In Chattanooga the gift has been focused on mayor Ron Littlefield's proposal to establish a services center for homeless people at the former Farmers Market on 11th Street, the so-called Chattanooga Community Resource Center (CCRC). Begun over a year ago, the gift has become a pinata with every party guest taking a whack.
Here is a summary of some of the stakeholders.
City Hall
The mayor got the party started when he had the city purchase the old Farmers Market site consisting of nine acres and several buildings for three-quarters of a million dollars. Littlefield has supported the city's purchase of this property since long before his election to mayor, when he was a city councilman during the Corker administration, and long before it was suggested as a location for a center for homeless services.
Now that this use of the site is being promoted, it has come out that Littlefield's own father was one of thousands who found themselves homeless during the Great Depression of the 1930's. Certainly people who lived through that experience bore the scars for the balance of their lives. Reportedly those scars made a lasting impression on Littlefield who has made ending homelessness in Chattanooga a major agenda of his administration.
The mayor's intentions for the Farmers Market property may well be good, but his methods for implementing them have raised many concerns. Tom Griscom, editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, has voiced concerns over the secrecy of the charrette process where only certain parties were invited and the press was barred. Businessperson and M.L. King neighborhood resident Merri Mai Williamson reported to the City Council how the city had preceded her investigative visit to Joy Junction in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with disinformation. "Dr. Reynalds had been contacted by our city and led to believe that my intentions were ill-founded."
The Homeless
Often the primary stakeholders have gone without a voice. Homeless person Russell Smith, brought in for the AIA charrette, said that Chattanooga has a reputation among the homeless for being very inviting. He urged providers to make the facilities available only to people actively enrolled in programs that give them an incentive to turn their lives around. "If it's open to everybody, it'll just enable people to do nothing," he said. "What's the point of straightening up if everything's going to be provided for you?
Times Free Press reporter Herman Wang has thoroughly covered the controversy for the past several months. He quoted Smith saying, "I came here from Houston... Chattanooga makes it easy to be homeless. You can sit here and make money every day, use crack cocaine and alcohol and still have a place to stay, a place to eat."
M.L. King Neighborhood
Williamson has been an outspoken opponent of the mayor's plan, going so far as to "embark on an eight-day journey, visiting homeless complexes and the surrounding communities in Austin, Texas, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Phoenix, Arizona." What she found was a shared pattern of prosperity, decline, revitalization and "struggle to maintain any momentum while fighting the daily challenges presented by having a concentration of homeless so nearby." Problems included drug abuse, hygiene problems associated with vagrancy, littering and lack of personal and property security.
The M.L. King Neighborhood Association and other local residents and business owners fear that the proposed homeless center will similarly degrade their revitalizing neighborhood while failing to address homelessness issues adequately.
Resident Anita Polk-Conley said shelters should be held accountable for the public behavior of their clients. "If any other businesses had people laying around outside, we'd shut them down. That affects businesses and tourism. A day center can help them get off the street, but it doesn't stop homelessness."
The Homeless Coalition
According to the Chattanooga Homeless Coalition Web site, "In May 1987, the Metropolitan Council for Community Services (now known as the Community Research Council) completed a Chattanooga Survey of the Homeless... In 1994, a second survey of the homeless in Chattanooga was conducted under the auspice of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, School of Social and Community Services. Through 1996-97, this study was 'updated' annually by the Metropolitan Council for Community Services. In 1995, the Coalition was incorporated as a non-profit corporation."
A group of 14 "service providers, government administrators, housing developers, community leaders, and homeless individuals" met in 2003 to formulate a comprehensive plan to end homelessness in Chattanooga. From that seven-month process came the "Blueprint to End Chronic Homelessness in the Chattanooga Region in Ten Years" and formation of the Chattanooga Regional Interagency Council on Homelessness according to the now-dismantled followtheblueprint.com.
Services Providers
Perhaps most outspoken among providers has been Charlie Hughes, director of the Community Kitchen. "We spend a lot of time talking about how to get people out of Miller Park," says Hughes. "Are we just going to create another public park for the homeless to hang out?"
Some service providers would prefer the Farmers Market site to be more of an extension of what they're already doing. They suggested adding parking to ease traffic on 11th Street.
Hughes has said the Community Kitchen could use more space. He would like to shift their thrift store to the Farmers Market facility across the street. That would free space for a day center, respite care facility and 24-hour shelter. He would then relocate and expand their health care center to a building currently planned for the day center behind the Community Kitchen.
Hughes has stated that the Community Kitchen's needs cannot wait. Littlefield has promised $250,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds toward the day shelter. The Community Kitchen's own fundraising program will finance the respite care facility and 24-hour shelter according to Hughes.
Public-private planning and development company River City Co. has purchased the Union Gospel Mission at the corner of Main and Market streets. Though Union Gospel Mission has a year to vacate its current location, delays on the Farmers Market project jeopardize a smooth transition for one of the organizations discussed as a possible tenant at the 11th Street location.
Environmental Agency
Times Free Press reporter Pam Sohn discovered a Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation file that identified the 11th Street acreage as a former 25-foot-deep clay-and-shale quarry. Reportedly the quarry was used as a dumping ground for coal tar and other polluting by-products of manufacturing.
Ashley Holt, manager, TDEC Division of Remediation, says, “The site needs further testing and perhaps cleanup if people will live there. If the homeless shelter is a residential one, they will have to clean up to that standard.”
Community Committee
City councilwoman Linda Bennett chairs the Community Committee on Homelessness launched by councilman Leamon Pierce to investigate the mayor's plan. The committee asserted that 2004's "Blueprint to End Chronic Homelessness in the Chattanooga Region in Ten Years" should be updated by the end of 2007. "There was a dialogue with the blueprint that was lost," said committee member Richard Brown, vice chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The committee recommended that the city and county establish a single entity to coordinate, direct and sustain the local response to homelessness by September of 2007. They also recommended an education program to discourage members of the public from giving money to panhandlers.
After releasing the report with a passage stating that the homeless committee was "unable to find a rationale to support the idea" for the proposed facility off 11th Street, Bennett said in a statement that there was a "mix-up in the drafts" of the report and that an earlier draft had erroneously been released.
Nonetheless, claiming that the mayor acted on his own to establish a homeless services center at the former Farmers Market, Pierce urged him to slow down and seek input from others. "I feel like from day one, that the community and the public, the downtown, the business sector, did not have any input into the planning of what's getting ready to take place."
The AIA
The AIA plan includes space for the Rescue Mission and Union Gospel Mission, a police precinct, a job training facility and storefronts for businesses. It also includes a building for the Interfaith Hospitality Network, another for the Southeast Tennessee Human Resource Agency, the Community Kitchen's thrift store and recycling center and a restricted-access central courtyard.
David Hudson, CEO of Artech Design, is heading the design of the homeless services center for the American Institute of Architects. "We're looking at the immediate future potential for the site, as well as what this site will look like in 20 years," said Hudson. "The goal is to establish a guide for this site over time."
"As the projects are completed over the course of this year, the AIA will compile case studies from individual Blueprint projects. The case studies, intended for local officials interested in implementing similar programs, will be accessible through the AIA’s Web site, www.aia150.org free of charge. The completed piece, titled 'Blueprint for America Mosaic: A Gift to the Nation,' will be presented by the AIA in 2008," according to an AIA release.
