Ward Representation - off the record

I heard "off the record" yesterday that not all city departments are eagerly working to make sure ward representation can be put into place for the next election

Given this city's past efforts to stop ward representation, I take these rumors seriously. I'd have to pull out thirteen years of files to completely reconstruct this obstruction, but:
-- say you'll vote yes and then vote no.
-- say you'll approve it under certain conditions, and then change your mind when those conditions are met.
-- say you support it but work against it behind the scenes.

Even as recently as last September, the enabling legislation for WR languished in the House of Representatives while Mayor Ryan, ostensibly a supporter, twiddled his thumbs and the City Council, including Council President Jose Tosado, WR's biggest supporter on the Council, seemed unaware that the bill wasn't moving ahead.. It took hundreds of phone calls to our legislators and the Governor's office to get the ball rolling, and even so, it was signed into law by Governor Patrick with less than 24 hours to spare.

It's not NOVEMBER 2009 by which the city needs to be ready-- it's SEPTEMBER, in time for the Primaries.

I'm going to wager, right now, that every single one of the city's eight wards will need a primary election for City Council, and quite possibly for School Committee. Now that ward representation is law in Springfield, Massachusetts, even those who worked against it will try to take advantage of it.

Political life in Springfield life is about to get even more interesting.

Ward representation and the School Committee

Ward representation's impact on the City Council has gotten the most attention so far, but big changes are in store for the School Committee, also.

Victor Davila emailed me the other day to ask what would happen in the 2009 elections to the School Committee, which, up until this the last election, has had staggered, four year terms. Would only those seats up for re-election become ward seats? Or would all the seats that were going to become ward seats happen at the same timje? I told him that was a good question, and I'd have to find out.

The more I thought about it, though, it did seem to me that all seats would have to transition to ward seats at the same time. I checked in with the city's attorney, Ed Pakula, and sure enough, that's what he and Mayor Ryan were envisioning.

Photo from the Springfield School Dept. website
That means that Thomas Ashe, Antoinette Pepe and Chris Collins will only be serving two year terms. I wonder if they realized that that would be the case if they were elected AND ward representation passed?

In 2009, we will be electing the entire School Committee, two-at large and four ward seats, meaning an end to staggered terms. If it seems important to restore them, it will have to be some with separate legislation.

Just to remind folks what they voted for, School Committee seats will represent wards One and Three, Four and Five, Six and Seven and Two and Eight, PLUS two at-large.

Ward Representation - will we even have a chance to vote for it?

What a frustrating day yesterday was. I returned a call from Candace Lopes, Sen. Buoniconti's aide, and I knew was bad news even before I called.

No, the Senate had not voted on the home rule legislation for ward representation-- in fact, the House hadn't even finished voting. And even after the legislation is passed, it still has to be signed by the Governor-- all before what I believe to be the deadline for getting a question on the ballot-- next Monday, October 1. Candace said the rumor was that a House member from Western Mass-- no identity known-- was holding the legislation up.

I called Rep. Ben Swan, a longtime ward rep supporter, who said he hoped it would finish being voted on this Thursday, but that it really wasn't up to him, it was up to the House leadership-- that means Speaker of the House Salvatore DiMasi. So I called his office and talked (of course) to an aide.

Then I called the Governor's office to make sure he was going to be in town to sign the legislation, should it pass both houses of the Legislature. Of course that's like trying to talk to God, but I did speak to his legislative director who said that getting the Governor to sign was not that simple-- that it often took 30 days or more while the Governor did "due diligence" on the legislation.

During the day other ward rep supporters called their state representatives. The responses ranged from pretty clueless to informed and ready to vote favorably; everyone denied being "the one" to hold the bill up.

Then I called Mayor Ryan's office, for the fourth time since August, to ask him the same thing-- PLEASE be in touch with the Western Mass. legislators and tell them to move the home rule petition forward. Later in the day I was told by a mayor's aide that Mayor Ryan was, that very day, writing a letter to the reps-- too little, too late for a mayor who is supposed to be a ward rep supporter (as is his mayoral opposition, Domenic Sarno, at least for the last couple years).

Finally I called Mike Plaisance, reporter at the Springfield Republican, to fill him in on what was (not) happening. He called me later and said he'd been told by the city's Election office that the question could go on the Springfield ballot as late as October 19. Now that's not what I was told by the Election office, (and not one of the city councilors, state reps or city lawyers that I've talked to over the last several months have challenged that date-- maybe they just don't know) so my job today is to clarify what the real deadline is.

If it's October 19, terrific. Of course that gives us grassroots folks even less time to campaign among the city's registered voters. However, even that date probably doesn't guarantee that the Legislature will finish doing it's job.

And they wonder why people are cynical about voting and politics.

Racism comes full circle in Springfield,MA

Poor Mayor Ryan.

I doubt he had any idea that today, when he announced the city was ready to begin diversity training of its employees, that eight of those employees would be announcing a racial discrimination lawsuit at nearly the same time!

Irony of ironies, the fellow he announced would be doing the training, Tom Belton, was one of the eight (plus attorney Devin Moriarty) standing on the steps of City Hall as they talked about decades of being passed over for promotions, not receiving raises, and being subjected to insensitive remarks by white co-workers.

Mayor Ryan is still trying to handle the fallout from the February resignation of his Chief of Staff Michelle Webber. Webber resigned after Rep. Cheryl Rivera went public with accusations of racism against Webber, accusations that Webber denied at the same time she apologized to anyone she might have offended.

Of course discrimination at City Hall didn't start with Mayor Ryan, and it looks like it won't end with him, either.

I remember a former city councilor of color telling me I just had no idea what it was really like for people of color during the Albano administration, and why that councilor was choosing to support former state representative Paul Caron for mayor instead.

And lest we forget, this is Ryan's second go-around as mayor of Springfield. In his first term, Ryan called in the National Guard to make mass arrests at a peaceful demonstration of African-Americans at Court Square. They were there to protest the arrests of African-Americans who had been clubbing at the Octagon Lounge. One of those arrested is our current State Rep Ben Swan.

Ryan also ushered in the "Strong Mayor, All At-Large City Council and School Committee" election system which has resulted in only six people of color being elected to city council in forty-five years.

In another irony, Rep. Rivera's accusations against Michelle Webber in Ryan's second time in office were part of the trial affidavits we submitted in our federal lawsuit against the City of Springfield to challenge Springfield's all at-large voting system-- Arise for Social Justice, Oiste, the NE Chapter of the NAACP and a number of individual plaintiffs.

A binding question to change to an "8 ward,5 at-large" system will finally be on the ballot this November.

Thus we come almost full circle.

I know that as a group, we white people don't understand how much our well-being is bound to the well-being of people of color. Social injustice skews our reality like a funhouse mirror. But we can change. I see it all the time.

Right now we need to support the eight courageous people who today said: Enough is enough.

What's wrong with Springfield's homeless plans

I don't usually reprint an entire article, but this one is just too good...really puts a finger on the flaws in Phil Mangano's plans to end homelessness.

I will never forget sitting at the back of the room at Mayor Ryan's press conference about Springfield's ten year plan, and listening to Bush appointee Phil Mangano congratulate the city. The irony of a guy representing an administration that has decimated housing opportunities talking about ending chronic homelessness seemed to be lost on our public officials.

Seems they forgot the reason it’s called home-less-ness

By Paul Boden, Contributing columnist

The Republicans may have lost control of Congress, but they still maintain a tight rein on homeless policy and the public perception of homelessness. The House and Senate can change and change again, but thanks to the tireless efforts of the White House, Department of Housing and Urban Development and National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), the acknowledged “experts” on homelessness still are Phil Mangano with his traveling minstrel show, HUD with their federally funded studies, and White House award winning NAEH with their compassionate conservative approach to “ending homelessness.”

Immediately after last November’s elections, NAEH and Mangano (head of Bush’s Interagency Council on Homelessness) embarked upon editorial board tours around the country, to ensure that the administration’s 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness initiative would continue to be perceived as the One True Way to address homelessness. Their message is clear — that homelessness as we know it today is not caused by the lack of affordable housing, but by the failures of a few bottom-feeding individuals and emergency service programs.

They steer clear of the federal government’s refusal to preserve and promote affordable housing. Instead, they promote yet another set of plans to be created by communities already in competition with each other over scraps from their HUD master’s table. There are more than 470 Homeless Planning Boards as well as more than 200 10-Year Plans already in place, all competing for the biggest piece of the less than $1.4 billion HUD is allocated to dole out for homelessness assistance.

“$100 million has been added to homeless assistance!” they say, “George Bush cares, he really do.”

They don’t mention the $290 million cut from public housing operating expenses, or the thousands of security and maintenance workers laid-off from Public Housing Authorities, or the vacant units being sold off rather than renovated and rented to poor people. They don’t talk about the 100,000 public housing units lost between 1996 and 2005 nationwide. They certainly don’t talk about the zero funding for new public housing since 1996, and they are a bit reticent about the 4,000 undamaged public housing units being demolished in New Orleans along with those that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Chronic homelessness, they say, is the problem. Worry not, because once we solve that, we’ll get back to the other 90 percent of you poor schmucks without housing.

In the meantime, what we need are more plans in place to deal with us poor schmucks when we become chronic. And, they have even thoughtfully provided a step-by-step guide to writing effective 10-Year Plans, to help plan writers secure funds to alleviate the “visible impact” of “chronic homelessness” on their “community’s safety and attractiveness.” And in the meantime, the thousands of poor people and families losing their housing every year should just tough it out, (or perhaps chill out and smoke some “chronic”) until the chronics are under control.

In the meantime, housing subsidies are better directed toward mortgage lenders and wealthier households, to the tune of $122 billion a year; those pesky poor people looking for a place to rent can make do with the less than $30 billion, and decreasing, allocated to HUD.

Besides, housing has nothing to do with homelessness. HUD pays experts to write reports proving conclusively that what homeless people really need is biometric tracking, life skills training and leased single resident occupancy rooms with case managers in the front office, and they need 10-Year Plans to be written for them.

It’s funny that once upon a time, our federal government created HUD, a Social Security system, and the Works Progress Administration — all without having to write a single 10-Year Plan, and these programs actually worked!

2007 marks the 20th anniversary of the federal government’s primary response to contemporary homelessness, the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987. The money provided by this act has become the lifeblood of National Alliance to End Homelessness and the Interagency Council on Homelessness as they promote the chronic homeless initiative and mobilize a policy movement in support of itself. After 20 years of writing plan after plan after plan on how “best” to spend McKinney money and “end homelessness,” there hasn’t been one damn plan to restore the cuts to federal funding for affordable housing, which is, after all, what got us here in the first place.

Tell Congress, tell the White House, tell your mama and your papa too. Say it to anyone who will listen and write it to those who won't. Nothing ends homelessness like a home.

Paul Boden is director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), based in San Francisco, and a leading activist against homelessness.

WRAP is a collaboration between six community organizations in California, Oregon and Washington, and the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness.

WRAP’s members recently released an 88-page illustrated report titled “Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures.” A PDF file of the report can be downloaded for free at wraphome.org. From Street Roots.

Happy Birthday, Mitch Snyder

Belated, actually-- his birthday was a couple of weeks ago. God, I miss him. Mitch, a hardcore homeless and housing activist, is one of my heroes.

He came to Arise in 1988 and convinced us to turn out as many people as we could for a Washington, D.C. demonstration taking place the next year in support of the National Affordable Housing Act. This was a challenge for a poor people's organization, but, with other allies in Western Mass, we did it. I still have a picture of our group at the march, holding a Western Mass banner high and proudly, It's hung in my various offices for eighteen years.


"On July l4, 1988, attention and support for the "National Affordable Housing Act" was generated through actions in over seventy cities across the U.S.A. Most involved building take overs and other acts of civil disobedience.n October of 1989 the movement that Snyder helped create brought over 140,000 people to Washington to demand increased federal support for affordable housing.

Less than a year after that march on Washington Snyder was dead. He committed suicide in July of 1990." First Church Shelter, Cambridge.

This site talks about the accomplishments of Mitch's hunger fasts and acts of non-violent civil disobedience. I think Jim Stewart must have written it-- we had a chance to work together many years ago.

Mitch has been much on my mind these days, especially since Gerry McCafferty, the city's coordinator of homeless and special needs housing, mentioned Mitch in her opinion piece on homelessness in the Republican the Sunday before last. It turns out that Gerry was at that D.C. demonstration with Mitch, too. What she described as her most enduring memory of the day was being in a civil disobedience action and being yelled at by Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, one of the sponsors of the housing legislation, who told Mitch and her group was undermining support for the bill.

Gerry told this story as part of explaining why she was now seemingly on the other side-- working within the system.

My most enduring memory of the day was the sea of people, most poor, many homeless, feeling a sense of our power, feeling hope and belief in the possibility of change.

And, after all, the legislation did pass. I'll bet Barney Frank even voted for it.

I love the way people like Gerry have such selective memories about the role of poor people in social change, and about the use of direct action, civil and otherwise, as a catalyst for that change.

Was homelessness even on the city of Springfield, Massachusetts' radar before Larry Dunham froze to death? Was there a plan before homeless people organized a tent city in the spring that lasted six months? I know there was not.

Recently I went back and reread the entire Homes within Reach document, the city's plan to end chronic homelessness within ten years. The plan does well making use of scarce resources to accomplish as much as possible. However, one resource left totally untapped is homeless and at-risk.people themselves.

I was supposed to be on that task force, along with Christina, one of the leaders of Sanctuary City. We were each at a couple of meetings, but then somehow never got notices....I'd call Russ Denver's office, then chair of the task force and still head of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, and ask when the next meetings were taking place...but we never heard...and then we heard there was a draft plan and it could be revised....but you know what it's like, once the solution is framed, all that's allowed after that is fine-tuning. (Nothing like splitting into subcommittees to limit the real number of decision-makers.

At the heart of all of this, of course, is class prejudice and self-interest, manifesting as the need to control those deemed lesser than you who are also perceived as a threat to your well-being.

Why else would human service workers talk about "servicing" people?
Why else would the Department of Transitional Assistance call a family in need "an assistance unit?"
Why else would the desires of homeless people be discounted so that those who "know better"can make the decisions?

The city is happy, now; the powers that be have had their way, the Warming Place shelter has been forced to close and the plan to end homelessness is underway. I hope the best of it succeeds, but the "managing" and "handling" of homeless people makes me sick.

Tonight when I was looking up a few facts about Mitch, I stumbled on a blog called Apesmas' Lament-- and a post just written on July19!--about the writer's memories of Mitch Snyder. It's a great piece and deserves reading. He talks about the Port of Seattle's refusal to sell to King County 162 apartments that could be made available to desperately poor people, choosing instead to demolish them. He ends by asking, "I wonder what Mitch would do?"

That's one of the questions I ask myself. Now, when many poor people start asking that question.....

A rumor of housing

I hear the city's homeless director, Gerry McCafferty, was hanging out in the parking lot of the Warming Place shelter last night, telling the guests going in for the night that there was plenty of shelter at Friends of the Homeless and the Springfield Rescue Mission. Gee, she could have gone inside. Whenever I've wanted to pass out flyers for Arise at the Warming Place, I've gone in and asked permission. A few times I forgot and just went in.

I hear if you want to stay at the Rescue Mission's Taylor St. shelter, you have to take a breathalyzer test, can't bring in food or a radio, and have to participate in evening prayer, preaching and discussion.

I hear a guy from Mental Health Associates went down to the Warming Place tonight and told people that if they could find apartments, the city would come up with first, last and security for rent, to forget about that "other program." Some folks were upset. "Wait, I was on that waiting list!" It all seemed very confusing to the homeless.

If this is true-- this idea of first, last and security-- its a good idea for all the wrong reasons and won't work without planning and support and won't work for everybody anyway. As things stand now, it's an act of desperation on the part of the city and Mayor-- anything they can come up with to empty the shelter before the Warming Place's hearing on its injunction Friday to keep from being evicted by the city.

To think that there were times when I actually had some faith in the goodwill of the city officials and business leaders that were going to make sure nobody went unsheltered after June 30. The last of that faith evaporated at the May 22 Emergency Shelter Committee meeting. "Well, the fix is really in," I remember saying. "You all know exactly how this is going to turn out."

Can you picture Ryan and Sarno homeless?

Mayoral candidates in Nashville, Tennessee spent a night on the streets in June, trying to get a sense of what it means to be homeless and what Nashville can do about it. Why don't I think this will happen here?

Mayoral rivals spend a night on the streets

The vice mayor was bounced out of a bar after asking for a bag of potato chips at 3 a.m. Two councilmen walked the downtown streets hour after hour, rarely, if ever, sleeping. And the former city attorney struggled to catch some shut-eye on a bus-stop bench.

Those were some of the experiences of four Nashville mayoral candidates who went on an "urban plunge," seeing Nashville's downtown homeless community up close and personally.

The event was organized by the Nashville Homeless Power Project, which has become a very visible group lobbying Metro officials for housing and other services for the city's homeless population.

Each candidate said he came away with a new outlook on homelessness and what the city can — and, in some cases, can't — do about it.

The National Coalition for the Homeless has been organizing similar experiences for college students and others for the last 25 years. But the group's executive director, Michael Stoops, said it was the first time political candidates agreed to take part. "I think all people who run for office should be in touch with people living in poverty," Stoops said.

Read the Nashville Tennessean report here. Thanks to The 13th Juror for a lead on the story.

Shelter seeks injunction against city to prevent closure.

GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES: This Sunday morning, which was to be the Warming Place shelter's last morning, friends are invited to come and join in a prayer vigil at 8:30 am. All friends are welcome

This Friday, Open Pantry Community Services, which runs the shelter, is taking the City of Springfield, MA to court, seeking an injunction which will stop the forced closing of the shelter.

The city has put the squeeze on the Open Pantry and homeless people for some time. First Church, Court Square, had offered to let the Warming Place stay in their basement for a few weeks. This is not acceptable to the city. A few days ago, Gerry McCafferty, head of the city's Office of Homeless and Special Needs Housing, told OP's director Kevin Noonan that Mayor Ryan would consider it an act of political protest if the shelter moved to the church.

Political protest is about all that's worked when it comes to getting the city's attention focused on solving homelessness! It took two homeless men freezing to death and a tent city that lasted six months and housed 400 different people before a real planning process began.

Now that there is some progress to show, seems like those who've been on the front lines defending the homeless, as well as the homeless themselves, will now pay the price. But the Open Pantry, at least, is not going quietly. I can't resist putting in the entire text of the injunction.

Open Pantry Community Services vs. City of Springfield, MA Acting By and Through its Office of Housing and Neighborhood Services.

The plaintiff is the provider of essential food, shelter and emergency housing services to those otherwise homeless residents of the City of Springfield, Massachusetts who are poor or homeless.

The plaintiff has been providing its services to 90 to 102 persons a night under funding provided by both the City and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts pursuant to certain Community Development Block Grants (the “CDBG Funds) and private donations since September 2005 through March 2006. In March 2006 Open Pantry was awarded a contract for $400,800 in Emergency Assistance (EA “funds”) funds through the State Department of Transition Assistance (the “DTA”).

In the providing of its services Open Pantry had been utilizing the City’s facility located on West Columbus Avenue, more commonly known as the former York Street Jail.

Since March 2006, as a requirement of the Department of Transitional Assistance, the City issued temporary occupancy permits to the plaintiff which it permitted to operate and provide its homeless housing services.

Since the issuance of the first temporary occupancy permit, the City has intentionally issued subsequent temporary occupancy permits which allow fewer and fewer persons to be sheltered at the facility when the actual number of such persons has remained constant or been increasing.

The current temporary occupancy permit expires on June 30, 2007 after which there will no longer be shelter beds available at the former York Street jail.

Upon information and belief, the City has engaged in a specific plan and scheme to reduce the number of available beds and to remove or reduce the shelter facilities which provides spaces to those persons who are at great risk and in need.

The City has failed to provide reasonable alternative shelters and/or housing for those persons presently being cared for at the former York Street Jail.

One alternative shelter facility proposed by the City is religious and sectarian in nature, discriminates against women, and has a requirement that all occupants be “well behaved.”

The City claims that the plaintiff may no longer use the former York Street Jail; and that it must be closed in order for certain asbestos abatement work to commence.

Any purported asbestos abatement work is in a separate building (connected by a corridor with sealing doors at each end) pof the former York Street jail.

Upon information and belief, no contract has been awarded by the City and/or no asbestos abatement work has been scheduled at the former York Street Jail.

The allegations of the City regarding asbestos abatement work and the need to close the facility are but a mere pretext for the underlying purpose of reducing and limiting the number of available shelter beds within the City of Springfield.

The City, by refusing to extend the temporary occupancy permit, caused the plaintiff to lose its eligibility for State Department of Transitional Assistance and ESG funding.

On or about June 18, the City assured the plaintiff that it would fund and provide a site in which to operate through the fall of 2007.

The plaintiff attempted to resolve the problem with the City by engaging in numerous meetings and discussions after which the City ultimately regeged on its promises and assurances.

There is a great likelihood of immediate and irreparable harm to the plaintiff, its staff and to those vulnerable people in whose care the plaintiff is charged and responsible unless the requested relief is granted.

Maintaining the status quo will not be more burdensome or detrimental to the defendant than to the plaintiff as the defendant has failed to demonstrate its ability to provide care and facilities for the homeless persons at the York Street Jail.

THEREFORE, the plaintiff respectfully requests:

the Court maintain the status quo by enjoining the eviction or relocation of the current occupants being cared for by the plaintiff at the former York Street Jail.

the Court order the City to issue a temporary occupancy permit for the former York Street Jail for 100 persons a night from May 17, 2007 through December 31, 2007 or until further order of the Court.

the Court enjoin the City from interfering with the plaintiff’s application process requesting State Emergency Shelter Grant funds.

the Court order the City to cause to be issued to the plaintiff its Federal Emergency Shelter Grant funds in the amount of $60,000 from the federally funded state funds and $20,000 from the City’s existing funds.

For such other relief as is just and proper. By Norman C. Michaels, Esquire

What part of "Safety Net" don't you understand?

I was trying to reach Ron Willougby, director of the Springfield Rescue Mission, today-- tried three times but he was on the phone, in a meeting, or just left.

With anybody else, I'd think he was blowing me off, but not Ron. Ron is reopening the Taylor St. Shelter, which has been open the last two years as a winter-only.shelter for sober men. It had closed, as scheduled, on May 31, but just when the city has having to do some real scrambling to figure out how to shelter homeless people after their planned eviction of Warming Place shelter June 30, Ron announced that he was reopening Taylor St.

Seeing that the Springfield Rescue Mission does not take any funding from the city or state, I wondered if the mission had come into a windfall. Really, I just wanted to know how long Ron could keep it open.

"So maybe you can answer a question for me," I said to the very nice man who told me Ron had just left, "I understand you're reopening Taylor St?"

"Yes, we are," he answered.

"How long are you planning to stay open?"

His voice deepened over the seriousness of what he was about to say.

"Well, we have no funds. We're going through prayer to get the money."

"Well, good luck to you," I said, which, now that I think about it, was probably not appropriate to say.

I don't blame Ron or the Rescue Mission for reopening the shelter-- their motive, as it says on their website, is "to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the hungry, homeless, addicted and poor by introducing them to Christ and helping them apply the Word of God to every area of their lives." Fewer people will be unsheltered because of Taylor St.

But I continue to be astounded that Mayor Ryan and Gerry McCafferty, head of the Office for Homeless and Special Needs Housing, are willing to let the "safety net" plan and the well-being of the homeless depend on divine intervention.

(painting by deb hoeffner)

Homeless man found dead in Springfield; is this just the beginning?

Bad news all around for homeless people in Springfield today: a man has died and the state has made a decision which could lead to the deaths-- and will certainly lead to the misery-- of more homeless people.

A homeless man was found dead on a park bench in Riverfront Park today. The police don't believe foul play was involved. He was 46 years old and his name is not being released until his family can be notified.

"Whoever he is, I know him," my sister said, already mourning, just not knowing for whom. She works at the Warming Place shelter.

Now the other bad news: as of June 30, the Warming Place shelter will no longer be funded by the state, the city of Springfield can evict the program, and then the city will demolish the old jail that's been the Warming Place's home since September, 2005.

When the numbers of the homeless clash with the politics of the city, the homeless lose.

The contract to provide 85 beds for the homeless which has been the Open Pantry's (the Warming Place's parent) for the last three years will go instead to the Friends of the Homeless. Problem is, only 54 beds will be new; the rest of the contract will be used to pay for beds. F. O. H. provides but isn't paid for. Seeing as the Warming Place has been sheltering about 100 people a night, 46 will be left without shelter. Over at F.O.H. half of the 54 people will be housed in the basement and half in the room that is usually the soup kitchen for the shelter. And the rest? And anyone new who becomes homeless? The city says it'll have some housing vouchers available in September, if they can find landlords.

What a mess. Gerry McCafferty, the city's Homeless and Special Needs Housing Coordinator, recently admitted at a meeting I was at that the city intends to have "no excess capacity" in shelter beds. So it seems like the city's plan is moving right along.

For years, through every administration I can remember, the city has rejected affordable housing and neglected the homeless. For years the Friends of the Homeless was run by the crook Frannie Keough and everybody knew it but nothing was done until the F.B.I. stepped in.

That history began to change when only a few days into Mayor Ryan's first term, a homeless man froze to death on the steps of Symphony Hall. It has not been all uphill-- Sanctuary City, a tent city run by the homeless with others helping, filled a six month shelter gap-- but once the city began its Ten Year Planning Process, there was a chance for continued, small gains.

Now I believe that Mayor Ryan and those who work for him have manipulated the process and the outcome every step of the way. At least one of their goals is to eliminate the Warming Place shelter because its director, Kevin Noonan, has been unfailingly faithful to sheltering the homeless. That makes him a radical and radicals are not wanted in Springfield.

The end of this chapter is marked by another death.

The Woman Who Had Me Arrested

Kathleen Lingenberg, director of the city’s Housing and Neighborhood Development, is leaving her job after eleven years because she’s moving out of Springfield and won’t meet the city’s residency’s requirement.

I couldn’t begin (not objectively) to sum up her contributions to Springfield, so let me just say what is true for me:

First, I guess, I will have to remember her as the woman who got me arrested—at least I’m pretty sure she was the one who decided, seeing as she was running the public auction of city-owned property where I stood up and spoke out of turn.

We ( me, Arise, homeless people) had been asking the city for months to give some tax-title property to homeless people to fix up. I and other Arise members and homeless people politely crashed the auction. We weren’t supposed to be there, because we didn’t have the thousand bucks entry fee, but we got by the doorkeepers, passed out flyers, and just stayed. At some point I noticed that a half dozen police officers were situated around the room.

When 25 St. James Ave. came up on the auction block, a building that would have made a perfect boarding house, and that we’d asked for, I stood up and spoke and got hauled away by the cops. The rest is another story.

Second, I know Kathleen did not use all of the power at her disposal to shut Springfield's Sanctuary down. If she and other department heads had used their full weight against us, we would probably not have been able to survive. But she didn’t. The following spring she and Health and Human Services Director met with some of us from Arise to talk about possibly cooperating on a new tent city should that become necessary. Mayor Ryan wound up squelching that idea, and in any case the Warming Place shelter stayed open, but I never doubted her sincerity in trying to come up with a mutual solution.

Next, Kathleen is one of the bluntest people I know. She will never tell you something just because she thinks that’s what you want to hear. Seeing as I am like that to quite a degree myself, we tended to have good, if infrequent, exchanges.

Finally, Kathleen represented and promoted a housing policy designed for the city that we want to have, not for the city we are. That means a focus on home ownership and the discouragement proposals for new, affordable rental housing. For the 25% “officially poor” people in Springfield, probably for the 40% of the residents who struggle to meet their basic needs, it’s a policy that leaves them, sometimes literally, out in the cold.

I don’t expect any magic policy changes when Kathleen steps down and someone else takes her place. Mayor Ryan, his competition Domenic Sarno, the vast majority of other city officials and the remaining middle and upper classes in this city feel the same way she does.

I wish her luck. Springfield, however, will need more than luck if we are ever to figure out how all the residents in this city can meet their need for decent, affordable housing.

Tent City flyer

text of the flyer that started getting passed out last night:

BETTER BUY A TENT!

Here’s what Arise has found out about the city’s “plans” for homeless people. As usual, homeless people are the last to know.

The Mayor and the Control Board have decided that there will be NO extension of the Warming Place at the York St. jail site.

JUNE 30 IS THE LAST DAY THE WARMING PLACE WILL BE OPEN, UNLESS THE OPEN PANTRY DIRECTOR CAN FIND SOME TEMPORARY PLACE VERY QUICKLY, AND IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD.

TAYLOR ST. IS STILL SET TO CLOSE ON MAY 30.
FRIENDS OF THE HOMELESS MAY BE WILLING TO SQUEEZE FOLKS INTO THE BASEMENT—IF THEY GET PAID FOR IT.

THE MAYOR HAS DECIDED HE DOESN’T WANT ANY VACANCIES IN ANY SHELTER—HE WANTS “JUST ENOUGH”-- BECAUSE IT MIGHT DRAW MORE HOMELESS PEOPLE TO SPRINGFIELD!

MEANWHILE, EVERYBODY IS HOPING TO BE ONE OF THE LUCKY 100 TO GET A SUBSIDY FOR AN APARTMENT BEFORE JUNE 30.

DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH! LANDLORDS ARE BEING VERY SLOW TO SIGN UP FOR THE PROGRAM.

Besides, the program is only for the “chronically homeless”—long-term substance abuse issues, mental illness, or those who have bounced from shelter to shelter for years! If you have aged out of foster care, got kicked out of your house, lost a job, or had just plain bad luck, YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE FOR A SUBSIDY!

All we can tell you right now is if you have any income at all on the first of the month, BETTER BUY A TENT!

Info? Want to organize? Call Arise at 734-4948.

Who Will Care? We'll Find Out

Today I started mentally composing a list of housed people, houses of worship and organizations that might actually care about what happens to homeless people.

Still can't get it out of my mind: Mayor Ryan KNOWS that people will be out on the street as of June 30, and he has CHOSEN to close the Warming Place because he thinks that the unsheltered will disappear from Springfield if they have no shelter. He fears that if there is even ONE vacancy at any Springfield shelter, we will draw in homeless people from outside the city. (I know writing in caps is gauche but I am THINKING in caps.)

In my spare time (ha!) I am going to find out:
Do cities the size of Westfield and Ludlow, if they are near a major metropolitan area, EVER provide their own shelter?
Is the ratio of Springfield homeless to non-Springfield homeless (about 60%/40% as I recall, with 75% from Hampden County) really that different than in any other city Springfield's size?

I am so tired of the crap and the assumptions.about people who become homeless.

Maybe one reason the idea of a tent city feels not foreign to me is that I've spent a little more than a tenth of my life living in a tent. When I homesteaded in Maine with my husband at the time, we built a shelter by pulling down saplings, tying them together, creating a weave with other small trees, and then covering the whole affair with canvas tarps and with flattened cardboard boxes stuffed inbetween. We built the shelter over a wonderful outcropping of rock that formed a natural fireplace. Smoke drifted up to a hole in the chimney. In the winters we used a tin stove.

Of course, getting wood for the stove was an ongoing affair. I fell into the habit of looking for standing deadwood-- didn't want to cut living trees and deadwood on the ground tended to be too wet. I got pretty good at knowing at a glance, even in the winter without leaves to guide me, which trees were standing up dead, and then mentally marking them for harvesting later. It took years for the habit to die away after I came back to Springfield. It was both a pleasurable activity-- in the sense of some treasure found-- and a habit necessary for survival in the Maine winters.

Now I find myself scanning the city as I drive, looking for vacant lots, hidden yet accessible places where people might camp if they had to. I remember doing this three years ago, after Sanctuary City agreed to find another place to move after six weeks on the lush lawn of St. Michael's. Same skill, different use.

A few of today's small pleasures (I didn't go looking for them, but boy, were they needed):
-- The grackles feeding their babies under the eaves of my work window eat my cracker crumbs.
-- The scent of lilacs drifts into my window.
-- I hear singing and look out my window and a Somalian woman is striding to the bus stop in full song.
Photo by William Cordero

Better Buy A Tent

Where do I start?
Maybe with the ending:
As of June 30, best case scenario, there will be from 50 to 70 men and women without any shelter.

From today's Emergency Shelter meeting: The city has refused to extend the Warming Place shelter's occupancy of the old York St. jail. Somehow, this jail has become symbolic with Springfield's blight and has taken on magical powers-- along the line of, "Tear it down, and they will come (and all the homeless will go)." I would say there is no getting the city to change its mind on this one. About 90 people a night stay overnight at the Warming Place.

Taylor St. shelter, run by the Springfield Rescue Mission (36 men), is due to close May 31, although I will call the director tomorrow to see if on the offchance his organization has come into a sudden windfall and can keep the shelter open.

If the Warming Place closes, and Friends of the Homeless' shelter on Worthington St. is funded by by the state instead, it will only mean 50 new shelter beds, because they will use the rest of the contract to cover the costs of beds they already provide.

Just writing this, I'm thinking, no wonder so many people think homelessness is an industry! It's really a competition-- the feds and the state only give enough to get 50% of the job done, leaving the shelter providers to fight over the crumbs.

A major part of the city's plan to "end chronic homelessness" is the Housing First strategy. To that end, the city is counting on 144 housing vouchers to place people into housing with supportive services. Problem is, landlords are not beating down the doors to participate in this program. It's slow going. Well, so be it. It's still a solid (if not sole) piece of strategy.

But what happens in the meantime?

It is incredibly difficult to get a straight answer out of Gerry McCafferty, the city's Homeless and Special Needs Housing Coordinator, about how many people will be in their own apartment by June 30, probably because she doesn't know herself. Supposedly 36 people have already been placed, but the shelter population remains the same.

When I asked her what was supposed to happen to people without shelter after June 30, she switched to talking about the responsibility of other communities, like Ludlow, Chicopee, West Springfield, and Holyoke, to house their own homeless people. (Actually Holyoke houses a huge amount of family shelter.) In other words, homeless people will be used as pawns to pressure surrounding communities. But nothing will happen quickly enough (if at all) to prevent people from being without shelter. She said that the city felt that if there was any vacancy at all in Springfield's shelters, that it would bring in homeless people from outside Springfield.

When I asked her who had made this decision, she said the mayor and the Control Board.

At one point I asked for a show of hands of the other eight people at the meeting: how many had been born in Springfield? Four of us put up our hands. How many lived in Springfield now? Four. My point was not that other opinions were illegitimate, but that population is fluid. Do none of us have the right to move and call another city or town home?

I was suddenly hit with a sense of how really far away poor people, maybe most people, are from the source of real power. When I think of the Control Board, its members seem as inaccessible as the president or a king.

Right now my thoughts are turning to how to get the word out to people in the shelters about what's going to be happening. Of course they are always the last to know. Unity among the homeless is not high right now, because they all know about the housing vouchers, and everybody wants one-- but of course there are more homeless people than vouchers. And the vouchers are for the "chronically homeless," so many will not be eligible.

If you are labeled mentally ill, have a substance abuse problem, or have spent a long time bouncing from shelter to shelter (usually because of mental illness or substance abuse, you've got a shot. If you are eighteen years old and just aging out of foster care, lost a place to live when you got divorced, lost a job because of an illness or are just down on your luck, you can forget about it.

All right, it's tired and I'm getting late, more tomorrow.

Domenic Sarno: the man who would be mayor

Ah, Domenic Sarno…God loves him, his family loves him, he would have the city love him (at least enough to vote him in as mayor) but when I think about him, my mouth twists to the side.

I asked in an earlier post: how is Dom Sarno like President Bush? One answer: he can’t admit a mistake.

Now, poor people, including poor activists, can’t ever get very close to the seat of power in this city, so other people might have even better examples of Dom’s inability to own up—or maybe even examples that contradict my own experience—but here’s how he looks from the Arise side.

On August 17, 2006, Arise members and a number of homeless people attended a Civil Rights subcommittee of Springfield City Council, chaired by Domenic Sarno; the topic was homelessness. We thought that the meeting was about the civil rights of homeless people; it turned out to be about the civil rights of our housed citizens who don't like to be asked for money by poor people, or see them sleeping in doorways, etc.

At the end of Sarno's opening remarks, he said (I’m paraphrasing, seeing as the City Council does not keep verbatim transcripts) "Lastly, I have heard some disturbing information, if it is true-- that Arise is getting people from Northampton to come to Springfield, pretend they are homeless, and take pictures of the police."

I protested that this was untrue-- we have our own members who are really homeless, we don't need to get people to pretend. Sarno cut me off and said that his info was credible and that he’d gotten it from Police Commissioner, Edward Flynn (also present at the meeting).

Attempts to hold Flynn’s office accountable for this misinformation were fruitless (another post).

In October, I met with Bernie Glassman of the Zen Peacemakers, who was interested in doing “something” for the homeless. He mentioned that a dozen people from his organization had slept on the streets for a week over the summer, so they could find out what homelessness in Springfield was all about. I’d actually already heard about this from my sister Liz, who works at the Warming Place, because some homeless people had had to sleep on the floor the night that the Peacemakers, in disguise as homeless people, had turned up at the shelter. Suddenly it hit me, and I told the story of Sarno’s remarks to Glassman.

“I’ll bet it was you and your crew that Flynn reported as Arise members to Councilor Sarno,” I said.

“I’ll bet it was,” he said with a smile.

The following month, on November 17, Dom held a special subcommittee meeting to introduce the Zen Peacemakers to the Springfield community—they seem to have really hit it off. I attended the meeting, and before it actually began I thought, What a perfect time for Dom to acknowledge that it wasn’t Arise members out on the street, it was the Peacemakers, and to offer us a public apology for his misinformation. I put my thoughts in a quick note and went up to the rail to hand it to him. He was taken aback by my handing him a note—he was already pumping my hand and thanking me for coming when I slipped it to him—and I saw him read it as a video presentation about the Peacemaker’s work in Brooklyn was being prepared.

Dom stood up to open the meeting, and began by saying, “Before we actually begin, there’s something I’d like to tell you…”

Here it comes! I thought.

Well, what he actually said eludes me now, but as you might guess, it was not an acknowledgement of his error. I think the twist in my mouth that occurs whenever Dom Sarno is mentioned began at that moment.

A small affront, to be sure, in the grand scheme of things, but one that tells me much.

I have had many differences with Mayor Ryan about how he is working to solve the homeless problem in Springfield, but at least he’s trying.

Sarno’s solutions, on the other hand, range from wanting to put skunk-scented spray in empty buildings to discourage the homeless from sleeping in them to criminalizing shopping carts and panhandling.

It’s going to be an interesting mayoral campaign.

Making 100+ people disappear

REJECTED: I found out today that the City of Springfield has rejected a proposal from a board that I’m a member of (32 Byers, Inc.) to turn the long-empty Spruce Manor Nursing Home on Central St.(which the city now owns) into 40 one and two-bedroom apartments for people who want to get out of homelessness.

Instead, the nursing home will be torn down and HAP will build two or three houses as part of its home ownership push. Very nice, very nice. Too bad most of the people I know don’t own and will never be able to own a home.

I did talk to HAP Executive Director Peter Gagliardi a few months ago, and asked him (quite nervy of me, I suppose) to withdraw his proposal so that ours had a better chance of succeeding. After all, HAP has done 70 one and two-bedroom homes in the recent past, and Spruce Manor Nursing Home is the only property in the city’s portfolio large enough to be rehabbed into more than eight units. Except for one eight-unit apartment building, everything else is lots or houses. In other words, plenty of room for HAP almost anywhere else. But NO room anywhere else for a project like ours.

Peter listened politely and said he’d let me know and a few weeks later when he called saying HAP was going to go ahead, I wasn’t surprised.

Arise has a little history with Spruce Manor. It’s only a few blocks from our office on Rifle St. In late 2003 we had been collecting signatures asking the Mayor to give homeless people a building to fix up as a place to live. Spruce Manor looked good, and we thought a clean-up would help to show that we really were willing to work hard to make our dream come true. Six weeks before Sanctuary City was born—before we even knew there was going to be a Sanctuary City— Arise, homeless people, and students did a clean-up at the building. We trimmed brush, picked up trash, and spraypainted over graffiti. We talked to a lot of neighbors. Most wanted to see Spruce Manor be converted to housing.

We gave the mayor a couple of thousand signatures, but nothing came of it—Kathleen Lingenberg, Director of Housing, told me the building was structurally unsound and would be torn down. And before we knew it, the Warming Place ran out of money and shut its doors; 60 people were unsheltered, and the need for Sanctuary City was upon us. We thought briefly about occupying the building, but we thought the city would be pretty merciless about evicting and arresting, and the building was full of mold. We didn’t want to put people’s health at risk.

Jump ahead three years. The city is now in the first stages of its ten year planning process to end homelessness. The first quantifiable target is to place 140 “chronically homeless” into subsidized apartments with case management. Of course this is all existing housing—tightening up the market for people who need affordable housing, and who very well may be homeless without it.

Under these circumstances, doesn’t it just make too much sense to create 40 affordable apartments as opposed to two or three single family homes?

The city seems to think that there is a finite and static number of “chronically homeless” people, and if only those people could be “placed into housing,” we could pretty much end—or at least control—our homeless population. I have yet to hear, at any of the many meetings on homelessness I’ve been in, any serious effort to look at underlying causes of homelessness—poverty, lack of health care, lack of housing, to name the big ones. There’s a fair amount of recognition of the special needs of “chronically homeless” people, and some good tactics for dealing with people one on one. But unless the city starts connecting the dots, people will continue to fall into homelessness.

For a good critique of the Chronic Homeless Initiative, see a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Meanwhile, the Warming Place shelter, run by Open Pantry Community Services, is reporting about 100 men and women stay over each night. The WP is housed in the old Hampden County jail on York St. The city has given the shelter a June 30^th eviction date. The jail will be torn down to make way for riverfront development.

Is it magical thinking on the city’s part that they can place 140 people by June 30^th and thereby (at least in the city’s way of thinking) making the Warming Place unnecessary? The city’s plan is already behind schedule.

Is the city going to make another Sanctuary City inevitable?