January 2009
THE GREENWOOD TREE MONTHLY
A PANTHEIST PUBLICATION PUBLISHED BY
ROBINS HOOD COMMUNITY CENTER
Publisher: Lone Wolf Editors: Mr. Mojo, Katrine & Brenda Sumner
SPECIAL EDITION
It is a sad state of affairs when dealing with the homeless only two phrases comes to mind:
For the (Liberals: This is a total inexcusable nightmare) and the
(Conservatives: The homeless deserve what they get and we should not even try to help)
The Homeless in both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky have quadrupled in the past 8 years. One city in particular has even denied that homeless even exist in their city! This is hard to deny when 3 homeless men in as many weeks have died in their city!
This Special Edition is part of a lengthy investigation towards the problem with homelessness.
Their will be interviews with City Council persons, County Commissioners, State Representatives, State Senators, Federal Congress persons and Senate persons as well as most branches of the local and national Homeless Coalitions.
Politicians such as the Mayor of Cincinnati have not returned calls to explain Cincinnati’s 4th place position as the meanest city in the nation towards the homeless.
Recovery center site challenged
Bad for addicts, residents claim By Jeanne HouckPost staff reporter Residents of Covington's Wallace Woods neighborhood are not the first to oppose the establishment of a drug recovery center for men in their neighborhood.They might be the first to float the argument, though, that locating the center near their homes, schools and businesses would be a bad idea for the drug addicts."Do you have any idea how many drugs are sold (nearby) at the corner of Wallace and Madison (avenues)?" one woman asked Mac McArthur, director of Transitions Inc., Monday.The question came during a meeting of the Wallace Woods Neighborhood Association. McArthur had been invited to outline Transitions' proposal to build a residential recovery center for 100 men on a two-acre vacant site formerly occupied by the Donaldson Art Sign Co. off Donaldson Avenue. The center would be west of Madison Avenue and about a block and a half from the Covington Police Department at 20th Street and Madison Avenue.A Donaldson Avenue recovery center is still far from certain, though. Covington and Kenton County own the property because the previous owners failed to pay their taxes. Not only would those governments need to sign on, public hearings must be held, regulations met and funding secured.McArthur assured the residents Monday that the recovery center would not be a methadone clinic, homeless shelter, soup kitchen or emergency housing. Transient walk-ins would be escorted out - as would people who were referred there by the courts but were not committed to sobering up or straightening out, he said. McArthur said Transitions hopes the recovery center would be one of 10 "Recovery Kentucky" centers Gov. Ernie Fletcher wants to see built across the state for substance abusers who are poor, uninsured and about to become homeless. The Governor's Office for Local Development, the Department of Corrections and the Kentucky Housing Corp. are offering $9.5 million in grants and tax credits to construct and operate the centers. McArthur said Fletcher believes the centers eventually will save taxpayers on the costs of incarcerating or otherwise caring for drug addicts.Wallace Woods residents see no relief ahead if Covington - with its abundance of social-service agencies and treatment centers - continues to be asked to shoulder much more than its fair share of the financial and societal costs of drug addiction.Transitions is awaiting word of funding based on a proposal to build and operate the recovery center on county-owned property next to the Rosedale nursing home in Latonia. After an outcry from Latonia residents that reached the governor's office, though, Transitions decided to look for another location.Wallace Woods residents said Transitions should not try to dump this center in their neighborhood just because other neighborhoods and cities have said no. "Erlanger doesn't want it. Latonia doesn't want it, and I don't want it," said John Ryker of Glenway Avenue.McArthur said the recovery center would be based on a national award-winning model pioneered in Louisville and Lexington that has an enviable success rate. He said some 65 percent of former residents remain drug-free a year after they graduate.Ryker said the effectiveness of the program isn't his only concern. "You could do an absolutely perfect job, and it would still hurt my property values." Publication date: 08-02-2005
October 31 2007
COVINGTON OUTLAWS HOMELESS SHELTERS
Nov. 3 - Message for Covington city officials: Think twice, for it's another day for you and me in paradise.
According to the Kentucky Post of October 31, a nonprofit organization wants to build an emergency homeless shelter in Covington or Newport. Covington officials, however, have taken their city out of the running by further cementing their reputation as one of the most heartless city governments in America when it comes to its treatment of the homeless.
In the early part of the decade, Covington was listed on a national ranking of the most unfriendly North American cities for the homeless after the city bulldozed a makeshift encampment without warning and brutally killed a homeless man's cat. This act was nothing short of evil. Around the same time, the city hosted a rally by Freak Rethuglic types (which was attended almost entirely by suburbanites who didn't even live in the city) who actually claimed the city's homeless had it too easy. This is the only known instance of such a demonstration ever taking place in the history of the world.
You'd think Covington's leaders wouldn't want to visit further embarrassment upon themselves. (Actually the Republicans lose Covington in presidential elections, since it's an inner city, but that doesn't guarantee a progressive city government. Look at New York, after all.) But they didn't learn, did they? Earlier this year, Covington's only emergency shelter for the homeless closed. And it can't be replaced because - get this - the city has outlawed new shelters.
It's not as if some vague policy has the accidental effect of banning shelters. It's not as if the city denies that such a policy has a deliberate effect either. It does have a deliberate effect, but the city is unrepentant enough to come right out and say so. City Manager Jay Fossett boasts that the zoning code was just changed. "Homeless shelters are no longer permitted in Covington under our zoning code," he declared. He said the new ordinance bans not just shelters but also other social service agencies. Was it intended? Fossett said, "That was their intent, so I don't think it's likely that they would change their mind and allow a shelter."
We appreciate your honesty, Jay. Most cities would just deny they intended it. Of course this honesty is driven by the city's own smug desire to appeal to the gentrified conservatives who it wants to attract. How shameless.
If any shelter or other service agency existed, it would be grandfathered and allowed to stay. But Covington lacks a shelter now, and nobody's allowed to open a shelter even where one used to stand. (Ooh, an Allowed Cloud!)
Surely nobody believes that banning shelters will decrease the problems associated with homelessness. Before the most recent shelter opened, the homeless camped nearby. Thus, most of the opposition that the shelter did generate was based largely on flimsy excuses. They claimed people staying at the shelter created too many problems, but if that's the case, wouldn't they create more problems if they were out on the streets?
You have to wonder about people sometimes. There used to be these things called ethics and standards, which restrained most government officials in our urban centers from deliberately stepping on the downtrodden. Leadership meant doing what was in the interest of your constituents - including the least well off. But these days, anyone who's below the poverty line or who doesn't own property doesn't get a voice, and politicians are proud to have it that way.
Copied from Cincy.com
. Friday, January 12, 2007
How many homeless in Cincinnati? Depends who's counting
A reader who wishes to be known only as "Mark from Delhi"[19] raised a question about homeless counts based on a USA Today story from Wednesday, "Study: 744,000 Homeless in United States." Mark writes:
What caught my attention was of course the state of Ohio's total of 16,165. That number jumped out at me because of the homeless advocates who routinely claim nearly 25,000 homeless in the city of Cincinnati alone. How is that possible? This claim can be seen on their own website.
I think this is worth investigating. The city is facing a looming budget crisis, yet any hint of cuts in socials services result in claims of impending doom. I think these agencies have a vice grip on the city and are more interested in turning Cincinnati into one large Skid Row. How many homeless are there really, and is the city, county, even Federal and State spending more than needed?
An interesting question, and one that Councilman Jim Tarbell also rises from time to time. So I asked Georgine Getty, the executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, to defend her numbers. Her answer:
Thanks for your question. The National Alliance to End Homelessness used numbers that follow the HUD[20] definition of homelessness, which only includes people living in shelters, on the street, or in places not fit for human habitation, like abandoned buildings, cars etc. We use the Department of Education's definition, which includes these folks and also people who are precariously housed by "doubling up" (staying with other people for a few days or weeks, but not on the lease).
Also, their number is a point in time count for one night. I know their information reads like it's 16,165 for the whole year, but it's not. It's just on any night of the year that many people are homeless. 25,000 is the number of people who will experience homelessness at some point over the course of a year.
Following the stricter HUD definition (not including people who are doubled up), we estimate that there are 1,300 people homeless each night in Cincinnati -- 1100 in shelters and an additional 200 on the street, in cars, etc. Of course, this number is probably low because we have no way of finding everyone staying in cars and we do not check abandoned buildings for safety reasons.
Hope this helps - the number game can be really confusing with homelessness.
--
[19]Mark asked that his full name not be used. "I read enough blogs that I don't want to be on the wrong side of the insults," he wrote. ↩
[20]The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to USA Today, HUD is set to release its own census of homeless numbers shortly, so this isn't the last we've heard of the debate. ↩
Labels: demographics
By Gregory Korte at 3:28 PM 8 comments links to this post
A PANTHEIST PUBLICATION PUBLISHED BY
ROBINS HOOD COMMUNITY CENTER
Publisher: Lone Wolf Editors: Mr. Mojo, Katrine & Brenda Sumner
SPECIAL EDITION
It is a sad state of affairs when dealing with the homeless only two phrases comes to mind:
For the (Liberals: This is a total inexcusable nightmare) and the
(Conservatives: The homeless deserve what they get and we should not even try to help)
The Homeless in both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky have quadrupled in the past 8 years. One city in particular has even denied that homeless even exist in their city! This is hard to deny when 3 homeless men in as many weeks have died in their city!
This Special Edition is part of a lengthy investigation towards the problem with homelessness.
Their will be interviews with City Council persons, County Commissioners, State Representatives, State Senators, Federal Congress persons and Senate persons as well as most branches of the local and national Homeless Coalitions.
Politicians such as the Mayor of Cincinnati have not returned calls to explain Cincinnati’s 4th place position as the meanest city in the nation towards the homeless.
Recovery center site challenged
Bad for addicts, residents claim By Jeanne HouckPost staff reporter Residents of Covington's Wallace Woods neighborhood are not the first to oppose the establishment of a drug recovery center for men in their neighborhood.They might be the first to float the argument, though, that locating the center near their homes, schools and businesses would be a bad idea for the drug addicts."Do you have any idea how many drugs are sold (nearby) at the corner of Wallace and Madison (avenues)?" one woman asked Mac McArthur, director of Transitions Inc., Monday.The question came during a meeting of the Wallace Woods Neighborhood Association. McArthur had been invited to outline Transitions' proposal to build a residential recovery center for 100 men on a two-acre vacant site formerly occupied by the Donaldson Art Sign Co. off Donaldson Avenue. The center would be west of Madison Avenue and about a block and a half from the Covington Police Department at 20th Street and Madison Avenue.A Donaldson Avenue recovery center is still far from certain, though. Covington and Kenton County own the property because the previous owners failed to pay their taxes. Not only would those governments need to sign on, public hearings must be held, regulations met and funding secured.McArthur assured the residents Monday that the recovery center would not be a methadone clinic, homeless shelter, soup kitchen or emergency housing. Transient walk-ins would be escorted out - as would people who were referred there by the courts but were not committed to sobering up or straightening out, he said. McArthur said Transitions hopes the recovery center would be one of 10 "Recovery Kentucky" centers Gov. Ernie Fletcher wants to see built across the state for substance abusers who are poor, uninsured and about to become homeless. The Governor's Office for Local Development, the Department of Corrections and the Kentucky Housing Corp. are offering $9.5 million in grants and tax credits to construct and operate the centers. McArthur said Fletcher believes the centers eventually will save taxpayers on the costs of incarcerating or otherwise caring for drug addicts.Wallace Woods residents see no relief ahead if Covington - with its abundance of social-service agencies and treatment centers - continues to be asked to shoulder much more than its fair share of the financial and societal costs of drug addiction.Transitions is awaiting word of funding based on a proposal to build and operate the recovery center on county-owned property next to the Rosedale nursing home in Latonia. After an outcry from Latonia residents that reached the governor's office, though, Transitions decided to look for another location.Wallace Woods residents said Transitions should not try to dump this center in their neighborhood just because other neighborhoods and cities have said no. "Erlanger doesn't want it. Latonia doesn't want it, and I don't want it," said John Ryker of Glenway Avenue.McArthur said the recovery center would be based on a national award-winning model pioneered in Louisville and Lexington that has an enviable success rate. He said some 65 percent of former residents remain drug-free a year after they graduate.Ryker said the effectiveness of the program isn't his only concern. "You could do an absolutely perfect job, and it would still hurt my property values." Publication date: 08-02-2005
October 31 2007
COVINGTON OUTLAWS HOMELESS SHELTERS
Nov. 3 - Message for Covington city officials: Think twice, for it's another day for you and me in paradise.
According to the Kentucky Post of October 31, a nonprofit organization wants to build an emergency homeless shelter in Covington or Newport. Covington officials, however, have taken their city out of the running by further cementing their reputation as one of the most heartless city governments in America when it comes to its treatment of the homeless.
In the early part of the decade, Covington was listed on a national ranking of the most unfriendly North American cities for the homeless after the city bulldozed a makeshift encampment without warning and brutally killed a homeless man's cat. This act was nothing short of evil. Around the same time, the city hosted a rally by Freak Rethuglic types (which was attended almost entirely by suburbanites who didn't even live in the city) who actually claimed the city's homeless had it too easy. This is the only known instance of such a demonstration ever taking place in the history of the world.
You'd think Covington's leaders wouldn't want to visit further embarrassment upon themselves. (Actually the Republicans lose Covington in presidential elections, since it's an inner city, but that doesn't guarantee a progressive city government. Look at New York, after all.) But they didn't learn, did they? Earlier this year, Covington's only emergency shelter for the homeless closed. And it can't be replaced because - get this - the city has outlawed new shelters.
It's not as if some vague policy has the accidental effect of banning shelters. It's not as if the city denies that such a policy has a deliberate effect either. It does have a deliberate effect, but the city is unrepentant enough to come right out and say so. City Manager Jay Fossett boasts that the zoning code was just changed. "Homeless shelters are no longer permitted in Covington under our zoning code," he declared. He said the new ordinance bans not just shelters but also other social service agencies. Was it intended? Fossett said, "That was their intent, so I don't think it's likely that they would change their mind and allow a shelter."
We appreciate your honesty, Jay. Most cities would just deny they intended it. Of course this honesty is driven by the city's own smug desire to appeal to the gentrified conservatives who it wants to attract. How shameless.
If any shelter or other service agency existed, it would be grandfathered and allowed to stay. But Covington lacks a shelter now, and nobody's allowed to open a shelter even where one used to stand. (Ooh, an Allowed Cloud!)
Surely nobody believes that banning shelters will decrease the problems associated with homelessness. Before the most recent shelter opened, the homeless camped nearby. Thus, most of the opposition that the shelter did generate was based largely on flimsy excuses. They claimed people staying at the shelter created too many problems, but if that's the case, wouldn't they create more problems if they were out on the streets?
You have to wonder about people sometimes. There used to be these things called ethics and standards, which restrained most government officials in our urban centers from deliberately stepping on the downtrodden. Leadership meant doing what was in the interest of your constituents - including the least well off. But these days, anyone who's below the poverty line or who doesn't own property doesn't get a voice, and politicians are proud to have it that way.
Copied from Cincy.com
. Friday, January 12, 2007
How many homeless in Cincinnati? Depends who's counting
A reader who wishes to be known only as "Mark from Delhi"[19] raised a question about homeless counts based on a USA Today story from Wednesday, "Study: 744,000 Homeless in United States." Mark writes:
What caught my attention was of course the state of Ohio's total of 16,165. That number jumped out at me because of the homeless advocates who routinely claim nearly 25,000 homeless in the city of Cincinnati alone. How is that possible? This claim can be seen on their own website.
I think this is worth investigating. The city is facing a looming budget crisis, yet any hint of cuts in socials services result in claims of impending doom. I think these agencies have a vice grip on the city and are more interested in turning Cincinnati into one large Skid Row. How many homeless are there really, and is the city, county, even Federal and State spending more than needed?
An interesting question, and one that Councilman Jim Tarbell also rises from time to time. So I asked Georgine Getty, the executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, to defend her numbers. Her answer:
Thanks for your question. The National Alliance to End Homelessness used numbers that follow the HUD[20] definition of homelessness, which only includes people living in shelters, on the street, or in places not fit for human habitation, like abandoned buildings, cars etc. We use the Department of Education's definition, which includes these folks and also people who are precariously housed by "doubling up" (staying with other people for a few days or weeks, but not on the lease).
Also, their number is a point in time count for one night. I know their information reads like it's 16,165 for the whole year, but it's not. It's just on any night of the year that many people are homeless. 25,000 is the number of people who will experience homelessness at some point over the course of a year.
Following the stricter HUD definition (not including people who are doubled up), we estimate that there are 1,300 people homeless each night in Cincinnati -- 1100 in shelters and an additional 200 on the street, in cars, etc. Of course, this number is probably low because we have no way of finding everyone staying in cars and we do not check abandoned buildings for safety reasons.
Hope this helps - the number game can be really confusing with homelessness.
--
[19]Mark asked that his full name not be used. "I read enough blogs that I don't want to be on the wrong side of the insults," he wrote. ↩
[20]The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to USA Today, HUD is set to release its own census of homeless numbers shortly, so this isn't the last we've heard of the debate. ↩
Labels: demographics
By Gregory Korte at 3:28 PM 8 comments links to this post
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