Homeless encampments call for help
Recent decisions to scale back proposed shelter space lead us to wonder if there’s a serious commitment by Phoenix to solve the problem of homelessness
Your Turn
Amy Schwabenlender and Jonathan Koppell Guest columnists
Treating homelessness as just another tough-to-solve problem is easy if you ignore the humanity. But homelessness is not “pollution” or “inflation.” Homelessness is about real human beings without a place to sleep, to eat or to bathe.
Real people.
Like Dan, an army veteran who battled multiple demons – cancer, chronic emphysema, his violent temper and a prison record – and ended up living on the street.
We could not ignore Dan’s humanity. Like so many unsheltered men and women living, sleeping – surviving – on the streets, Dan was searching for a way out when he came to the Human Services Campus. After finding a bed at Central Arizona Shelter Services, he spent five months working toward a housing voucher and changing who he was.
“I’m nowhere near the same person I was when I came here,” he said. “I never dreamed this place could help so much. They turned my whole life around and gave me a whole new meaning to life.”
Best practices show that access to a shelter bed leads to additional services creating a path toward permanent housing. That is the ultimate goal.
But, it starts with getting the unsheltered population off the streets. And we simply lack sufficient shelter beds.
It’s why on Feb. 3, we will be before the Phoenix City Council seeking approval to increase the number of people we can shelter at the Human Services Campus. Specifically, we seek to add 275 shelter beds – which the existing building can accommodate – and establish a new 100bed low-barrier shelter at Andre House.
Additionally, we are requesting authorization to provide 200 emergency “beds” during extreme heat or cold. These “beds” are sleeping mats on the floor of the St. Vincent de Paul dining room or the Lodestar Day Resource Center at Human Services Campus.
This increase in capacity will address a need in the area that is not new.
For 10 years, 250 unsheltered men were housed overnight in what was called the Men’s Overflow Shelter. Another 250 men and women were permitted to sleep in a secure adjacent parking lot. If you drove past the campus back then, you didn’t see tents and encampments lining the sidewalks.
But three years ago, the overflow shelter was declared unsafe and closed. People moved to the streets. They had no place else to go. Although Central Arizona Shelter Services can accommodate 425 people, it’s full every night. About 500 men and women are turned away each month.
So now, just steps away from a resurgent downtown Phoenix, more than 200 people are living in gravel parking lots provided by Maricopa County (as a temporary COVID measure) and we’ve counted more than 200 others living unsheltered on nearby streets.
With more beds, we can help many of those 400 people get off the streets, providing the same first step that Dan and thousands of others took toward better futures.
Let’s be clear. This is not just a Phoenix problem. There are not enough shelter beds across the Valley. A regional homelessness solution is needed. As managers of the county’s coordinated entry system, we know this is an absolute necessity and we are actively engaged in efforts to bring all parties together and make it happen.
But we cannot wait. People are suffering. People are dying. As reported in this newspaper, more than 500 people experiencing homelessness in metro Phoenix died in the first nine months of 2020. Nearly 40% were 55 or older.
We also know the hardship experienced by people living and working in the area. The street population introduces concerns regarding blight, safety and sanitation.
That’s why we are desperate to act. Since our zoning request was filed on Jan. 31, 2019, we’ve met numerous times formally and informally with area residents and city staff to understand and address concerns about a situation we all find unacceptable.
We agreed to adhere to 22 stipulations developed by city staff as part of our zoning request application. This includes Human Services Campus, a nonprofit organization, taking responsibility for keeping clean the streets surrounding the campus. Subsequently, we received solid support from the Central City Village Planning Committee and unanimous backing from the Phoenix Human Relations Commission. We have more than 20,000 petition signatures in support, including 1,300 signatures from residents in the immediate area.
The city’s Planning Commission recently approved our request for additional beds but added a new slate of stipulations hastily created during the hearing without giving us an opportunity to even comment. The Andre House lowerbarrier shelter was discarded and the entire permit was limited to three years. This left us baffled.
Creating a shelter with fewer obstacles to admission – like allowing pets or many possessions – helps bring in those most difficult to accommodate. Such shelters do not take everyone or allow dangerous, illegal behavior. And terminating this service in three years regardless of need makes no sense.
Is there a serious commitment to solve the problems of homelessness? We are a group of nonprofit organizations stepping up together to address a problem expected to grow in the wake of COVID-related unemployment and evictions. Yet we face resistance and roadblocks that hinder our ability to help the people who need us the most.
Every human being deserves access to shelter, wrap-around services and affordable housing. We hope the city council will support our efforts to meet this need.
Homelessness is not a choice. How we choose to address it is.