Homeless shelter has been center of clashes
Neighbors, service providers frustrated by years of inaction
About 500 people sleep every night in sleeping bags, tents and makeshift tarp shelters on the streets around the Human Services Campus south of downtown Phoenix.
They either can’t get — or don’t want — one of the roughly 450 shelter spaces on the campus, which are full virtually every night.
The large encampment, which temporarily has been moved to nearby parking lots because of the COVID-19 pandemic, has created severe public health and safety issues for the people sleeping on the streets and nearby businesses and residents.
The Human Services Campus has asked Phoenix for permission to increase the number of people who can sleep on the campus by about 500. The leadership at the campus believes this will both save lives of people living in the harsh elements and unsafe conditions on the street while easing the burden on the neighborhoods.
Neighbors aren’t sold. They’re fearful that the people who move onto the campus will just be replaced by more people experiencing homelessness, which will further increase the issues they have with trash and crime in the area.
For more than 30 years, these working-class, minority neighborhoods has shouldered most of the burden of caring for people experiencing
“I fundamentally believe it is inhumane that we have buildings, we have capital and we have resources to shelter more people but we don’t have a permit to shelter more people.” Ash Uss
Advocacy and partnership coordinator for Andre House
homelessness in Maricopa County.
The current debate over whether to increase beds at the Human Services Campus comes after decades of inaction in every level of government in Arizona to successfully address a homelessness problem that has reached unprecedented levels.
And because of the economic consequences of COVID-19, the suffering could become even more acute.
Neighbors and service providers agree that the state, county and metroPhoenix cities need to create more shelters and more services in other parts of the region so that fewer people are concentrated in the neighborhoods around the Human Services Campus.
But after decades of broken promises and a lack of leadership, it’s hard for anyone to believe that change is possible.
Bill Morlan, president of Electric Supply Inc., said he feels like “we’re having the same conversations we’ve had for as long as we can remember.” Morlan’s been working at the business, which is almost next door to the Human Services Campus, since 1985 when his family bought it.
For the past year, the massive encampment on Madison Street dotted his property line, and he’d find trash and human feces on his property daily.
Morlan recently came across a transcript of a city meeting from decades ago where his father was listing the same concerns that he has now.
“The city and the county and the state have not really worked together with a good long-term approach on how to handle the problem of homelessness. They just try to hide it by sending it down to this neighborhood. We’re really the dumping ground,” Morlan said.
The failure of the government to adequately address the problem has led to a single homeless campus that’s absorbing a large potion of the homeless population and neighborhoods whose concerns about their health and safety are frequently brushed aside.
Both are overwhelmed and overburdened by the sheer volume of the homelessness problem in the region, which has been placed squarely on their shoulders because of decades of government inaction.
“We should have seen some of this coming a long time ago and been ready for this,” Morlan said.
Only one large service provider
The Human Services Campus includes15 organizations that provide services to the region’s homeless population, including a shelter run by Central Arizona Shelter Services.
Some smaller homeless shelters are scattered across metro Phoenix, but the Human Services Campus is the major provider of shelter and services for all of Maricopa County.
Plans for other large shelters in the region were scrapped in past decades because of neighborhood pushback and a lack of political will. Meanwhile, the demand for shelter has increased.
Unsheltered homelessness has increased in Maricopa County for the past six years. According to the most recent point-in-time count, there are at least 3,767 people living in places not meant for human habitation.
Maricopa County, the state of Arizona and the metro Phoenix cities share the responsibility of address homelessness in the region.
Each entity often blames the others for not doing their part. In actuality, no level of government has adequately addressed the issues of housing affordability and homeless services, what is evident in the increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness across the county.
Phoenix leaders say their city and constituents have carried the most weight because the Human Services Campus is in the city. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and other leaders have called on the county, state and suburban cities to pitch in and create their own shelters.
Those calls have gone largely unanswered.
A bill that would have allocated $5 million from Arizona’s general fund to build a new 200-bed emergency shelter for people age 55 and older in the West Valley got some traction earlier this year but was derailed after the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in Arizona.
What would zoning change do?
The Human Services Campus believes adding more shelter space on the campus will provide some relief for both the people experiencing homelessness and the surrounding neighborhoods that are impacted by people currently sleeping on the street.
Executive Director Amy Schwabenlender said the additional shelter beds will not solve the homelessness crisis for the whole county. But it’s one thing her organization can do now to move people off the streets and into a bed.
“We do know that a shelter bed is the step to housing, and a shelter bed is the way out of homelessness,” Schwabenlender told the Central City Village Planning Committee on Monday night.
The Human Services Campus zoning currently allows for 425 shelter beds, but the campus received approval to add 45 beds through a grant in past years, bringing the total number of beds to 470.
During extreme heat, the campus allows an additional 275 people to sleep indoors in the St. Vincent de Paul dining room.
So there can be as many as 745 people sleeping on the Human Services Campus.
That number was lower this summer because of physical distancing requirements associated with COVID-19, but was the case last summer and in recent past years.
About two years ago, Maricopa County closed the overflow shelter outside of the campus where about 500 people slept nightly and did not provide another option or additional shelter beds. Many believe that the closure led to the large number of people sleeping outside.
The zoning change the Human Services Campus is requesting would add 275 beds to the main shelter on the campus, operated by CASS, bringing the year-round total to 700.
It would also allow100 new beds to be operated at an existing building owned by Andre House, a Catholic service organization across the street from the Human Services Campus.
The Andre House shelter would be a “lower-barrier shelter,” meaning it would be more accepting of people with substance abuse issues, pets or excess personal belongings than a traditional shelter.
This type of shelter is meant to appeal to the people who have been living on the streets for long periods of time and may not be comfortable with the rules and crowds in a traditional shelter, said Ash Uss, advocacy and partnership coordinator for Andre House.
Uss interviewed people experiencing homelessness in the area and found that 90 out of 100 people who chose not to stay at CASS would feel comfortable staying in the Andre House shelter.
“We have evidence to believe that this kind of unique shelter model will capture those folks,” Uss said.
The zoning change would also allow for 200 “weather relief ” beds, which would allow an additional 200 people to sleep on the campus during extreme weather.
“I fundamentally believe it is inhumane that we have buildings, we have capital and we have resources to shelter more people but we don’t have a permit to shelter more people,” Uss said.
The Phoenix Planning and Development Department staff recommended approval of the bed increase, subject to 22 requirements that include daily cleaning around the property, a reservation of beds for police officers who encounter vulnerable people in need of a bed and mandatory community and city meetings to try to alleviate neighborhood issues.
The zoning change went before the Central City Village Planning Committee on Monday night.
The committee voted 6-3 to recommend approval of the bed increase, after about four hours of heated public comment.
The case is expected to go before the Planning Commission in November and to the Phoenix City Council for a final decision in December.
Decades of ‘disrespect’
“The things that this community wants are no different than what any community wants: to have a healthy, environmentally safe neighborhood full of opportunity and to have neighbors and business bring quality to life to the neighborhood and are not detrimental,” said Eva Olivas, executive director and CEO of the Phoenix Revitalization Corporation.
Olivas has led the charge against the expansion of beds at the Human Services Campus and for more than a decade has been asking city, county and state officials to intervene and reduce the campus’ impact on neighborhoods.
Olivas said people experiencing homelessness leave the shelter during the day and walk through their neighborhoods, often leaving behind trash and sometimes engaging in criminal activity. Parents won’t let their kids go to parks or walk the neighborhood unattended out of fear, and some elementary schools have had issues with people experiencing homelessness coming onto their campuses, she said.
She said the neighborhood groups have been shuffled around from the city, to the county, to the Human Services Campus — and she doesn’t believe any entity takes their concerns seriously.
Olivas said the shelter’s neighbors have no faith that the Human Services Campus adding beds will lessen the burden on neighborhoods. They believe it will just draw more people to the area and give the rest of Maricopa County an excuse to not develop other shelters, she said.
The neighborhoods surrounding the Human Services Campus are extremely low-income and largely Latino. Olivas said she believes this is why the city ignores their concerns.
She recalled a news story from last year about a Dutch Bros. coffee shop on Central and Camelback avenues that drew ire from neighbors because of the amount of traffic. The city revoked the coffee chain’s permits, effectively forcing it to close.
The neighborhood impact near the Human Services Campus is far worse than traffic congestion, but communities in the area are brushed aside, Olivas said.
“Are you serious? I don’t understand. Is it because people in that neighborhood said it?” she said.
Olivas said every time her neighborhood group speaks about their concerns, service providers and government officials say they have “no humanity” and don’t care about people experiencing homelessness.
This isn’t true, and the comments are hurtful and isolating, she said.
“They’re not asking for the Taj Mahal, they’re asking for a clean and safe environment,” Olivas said. “(The neighbors have) been so disrespected, so dismissed, so discarded.”
She said until neighborhoods are taken seriously by the Human Services Campus, “there’s no way for us to coexist.”
Schwabenlender said she recently read a transcript from a city meeting in 1990, shortly after CASS opened.
The concerns from the neighborhoods about trash, crime and oversaturation were nearly identical to those of today.
“After reading that, I have probably more empathy for some of the people who’ve lived here so long. They’ve been saying things for 30 years and no one’s heard them. That’s really disappointing,” Schwabenlender said.
She said the rules the city attached to the bed increase, including enhanced cleaning and more frequent conversations with the community, will create a better relationship with the neighborhoods and address their valid concerns about negative impacts.
Schwabenlender has been the executive director of Human Services Campus for about two years. Before her, there were several other executive directors over a short period of time and that could have led to a fractured relationship with the neighborhoods, she said.
She wants to change that, and she wants the neighborhoods to hold her and the campus accountable. Schwabenlender said she know that neighborhood trust is something that will take time to win.
“They have to have enough experience to know I’m going to do what I say I’m going to do,” Schwabenlender said. “I can’t speed up time to show them.”
Coverage of housing insecurity on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Arizona Community Foundation. Reach the reporter at jessica.boehm@gannett.com or 480-694-1823. Follow her on Twitter @jboehm_NEWS.