NEWS - MAINSTREET HOMELESS CENTER OPENS TODAY (Columbia, SC)

Monday, Jun. 13, 2011

Main Street homeless center opens today

But the real work begins Wednesday, when the first homeless clients arrive

By ADAM BEAM

Transitions, Main Street’s $15 million privately paid for homeless shelter, officially opens today after surviving three years of lawsuits, fundraising and politics.
It will have all the standard homeless services, including an emergency overnight shelter, counselors and a long-term program designed to find people jobs and a permanent place to stay.
But two services make Transitions unique to the Midlands: a day center and respite car

The day center will open first, officially accepting clients Wednesday. It’s a large room with a dining area, couches and computers. People can take showers, do laundry and get help with resumes or make appointments to see if they qualify for things like veterans or disability benefits.

“Or they can just hang out … out of the heat,” said Larry Arney, executive director of the Midlands Housing Alliance, the nonprofit organization of business, church and other community leaders that will operate Transitions.

Respite care will open sometime over the summer.

State law prevents hospitals from discharging patients if they don’t have a place to stay. So many patients who are homeless end up staying in the hospital, racking up $2,000 a day in charges the hospital has to absorb, according to Greg Gattman, vice president of operations for Palmetto Health.

Gattman said the hospital system has between 35 and 40 homeless patients every month it cannot discharge.
With respite care, Transitions will provide a place for these patients to be discharged, where they can be monitored by a nurse and reminded to take medications.

Gattman said Transitions’ respite care will be the only one of its kind in the Midlands.
“Respite is a safe place to transition these patients, to let them continue to get their medical needs met on an outpatient basis and let them stay some place while they continue their recovery,” he said. “We can use that hospital bed for somebody who needs that acute care.”
Columbia has always had multiple organizations that give homeless people a place to sleep at night.
But the city hasn’t had a homeless day center in at least 10 years, when the Oliver Gospel Mission shut down its day center because “the place kind of turned into a flophouse,” said Wayne Fields, the mission’s executive director.
As a result, public libraries have become the de facto day center for Columbia’s homeless, including Bryant King, who visited the Richland County Public Library’s main branch on Assembly Street Monday afternoon to use the computer.
“If I can get a job and a motel room, that’s all I need,” he said. “I’ll take the simplest thing I can get.”
But some nearby neighborhood residents see the day center as a problem, not a solution.
The homeless can come and go as they please at the day center, a concern to some that it will turn their neighborhood streets into a homeless highway.
“As the person who runs the Neighborhood Watch in Elmwood Park, we have a lot of traffic and a lot of burglary problems. With the new homeless people coming, I can’t say that it is going to improve,” said Peter Korper, the former Elmwood Park neighborhood association president who filed a lawsuit to stop the alliance from building the homeless center. “It’s just in the wrong place. Other cities laugh at us. What are we doing putting a homeless center in the middle of the state capital?”
But the homeless center doesn’t appear to be hurting Main Street.
Mast General Store opened last month at Main and Taylor streets. Some Lowcountry developers have purchased and are refurbishing 1556 Main St., and some Myrtle Beach restaurateurs plan to open a Brazilian Steak House in the Kress Building, across from the Columbia Museum of Art.
Fred Martin, vice president of operations for Mast General Store, said the company’s Asheville store is surrounded by homeless service providers.
“In downtown urban settings, you have to provide service for all who live in the area, and homeless people do live in the urban area,” he said. “I think that everybody can get along together, and I think that’s the philosophy of Mast. We are a community together, and we have to help each other.”
Transitions was built largely with private dollars, but a portion of its operating expenses, estimated to be just over $2 million a year, will include some public money.
Columbia City Council gave the Midlands Housing Alliance $250,000 this budget year, and plans to give another $250,000 next budget year, which begins July 1. The alliance will use the money for security, including running criminal background checks.
“The building will open with no long-term debt, which we always said was really paramount to success because we don’t have a dedicated funding source,” Arney said. “We have been, I think, kind of remarkably successful in getting support out of local governments, which has been one of our big challenges in our campaign.”
Even more remarkable is that the alliance received money from Columbia City Council, which in 2008 tried to persuade the alliance to move its homeless shelter to some city-owned property by the river. The alliance rejected the offer, and in response the city declined to contribute to the building campaign.
In addition to Columbia, the Midlands Housing Alliance has received financial commitments from Richland and Lexington counties and the city of West Columbia. The alliance has asked Cayce City Council for money, but that has not been approved.
Arney said public money makes up about a third of the center’s annual operating budget.
Fields, director of the Oliver Gospel Mission, said Columbia’s homeless service community has embraced Transitions and hopes it succeeds.
But he noted Transitions is a new facility with a new staff that is about to discover the challenges of reaching the homeless.
“They have their operational challenges ahead of them. … You can have something really good that’s going on, but it can really get abused, and I think the staff there will, they will learn that,” Fields said. “We haven’t figured it all out. We’ve learned some things along the way. It’s a big pie, and there are some pieces they are going to address that we’re not. So we’re really thankful this thing is going to happen.”

NEWS - ECONOMY SQUEEZES 'FAMILY SHELTER' (Columbia, SC)

Monday, Jun. 13, 2011

Economy squeezes Family Shelter

By BERTRAM RANTIN -  

The Family Shelter’s 30-year tradition of serving transitional homeless families is being threatened as an increasingly tight economy is straining the residential facility’s ability to balance its books.
Agency leaders say the landmark homeless shelter needs to raise $100,000 by the end of the year or it might have to turn away families who don’t have a place to live.
The shelter provides temporary housing for those who have lost their homes for various reasons and offers referral services for such things as job searches and counseling, all designed to get families back into the mainstream. Last year the shelter helped 140 families but saw its donations drop significantly.

“We started to really worry when donations were down for the holiday season last year,” Family Shelter executive director Jonathan Artz said. “Every year we see ups and downs with donations to some degree, but ending 2010 with a deficit meant that 2011 would be even more difficult.”
Artz said the agency typically uses its lines of credit to make it through the summer months, when giving is lower. That money is paid back when donations come in during the holiday season, a practice followed by many other nonprofits.
But the slower than normal holiday has left the Family Shelter’s financial reserves seriously depleted. Artz said $100,000 is what the agency needs to pay back the lines of credit, establish a one-month operating reserve and meet its current financial obligations.
“We need to raise at least half of this in the next three months to be able to continue to provide emergency food and shelter to homeless families with children,” Artz said. “We need to raise all of it by the end of the year if we are going to be able to ensure that Family Shelter continues to be a resource in the community for the long-term future.”
The agency has taken some significant cost-cutting steps, he said, including reducing staff, renegotiating service contracts and lowering its food budget. Employees also have been required to contribute more toward their insurance premiums.
“Of course, we always use volunteers and donated goods as well to keep our expenses down,” Artz said. “The majority of our yardwork has always been done by volunteers.”
Artz said he realizes many families who haven’t lost their homes are facing financial struggles and may find it hard to give. “With the economic trouble of the past few years, many people are more focused on their own immediate situation right now rather than making a donation,” he said.
And he understands that many other service agencies are facing the same challenges. “I think that people in Columbia are by nature very generous, but there are so many worthy causes,” he said. “So even though we work together in the nonprofit community and support each other, to some degree we are in competition for our survival.”
That, he said, makes it all the more important that the agency use its resources wisely and work with other groups that provide supporting services.
For example, Artz explained that when a family comes to Family Shelter, they receive clothing and bus tickets from Cooperative Ministry and food purchased at a discount from Harvest Hope Food Bank, while their children are enrolled in the afterschool program at St. Lawrence Place or in daycare at Children’s Garden.
“It’s really a team effort, and it should be,” Artz said.
In addition to emergency housing, the Family Shelter’s services include job and housing searches, rental assistance, counseling and child care assistance. Last year the agency received more than 1,000 requests for assistance.
“The need for emergency shelter for homeless families with children in Columbia is enormous,” Artz said. “There really aren’t enough resources available for the children and parents in our community who need it most.”

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i never had an opportunity to live here. but i have had to call too see if they had room for a woman and a child. there wasnt any, and my son and i eventually ended up at HANNA HOUSE (sumpter st, columbia, SC).
my best freind sandy (tersea Sandy Elledge-Knapp) actually has has a few stints in this facility, and when she had her daughter Heather, she was residing there. i felt compassion for her situation, with a new baby and living in a shelter, and having to try to make ends meet, i offered her a bedroom in my duplex.
i was pregnant at the time, the year: 1994.
heather was just a few months old.
daniel hadnt even been born, and it would eventually be, 7 years more before id ever have to rely on a system to help me get back on my feet.
i have a very high respect for shelters, and the help they offer thse who are sincere in seeking out a way to manage a life thats spiraled out of control.
it saddens me, that our economy is so bad that those who REALLY need the help, may not end up getting it because the funds of people, and donations arnt as available.

be ever thankful, week to week, pay check-to paycheck, your not in the shoes of those who have to suffer even harder than i ever had too being homeless....one donation away from closing the doors to those who need help.

MICHELLE