common theme Springfield authorities, especially the police, have become much less tolerant of the homeless because of the increased tourism the museum is bringing. Police routinely roust them for loitering now when they used to let it go. "We're just talking and the police stop and ask if we've got alcohol, have we got drugs," one said. "All we're doing is talking like everyone else." Several said if the shelter is built on J. David Jones Parkway, all the police have to do is patrol more often to keep loiterers out of the cemetery. "Dosen't the cemetery have any security? one asked. One suggested a separate area in the shelter for corrections wards with security cameras and stricter oversight. Another suggested a centralized social service area in town. These people walk our streets every day and know Springfield better than most of us. They mentioned other locations for a shelter that would not be so far from other agencies. The point is, they made suggestions, good ones. They have ideas. They understand the concerns about the new shelter and they offered solutions to potential problems. All we had to do was ask.

Dave Bakke can be reached at 788-1541 or dave.bakke@sj-r.com