An end to homelessness?
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posal to construct a new facility on J. David Jones Pkwy., across from Oak Ridge Cemetery, citing opposition from neighborhood groups.
Then, in the fall of 2007, the Army balked at purchasing property from Land of Lincoln Goodwill Industries at 800 N. 10th St., apparently over concerns about a leaking underground fuel tank. According to Major Paul Logan, the corps officer for the Springfield Army, more than 35 properties were considered. In most cases, he says, location — not price — was the major sticking point.
When the Salvation Army secured the Horace Mann site, capital campaign director Dave MacDonna said, the mood at Salvation Army headquarters was ecstatic. The Salvation Army plans to sell its headquarters building at 530 N. Sixth St. and use the proceeds to fund their move. “Everyone was cheering,” MacDonna says. But no matter how quickly the Army moves — Logan and MacDonna say some programs may be phased into the new building even as the renovation is being conducted – the homeless will have to make it through another winter on the streets, to say nothing of the approaching summer swelter.
One solution offered by Homeless United for Change is to reopen the Springfield Overflow Shelter, which normally operates just during the winter months. The city, they say, should also take charge of arranging for a day center equipped with computers so people can look for jobs on the Internet, prepare for job interviews, and just spend a few hours off the streets.
For those items, HUC is looking to Mayor Tim Davlin’s office, and the person he put in charge of coordinating homeless services, community relations director Sandy Robinson.
HUC members have repeatedly charged the Davlin administration and Robinson with stonewalling the group. “We have an administration – and it’s probably a tradition in Springfield; I don’t think it’s just Davlin – where you’d think you were in a poker game in a dark room,” says Barb Olson, one of HUC’s lead organizers.
“We hesitate to say there’s a culture of secrecy but that certainly is what it feels like.” HUC has outlined the group’s grievances and recently held a rally outside city hall. They’re asking the city to impose strict transparency and accountability requirements on the Sangamon County Heartland Continuum of Care, which distributes federal homeless dollars, as well as the agencies that will be in charge of the homelessness prevention and rehousing programs for families and individuals (MERCY Communities, Sara Center and Fifth Street Renaissance, respectively).
Most of all, HUC says homeless people should play a larger role in planning the services of which they’ll be the primary users, particularly in the initial phases of the ongoing recalibration of the 10-year homeless plan. Additionally, the homeless had no input into which agencies would receive the federal money, members say. “It was very discouraging being told right at the beginning that no matter what we said, it wouldn’t make a difference,” Olson says. Robinson describes such statements as mischaracterizations.
For the 10-year plan revision, he says, questionnaires were provided to social service agencies as well as HUC, which were then submitted to Sikich Gardner & Co., the strategic planning firm in charge of the project due out in June, Robinson says. “No one’s been locked out. HUC has been able to participate at the same level as every other agency.”
As far as demanding greater transparency, Robinson says he can’t require agencies to update their Web sites or make reports beyond the quarterly reports mandated by the federal government.
But HUC’s strategy is this: “We’re asking for more transparency than we expect to get because we’d like to get a little,” Olson says. That also seems to be the impetus for launching a petition drive named in honor of Hawker to reopen an overflow shelter for the summertime.
Robinson hopes that with the amount of assistance coming to Springfield that the SOS will no longer be needed. He says: “When we have an adequate number of shelter beds, that eliminates the ‘O’ and the SOS ceases to exist.”
Contact R.L. Nave at [email protected]
