Frank Keough not the only crook in the shelter system

Former homeless shelter Francis Keough III was ordered back to prison this month for breaking into a house he used to own to steal furniture no longer his.  He'd just finished serving two years in federal prison for conspiracy, extortion, mail fraud, witness tampering and perjury charges, but apparently was willing to risk even more prison time while on parole to retrieve a kitchenette set.  Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees!  This is the same Keough who, when running the Friends of the Homeless shelter, reimbursed himself $165 for a pair of shoes he'd ruined while exploring the flood in the shelter's basement where homeless people stayed.

Keough is not alone, of course, in treating the homeless as his personal cash cows.

Earlier this week the former executive assistant of a youth crisis shelter in Los Alamito, California was sentenced to four years in prison for embezzling nearly half a million from the shelter and spending it on remodeling her home, going on vacation, and buying lots of new clothes.  LA Times.

Two years ago, a shelter director and the CEO of  City of Angels Medical Center in Los Angeles were indicted (and have since pled guilty) to a $1 million fraud scheme where they offered to pay homeless people to pretend they had received medical treatment at the hospital.

While personal gain does seem to be the primary motive for shelter fraud, one Detroit shelter director and his bookkeeper had "higher" motives: they funneled $750,000 of the shelter's money into a shell company that then contributed to Democratic Party candidates and causes. Debbie Schlussel.

Lest I give the impression that only shelter directors are crooks,  when Keough went down, after a U.S. Justice Department investigation began in 2004, so did the head of the Springfield Housing Authority Ray Asselin and nearly his entire family including his son, a former state representative, Carol Aranjo and her husband and son for stealing from (and destroying) the Edward G. Wells Credit Union, former Police Commission Chairman and head of the Mass. Career Development Center Gerald Phillips for fraud, and former Albano mayoral aide Anthony Aldolino and his brother Chet, a former police officer, for fraud and filing false income tax returns.

I bring this up today only so we can remind ourselves that no one in a position of public trust deserves to go unexamined.


Photo from 10b travelling's photostream at Flickr.

Former shelter director Keough arrested - some people just don't learn

Can't let this sad, funny and infuriating event pass without comment: on Friday, Frank Keough, former director of the Worthington St. Shelter, was arrested in Rhode Island after attempting to steal his former furniture from his former house!  Some people just don't learn.

Keough is on probation after his conviction for defrauding the federal government by stealing funds from the shelter to use for a variety of personal uses.  All together, he served 30 months in prison, 20 of them pre-trial.  He could have been out on bail for most of that, but, as I recall, he was incarcerated pre-trial for attempting to contact the witnesses against him.

He had a lovely home on the Rhode Island coast which he built partly with the "help" of shelter residents.  (Can you imagine, living in that shelter, that you would have the right to say NO to Keough?)  He stole TVs,   furniture and more from the shelter, and when he failed to make payments on the $300,000 in restitution he was required to make, his home was seized by the feds.

I wrote a little about Frank in 2007.  He was a player with other big, corrupt plays in our recent scandal-ridden years in Springfield.  Now he has violated his probation.  Is he headed back to jail?

Some readers of this blog know I'm not a big fan of prison, especially for non-violent crimes.  Frank's crimes, of course, certainly did violence to the homeless and the residents of Springfield.  But what should we do with him now?

I'd like to urge those in charge to turn him over to a local non-profit.  We'll put him to work.  He could serve meals at Loaves and Fishes.  He could clean the toilets at Worthington St. Shelter. He could stand on the corner of State and Main with a sign announcing himself as a thief and a fool.  And at night he could sleep on City Hall steps, where he once "served" as city councilor.  Come on, Frank, we'll find a use for you.

Photo from Tommy Devine's site.

Just two of the painful and bizarre incidents in Springfield this week

When will homeless people get a break? When will children stop being afraid of the police?

This morning the Springfield Republican reported that Bill Miller, Executive Director of the Friends of the Homeless Shelter on Worthington St., has had a sexual harassment charge filed against him by a social worker who had also been employed at the shelter. President of the board Bob Carroll is defending Miller, but the social worker, Holly Bell, has a letter from Bob Carroll that states, "The Board determined that many of your allegations were substantiated and that the Executive Director made comments to you that were inappropriate. The Board of Directors has taken appropriate discipline against the Executive Director."

So Carroll can deny Miller's culpability now, but he admitted it in print in a letter.

Part of what makes me sick to my stomach is how many people must have known about this, who just hoped it would go away, who found it more important to cover Miller's (and the Friends of the Homeless) ass than make the tough decisions. It reminds me of the Springfield Housing Authority in the Ray Asselin days, when it was common knowledge that maintenance men would attempt to solicit sexual favors in return for apartment repairs, with threats of evictions if tenants didn't comply.

I suppose I can feel sorry for Miller, put him in the same category as the numerous politicians who have seemingly lost their minds over a woman, betrayed their wives, and put their careers in the toilet. But Bell didn't want a relationship with Miller, she told him to stop, and she took it to the board of directors.

The last permanent director of the Friends of the Homeless shelter before Miller was Frank Keough, who has recently finished serving three years in prison for stealing from the shelter and putting his friends in no-show jobs, among other things. Rumors of sexual misbehavior on his and other staffs' part were common. Arise fought for years to get rid of Keough, but it took a Justice Department investigation, the same one that swept the Asselin family, the Ardolino brothers, and so many more, to accomplish the change.

Don't the homeless people who live at the Worthington St. Shelter deserve a director who pays attention to running the shelter?
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Thursday night, 15 year old Delano Walker ran from police into the street and was immediately hit and killed by a car.

Delano and two friends, all on bikes, were observed by the police just emerging from the car lot at Balise Hyundi on Columbus Ave. The police, who were part of an anti-car theft detail, went to stop them for questioning. Delano jumped off his bike and ran. Apparently, and I am only going on news reports so far, he had a knife and likely knew he'd be in trouble if searched. (Obviously, the kids hadn't just stolen a car.)

The police were doing their job, and Delano reacted with fear. We'll hear a lot more about the roots of that fear over the next few days. Delano had a knife. Did he also have a record? Or was he just one of those kids on bikes who get stopped and searched by the police because they are in a place deemed inappropriate by the police?

I think of a young African-American friend of mine who was stopped and searched cutting through a Mass Mutual parking lot who had some pot on him and got busted. (This was before the shift from felony to misdemeanor.)

I think of the small business owner not far from Arise's office who was questioned and frisked recently by several police officers in broad daylight outside of his store. Apparently he'd been observed by the officer on traffic detail across the streethanding some money to another man. I talked to the guy later; he was humiliated and embarrassed. Apparently a former teacher of his was walking by on his way to the drugstore and they stopped to talk. The teacher realized he'd left home without his wallet and asked if he could borrow $4. It was this transaction that brought him under suspicion. I mean, come on, why would a business owner be handling money?

I called Community Policing later that day to ask if there was a policy to determine when a conversation goes to the next level and becomes a search. Yes, indeed, there is such a document-- it's called the Use of Force Procedure. I asked if I could have a copy and the officer said she would email it to me. A few weeks later I called again to remind her. I'm sure such requests are not high on the priority list, given how busy the police are, but I would like to know, and right now I'm still waiting.

It's very difficult for people who are not poor and not of color to understand the relationship between the inner-city community and the police. I could write a book about it, but I won't. What I will say is that on both sides, suspicion and fear continue to damage our community.

I'm sorry for everyone involved in what happened Thursday night: the officers and driver who helped lift the car off Delano, his friends who had to watch him be killed, the Walker family, and most especially, Delano.

Photo of Bill Miller from Friends of the Homeless.

International Tent City Day to be commemorated May 15

Last night I got an unexpected phone call from a former resident of Springfield's 2004 Tent City. He's in Tennessee now and considering whether or not his city's homeless are ready to organize a tent city. Lots of homelessness but not much leadership, he said-- a not uncommon scenario. Organizing takes time.

Four years ago, on May 15, fifteen tent cities around the country held our nation's first commemoration of International Tent City and Housing Alternatives Day. We here in Springfield, MA didn't know anything about it, though, because we were too busy organizing our city's first tent city!

My organization, Arise for Social Justice, had been working intensively with the homeless community for more than a year. Homeless people had come to events we'd hosted at Arise with the Poor people's Economic Human Rights Campaign and half a dozen had become members. We'd demonstrated outside the Friends of the Homeless Shelter, calling for the resignation of then-director Frank Keough. (Frank is in prison, now, along with many of the other heads of city agencies from that era.) We'd been petitioning Mayor Ryan to give an empty building to homeless people to fix up, and had compiled a list of people and skills. We'd even done a clean-up of the building we wanted, and had met a few times about taking the building over.

Then the Warming Place shelter for single men and women closed on May 9, and circumstances forced our hand in a totally unexpected way.

May 10, ten people slept in our office. May 11, those ten plus fifteen more staked tents on the lawn of St. Michael's cathedral. The next day, 45 people. The next day, most of the 76 who'd been displaced from the shelter plus some who'd come in from the woods. 400 different people over the next six months stayed at Sanctuary City.

What happened from that point four years ago to the present day is a long and bittersweet story, not without its successes but to be told another day. But the picture I want to paint is that in order for desperation and anger to have the chance to become social change, homeless people and organizers (often but not always the same people) have to take small steps together before that quantum leap.

Dignity Village in Portland, OR, established 2000, is getting ready to celebrate International Tent City Day. I imagine Share/WHEEL's Tent City 4 in Seattle, WA will be doing the same-- they've been operating non-stop since 2002. Most tent cities have a considerably shorter lifespan.

What poor people in New Orleans have experienced has provided them with a political education that no one deserves to learn in that way. I've written about some of the housing organizing going on in New Orleans here. but it's hard to know how demoralized the community may be: a tent city set up across from city hall, partly in protest and partly from need, was cleared earlier this year and about 100 tents are now set up under the Claiborne Avenue underpass. Moast have lived there more than a year. In January, Mayor Nagle said he'd be moving everyone into one big tent where they could get help, but it hasn't happened yet.

There's been a tent city in Ontario, CA since last July, which reached a high point of 400 in March. Then the city took control of the tent city, refurbished it, provided sanitation and other amenities, and required everyone to prove they were from Ontario if they wanted to stay in what has now become known as the "Homeless Services Area." More than fifty people were forced to leave. Some people left because of the No Pets policy. Smaller encampments have been set up around the city but are quickly cleared only to be reestablished elsewhere.

Somewhere in these tent cities and in others across the country are leaders. Maybe those men and women lead in a very laid-back way, providing a touchstone of humanity; maybe they lead more explicitly and organize others in the encampments to provide some security . It's a hard way to get experience and people can burn out very quickly, but more leaders spring up. As long as people's incomes can't meet their basic need for shelter and food,as long as people lack power at the top, they will continue to find their power at the base.

Next Thursday, May 15, spare a thought for homeless people in encampments around the world. Wish them unity and power.


intersection of race and poverty

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.