Tag: homeless

Categories
News News Blog

Advocates Urge New Direction for Homeless Shelter Plan

CREDIT: Full Build

Full Build

Rendering of planned facility

Homeless advocates urged local leaders to re-think an $8 million plan for a new shelter, and to use the money, instead, for permanent housing, warning that the shelter could become a “human zoo.”

Last week, members of the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission detailed plans for the relocation and expansion of the Hospitality Hub, an organization that assists homeless men and women, providing customized care, resources, and/or referrals in partnership with other organizations.

Mid-South Peace and Justice Center

Private funding totaling $5 million has already been secured for the facility. Local government leaders pledged $2.4 million over two years.

The new facility will be for women and is planned for the former city of Memphis Public Service Inspection Station on Washington. The shelter will house 32 women, who  can spend four to nine days and, in some cases, up to 30 days. The goal of the new effort, officials said, is to eliminate street-level homelessness within 30 months.

The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center (MSPJC) said Tuesday that the plan “is not what it seems” and that “while well-intentioned, is missing the mark.”

Mid-South Peace and Justice Center

Brad Watkins

“With a proposed price tag of over $5 million in private construction and renovation costs, and up to $2.4 million in city and county funding, we could provide real housing, not just temporary shelter, for as many as 150 households by expanding funding for existing city and county programs, from the city’s contribution alone,” Brad Watkins, MSPJC’s executive director, said in a statement. “It’s not always how much you spend, it’s what you spend it on.”

Watkins said the money would be better spent in the Tenant-Based Rental Assistance Program, Rapid Rehousing, deposit and utility assistance, and Permanent Supportive Housing programs.

Thousands are now on a waiting list for housing through the Memphis Housing authority, Watkins said. Spending ”massive resources on a shelter for 32 individuals when there is likely no housing to place these people in afterwards, places a multi-million dollar cart in front of the proverbial horse.”
[pullquote-1] “In October of 2017, over 15,000 qualified local applicants for housing assistance were placed into a lottery for housing,” Watkins said. “The ‘winners’ didn’t get housing, they were simply added to the waiting list. This shows just how big of a gap there is when it comes to housing security.”

Further, MSPJC voiced concerns on the shelter’s proposed car wash, dog park, art garden, food trucks and outdoor rest “tubes.” Officials wondered who would work at the carwash and it they’d paid a living wage — “We doubt it.” Also, they asked “who are these amenities really for?”
Full Build

Layout of planned facility

”The risk is that (the shelter) becomes a ’human zoo,’ turning people experiencing homelessness a theme park spectacle while those with homes walk their dogs and enjoy food trucks,” reads a statement. “The cost is millions of dollars in overhead and salaries that won’t provide homes or move us closer to ending homelessness. The only thing this proposed shelter will do is absolve the guilt of those with homes who can now feel like progress is being made, even though it isn’t.”

Categories
News News Blog

UTHSC Students Giving Free Flu Vaccinations to Low-Income, Homeless

flu_shot.jpg

With the flu season approaching, it’s important for Memphians to get their vaccinations, which significantly reduces chances of contracting the respiratory illness.

In light of this, students at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) will be providing free flu vaccinations to the city’s low-income and homeless this Thursday. The students are a part of the Operation Immunization Committee of the American Pharmacists Association Academy of Student Pharmacists chapter at UTHSC.

Last year, the chapter was awarded a $3,000 grant to vaccinate Memphis’ low-income population. And the group will use the grant to provide flu vaccinations to 150 impoverished locals. All people have to do to receive the vaccinations is attend Idlewild Presbyterian Church’s “More Than a Meal” gathering.

The event, which will take place Thursday, October 23rd from 5:30 to 7 p.m., will give the city’s homeless and low-income a chance to enjoy a free meal and fellowship with church members. During the dinner, UTHSC College of Pharmacy students who are certified to give immunizations will administer vaccinations.

Over a period of 31 seasons between 1976 and 2007, estimated flu-associated deaths in the United States ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During a regular flu season, about 90 percent of deaths occur in people 65 years and older.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Somebody

“It’s pretty incredible,” says Alan Spearman, laughing over the strange events that have brought Nobody, his 62-minute documentary, to the attention of daytime TV watchers. The Commercial Appeal photographer and emerging filmmaker is overwhelmed by the e-mail he’s gotten since Nobody, the lyrical film he made with fellow CA shutterbug Lance Murphy, was featured on Dr. Phil last week in an episode titled “Hobo Daddy.”

“We’ll just have to see if it leads to anything,” Spearman says, fingers crossed.

Nobody, a visually rich meditation on homelessness, won the 2006 Hometowner Award at the Indie Memphis Film Festival and was later selected to screen at the Full Frame Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. Full Frame is widely considered the premier festival for documentaries in North America.

In July, the filmmakers were contacted by representatives of Dr. Phil and told that the TV therapist wanted to build an entire program around Jerry Bell, the homeless Mississippi river rat at the heart of Spearman and Murphy’s award-winning film. A month later, Murphy led a production crew from the show through a wooded area in Biloxi, Mississippi, looking for Bell’s camp.

Dr. Phil learned about Bell when Kayla, Bell’s daughter, who hadn’t seen her father since she was 2, contacted him.

“I just couldn’t think of why anybody would want to make a film of some homeless, dirty guy floating in a blow-up boat down the Mississippi River,” Kayla told Dr. Phil as she and her mother Glori raked Bell over the coals for not paying child support.

“I don’t think they were completely fair to Jerry,” Spearman says, questioning the facts and timelines presented on the show. “Besides, our goal as filmmakers wasn’t to glorify Jerry’s lifestyle or to hold him up as some kind of role model. Lance and I wanted to make a film about the life of a person you might pass on the street every day without ever even seeing.”

“Jerry had no idea who Dr. Phil was; he just wanted to see his daughter,” Murphy explains. “I did everything I could to prepare him. I figured that the show would be confrontational, and for the most part, it was.” But it wasn’t all Jerry Springer-esque either.

When Murphy and Bell arrived in Los Angeles for the taping, a producer for Dr. Phil offered to pay for a set of false teeth for Jerry “if it would make him more comfortable.” Bell said yes.

“The whole teeth thing has been an ongoing theme,” Murphy says. “When Jerry left for the Gulf Coast in his canoe, I wanted to make sure he had plenty to eat. So I’d gotten him these big tubs of peanut butter. But it was crunchy peanut butter. He said, ‘You know I can’t eat that.'”

After taping, Bell was flown back to Biloxi where a limo was waiting for him. Spearman says Bell asked the driver to take him to the edge of the woods and drop him off. “We didn’t get that on film,” Spearman says sadly.

Categories
News

Memphis’ “Street Person of the Year” Honored

Downtown and Midtown residents deal with panhandlers on a routine basis. Some dish out a dollar or a handful of spare change when they can. Others choose to walk on by, avoiding eye contact.

But the folks at the locally-based Street-People.com stop and chat for a while, offering people free food or a dollar in exchange for their stories and pictures, which are later documented on the website.

In honor of its one-year anniversary as a website, Street-People.com has named it’s “Street Person of the Year,” a mysterious man named Anthony, or Michael, who haunts Midtown locations, like Petra and Starbucks.

Read all about his life and his strange celebrity connections here.

www.street-people.com
Categories
News The Fly-By

Web of Assistance

When the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced its homeless-assistance awards February 20th, it granted $4.6 million to programs helping the homeless in Memphis. HUD’s Continuum of Care program rewards local agencies nationwide for meeting the needs of their homeless populations and funds promising new programs.

“It’s a performance-based competition,” explains Pat Morgan, author of the grant application and executive director of Partners for the Homeless. “We got $1.5 million more than our fair share, because we have been strategic in how we’ve gone after the dollars.”

Before joining Partners eight years ago, Morgan worked for the U.S. Interagency Council on the Homeless in Washington.

“I follow the golden rule: The one with the gold makes the rules,” she says. “In Washington, we looked at the best practices and research from around the country.”

Along with organizations such as MIFA and Catholic Charities, Partners is a member of the Coalition for the Homeless, a local association that coordinates the efforts of member organizations to assure that services are available. HUD defines the needs of the homeless as permanent and transitional housing, job training, mental-health counseling, substance-abuse treatment, and child care.

“The funding will continue as long as the programs are doing what they’re supposed to,” Morgan adds. The $1.5 million increase from last year will finance several new programs. One will develop permanent housing for chronically homeless disabled people. Another will build 24 units of permanent housing for people who frequently land in jail on charges of vagrancy or panhandling.

Partners’ portion of the grant will develop the Homeless Management Information System, a database of homeless individuals in the city. It will include a person’s name, race, Social Security number, and date of birth. The data will allow various local agencies to track the homeless population and see who’s accessing services and for how long.

“We can look at this huge database and see who’s been where. We’re developing a Web-based system that all of the agencies can look at,” Morgan says.

The improvements in local data gathering contributed to the overall effectiveness of homeless services. The National Coalition to End Homelessness reported earlier this year that only .5 percent of Memphis’ homeless population live unsheltered on the street, while 44 percent of the homeless live unsheltered nationally.

Despite the city’s respectable record, Morgan sees one major need.

“How are we going to get these people from the streets and into the [existing] housing? That’s a piece that we’re missing,” she says. “We have some outreach, but it’s not built into [agencies’] goals to get people their benefits and get them housed.”