At last, Tender Mercies has been able to move resident's back into Harkavy Hall, after that building's rehabilitation and remodeling. The whole project took over a year, a month or two late and several thousand pesos over budget.
In June a festive "official opening" took place, with city officials, TMI board members, residents, staff and mounted police officers all mingling and networking like crazy. Several days later, an ill-informed workman connected the telephone/cable system to the 120V house current and fried God knows how many meters of fiber optic in a few milliseconds. Much rewiring (refibering?) had to be done, thus delaying the return of residents who had been relocated to other buildings. During this past year of construction, Tender Mercies capacity dropped by about 30.
The year-plus of construction included some strange moments. A Bobcat backed into one of the Port-o-Lets and scared the you-know-what out of a construction worker who was using it at the time. (Ironically convenient that he was sitting where he was sitting.) It was discovered that the third floor was not part of the original building, and that undersized joists had been used to support it. While installing a new joist, the mounting hardware failed and the joist and a lot of plaster fell. Workers escaped miraculously with only minor injuries.
While digging up the old courtyard to prepare for brickwork and concrete paving, a bottle of beer was found, brewed here in Cincinnati during the 1870's. Nobody had the nerve to open it. At last report, the worker who found it is thinking about selling it on eBay. And speaking of selling, Visualingual inquired about purchasing the nineteenth century tile uncovered after two rather disgusting layers of linoleum were removed. Unfortunately the state historical people mandated that the tile was an historical artifact, and must not be removed from the premises. Since the tile was in no shape to be trod upon, a compromise was reached: The historical czar allowed the new flooring to simply be laid over the antique tile, thus complying with the letter, if not the spirit, of the law.
Maybe a better solution to the tile situation will be found 150 years from now, when next Harkavy is remodeled. For now, residents are impressed by a new elevator, new kitchen, and a new courtyard that is better shielded from the street by steel estate fencing. We are told clematis will soon be planted. The staff has a better view of what's going on on 12th Street, security cameras eyeball the neighborhood, and everything smells new. Imagine a three story building with "new car smell."
09 July 2009
03 July 2009
Little Red Tents, 12/06
Photo by Arslan, via flickr.com. Canal St. Martin, Paris, December 2006: An organization called "Enfants de Don Quichotte," provided tents for homeless people to draw attention to the lack of accomodations for the homeless in the city. 19 June 2009
THE DROP RECONFIGURES, FOR BETTER OR WORSE
All most homeless shelters do is provide homeless people with a place to sleep indoors. Buddy Gray had other ideas about bringing social services into some sort of shelter, like having licensed social workers connecting homeless shelter residents with housing, medical or psychiatric care, jobs or job training, G.E.D. programs, alcohol or substance rehab.
Over the years the Drop Inn Center has not been able to consistently deliver what Gray envisioned. Those of us who have had to stay there recall shower stalls soiled with feces, urine, blood or vomit. We remember a staff overwhelmed, especially during the winter months, by the raw need that confronted them. We can remember criminals on the lam hiding among the homeless, drug dealers finding ways in and out of the building to sell, or to recruit new customers and new players. Case managers from mental health agencies were afraid to come to the Drop, yet their clients often did not have bus fare to get to the case manager's office. Mail was lost, phone messages routinely lost or garbled. You were protected from hypothermia, but that was the only advantage over living outdoors. Companies that ran day labor scams were given unquestioned access to the shelter residents.
If you fell far enough through the cracks to land in the Drop, you became a persona non grata, a living ghost.
The Drop has been in the process of reassigning it's staff. Some staff will be let go, some will have to reapply for jobs. All job descriptions are being discontinued, and if staff wants to continue to work there, they will have to reapply for whatever new job description for which they might be qualified. No guarantees, no consideration for seniority. The Drop is cleaning house, both it's physical self, and it's
staff.
Recently, the Drop has been contending with more intense scrutiny because of attempts to gentrify the neighborhood, and because the School for the Performing Arts's new building is nearing completion in the block defined by W.12th, Elm St., Central Pkwy, and Race St. When you consider that students from the CSPA are harassed by bangers and drug dealers at the Sycamore location, you might find it odd that a new location was chosen at the southern end of Washington Park, half a block east of the Drop Inn Center's front door. But CSPA wanted to stay downtown, centrally located.
Meanwhile, the concept of centrally located services for homeless people remains anathema for most politicians and real estate developers. The NIMBY advocates may yet succeed in scattering homeless services all over the city. The question remains: If a homeless person does not have bus fare to go to his case manager's office, how much bus fare does he or she have to make a trip to one address for a place to sleep, another for medical or psychiatric services, another for job training, ad infinitum?
NIMBY perpetuates homelessness.
Over the years the Drop Inn Center has not been able to consistently deliver what Gray envisioned. Those of us who have had to stay there recall shower stalls soiled with feces, urine, blood or vomit. We remember a staff overwhelmed, especially during the winter months, by the raw need that confronted them. We can remember criminals on the lam hiding among the homeless, drug dealers finding ways in and out of the building to sell, or to recruit new customers and new players. Case managers from mental health agencies were afraid to come to the Drop, yet their clients often did not have bus fare to get to the case manager's office. Mail was lost, phone messages routinely lost or garbled. You were protected from hypothermia, but that was the only advantage over living outdoors. Companies that ran day labor scams were given unquestioned access to the shelter residents.
If you fell far enough through the cracks to land in the Drop, you became a persona non grata, a living ghost.
The Drop has been in the process of reassigning it's staff. Some staff will be let go, some will have to reapply for jobs. All job descriptions are being discontinued, and if staff wants to continue to work there, they will have to reapply for whatever new job description for which they might be qualified. No guarantees, no consideration for seniority. The Drop is cleaning house, both it's physical self, and it's
staff.
Recently, the Drop has been contending with more intense scrutiny because of attempts to gentrify the neighborhood, and because the School for the Performing Arts's new building is nearing completion in the block defined by W.12th, Elm St., Central Pkwy, and Race St. When you consider that students from the CSPA are harassed by bangers and drug dealers at the Sycamore location, you might find it odd that a new location was chosen at the southern end of Washington Park, half a block east of the Drop Inn Center's front door. But CSPA wanted to stay downtown, centrally located.
Meanwhile, the concept of centrally located services for homeless people remains anathema for most politicians and real estate developers. The NIMBY advocates may yet succeed in scattering homeless services all over the city. The question remains: If a homeless person does not have bus fare to go to his case manager's office, how much bus fare does he or she have to make a trip to one address for a place to sleep, another for medical or psychiatric services, another for job training, ad infinitum?
NIMBY perpetuates homelessness.
11 June 2009
Container Housing Update
Shipping container housing for the homeless is a topic considered here before. I am ambivalent about a more popular trend: the sexing up, or possibly gentrification, of shipping container housing. Should such a ubiquitous and inexpensive resource be transformed into something upscale and exclusive, then an opportunity to get people off the street --- while giving the taxpayers a break --- will be lost. It is cheaper to house homeless people than to warehouse them in jails or shelters.
Nevertheless, fabprefab.net is a terrific starting point if you are curious about what can be built with new or used shipping containers. This link will take you, not to their home page, but to their coverage of some design contest winners. All the structures had to be made from shipping containers, with the the completed building mandated to be comprised of more shipping container than not.
http://www.fabprefab.net/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=d7584eee1b989d12aaa8c539a63e8675&action=search2
Nevertheless, fabprefab.net is a terrific starting point if you are curious about what can be built with new or used shipping containers. This link will take you, not to their home page, but to their coverage of some design contest winners. All the structures had to be made from shipping containers, with the the completed building mandated to be comprised of more shipping container than not.
http://www.fabprefab.net/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=d7584eee1b989d12aaa8c539a63e8675&action=search2
31 May 2009
ARE YOU SURE BOO RADLEY GOT HIS START LIKE THIS?
Some of Jake's neighbors go months or even years without seeing him. Or maybe it's more accurate to say: Jake can go months without being seen. He is a semi-recluse, and his ability to minimize his contact with other humans is legendary.
Jake will tell you, if you ask, that people mistake him for Johnny Cash. He claims he is frequently stopped on the street and asked for autographs. On days when he doesn't resemble Johnny Cash, he might bear a striking resemblance to say, Roy Orbison. His neighbors only see him leave the building twice a week. He leaves early in the morning and returns with four plastic bags full of groceries. Never three, never five, always four plastic bags, two in each hand.
Three times per week, Jake lumbers down the hall to the rest room and touches up his hair with cheap hair dye and diluted india ink. When we ask him about all the hair dye splattered on the sink and in the shower, he appears genuinely puzzled. "Hair dye?" he says. "What hair dye?" Jake's face is as cratered and gnarly as a tumor on an oak tree. His face shows every day of his 60 years, and then some. The jet black hair, swept back across his huge head, seems almost like a bad joke, or a slapdash makeup job for a Saturday Night Live sketch. This guy can't be for real.
After the brief chat about hair dye, we didn't see Jake for a couple of months.
Our building is an SRO, or single room occupancy. Each floor has a shared bathroom, and there is a shared kitchen and laundry on the first floor. Some of our neighbors have lived in this building for three or four years, and they swear they have never seen Jake doing laundry. Nor does anyone recall seeing Jake in the kitchen. Ever. But if the residents don't see him, they certainly hear him. He can be heard whistling and humming. His flip flops can be heard several times a day in the hall. Jake uses the bathroom as a laundry, and the sink can be heard running. And running, and running. Naturally, since a hand sink only has room for one or two items of dirty clothing, Jake must sojourn to the bathroom every day to launder whatever change of clothes he will need next day.
You may wonder: How the hell does he dry his clothes? He lives in a single room, after all. Does he hang his sopping wet clothes out the window? Has he rigged a clothesline across the airshaft? The answer is: Jake apparently hangs his clothes to dry in his room. Once or twice per year, his room has to be sprayed for bedbugs, what with all that damp clothing creating a prime breeding environment. On those rare occasions when we see Jake and think to ask about the pink wheals festooning his neck and arms, his answer is: "Bug bites? What bug bites?"
As for using the bathroom for what the rest of us use it for --- that's too risky. Jake is constantly heard spraying and spritzing and muttering to himself about smelly, disgusting people. Jake prefers not to come in contact with the toilet that other people have used, so he simply maintains a bucket for that purpose in his room. Several times per week, usually in the wee hours of the morning, he flip flops down the hall with his old plastic pickle bucket. While the odor is detectable, it is not overwhelming. How he manages the odor problem remains a mystery, a sort of cloaca obscura. We prefer to let the mystery be.
When curious tenants stick their heads out their doors, just to get a look at the recluse, Jake's responses cover a wide spectrum. Jake can choose to not see you when he passes you in the hall, as if in an ambulatory catatonia. He his not ignoring you. You are simply not there, brushing past him in the narrow corridor, with your pathetic, stammering attempt at smalltalk. Others have reported that he does speak to them as he passes, but what he says is nearly unprintable.
Neighbor: "Morning, sir."
Jake: "Scum sucking slime eating skunkwad asswipe mother-----r...."
Is Jake a semi-recluse because he wishes to avoid human contact as much as possible?
Does he have say, Tourette's Syndrome, but remains in deep denial about it?
Or is Jake's need to remain in his room God's way of giving the rest of humanity a break? Also consider the Amish belief that damaged people are sent to teach us tolerance and patience. Maybe the Amish have an extra room ....
Jake will tell you, if you ask, that people mistake him for Johnny Cash. He claims he is frequently stopped on the street and asked for autographs. On days when he doesn't resemble Johnny Cash, he might bear a striking resemblance to say, Roy Orbison. His neighbors only see him leave the building twice a week. He leaves early in the morning and returns with four plastic bags full of groceries. Never three, never five, always four plastic bags, two in each hand.
Three times per week, Jake lumbers down the hall to the rest room and touches up his hair with cheap hair dye and diluted india ink. When we ask him about all the hair dye splattered on the sink and in the shower, he appears genuinely puzzled. "Hair dye?" he says. "What hair dye?" Jake's face is as cratered and gnarly as a tumor on an oak tree. His face shows every day of his 60 years, and then some. The jet black hair, swept back across his huge head, seems almost like a bad joke, or a slapdash makeup job for a Saturday Night Live sketch. This guy can't be for real.
After the brief chat about hair dye, we didn't see Jake for a couple of months.
Our building is an SRO, or single room occupancy. Each floor has a shared bathroom, and there is a shared kitchen and laundry on the first floor. Some of our neighbors have lived in this building for three or four years, and they swear they have never seen Jake doing laundry. Nor does anyone recall seeing Jake in the kitchen. Ever. But if the residents don't see him, they certainly hear him. He can be heard whistling and humming. His flip flops can be heard several times a day in the hall. Jake uses the bathroom as a laundry, and the sink can be heard running. And running, and running. Naturally, since a hand sink only has room for one or two items of dirty clothing, Jake must sojourn to the bathroom every day to launder whatever change of clothes he will need next day.
You may wonder: How the hell does he dry his clothes? He lives in a single room, after all. Does he hang his sopping wet clothes out the window? Has he rigged a clothesline across the airshaft? The answer is: Jake apparently hangs his clothes to dry in his room. Once or twice per year, his room has to be sprayed for bedbugs, what with all that damp clothing creating a prime breeding environment. On those rare occasions when we see Jake and think to ask about the pink wheals festooning his neck and arms, his answer is: "Bug bites? What bug bites?"
As for using the bathroom for what the rest of us use it for --- that's too risky. Jake is constantly heard spraying and spritzing and muttering to himself about smelly, disgusting people. Jake prefers not to come in contact with the toilet that other people have used, so he simply maintains a bucket for that purpose in his room. Several times per week, usually in the wee hours of the morning, he flip flops down the hall with his old plastic pickle bucket. While the odor is detectable, it is not overwhelming. How he manages the odor problem remains a mystery, a sort of cloaca obscura. We prefer to let the mystery be.
When curious tenants stick their heads out their doors, just to get a look at the recluse, Jake's responses cover a wide spectrum. Jake can choose to not see you when he passes you in the hall, as if in an ambulatory catatonia. He his not ignoring you. You are simply not there, brushing past him in the narrow corridor, with your pathetic, stammering attempt at smalltalk. Others have reported that he does speak to them as he passes, but what he says is nearly unprintable.
Neighbor: "Morning, sir."
Jake: "Scum sucking slime eating skunkwad asswipe mother-----r...."
Is Jake a semi-recluse because he wishes to avoid human contact as much as possible?
Does he have say, Tourette's Syndrome, but remains in deep denial about it?
Or is Jake's need to remain in his room God's way of giving the rest of humanity a break? Also consider the Amish belief that damaged people are sent to teach us tolerance and patience. Maybe the Amish have an extra room ....
19 May 2009
How Poverty Works
Here's an enlightening article on OregonLive.com:
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-6/1242679316105620.xml&storylist=national
06 May 2009
Bortz-Crowley Deprioritize the Homeless
Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless is urging people to attend the Cincinnati City Council meeting on May 7th to speak out against a proposed motion by Chris Bortz and David Crowley that would eliminate homelessness from the city's Human Services funding priorities. In other words, if there is no solution, there is no problem.
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