Tent City:
Higgins, Michael
STRUGGLING FOR SHELTER IN PHOENIX MICHAEL HIGGINS THE NEED to cope with the homeless has confronted American cities with a problem as perplexing as Rubik's Cube. A shining star in the economy of...
...Having a safe place to sleep, three meals a day and a place to wash up, will do a lot for these people," Dr...
...They didn't want to clean, cook, or pay utility bills," she said...
...Since the St...
...Stark had spent eight years in Latin America, studying the effects of social and economic upheavals...
...The city enacted stronger laws against vagrancy and public drunkenness...
...Vincent's shelter...
...The Hance administration pledged to assist St...
...IRONICALLY, the homeless squatters inhabiting Tent City, as the largest downtown camp was called, were only a stone's throw away from a pastoral farm scene...
...It's a good choice as far as the weather's concerned, or it's a good choice if they get a job...
...Referring to Tent City, an elderly homeowner asked, "If you can't control them there, how can you do it here...
...but it's a bad choice as far as the help one can get here, which is less than in Minneapolis, Akron, or Detroit...
...Before the St...
...The mayor of Phoenix, Margaret Hance, didn't want Robert Morrill hanging around downtown...
...The first tier was the most basic: the need for an emergency shelter...
...Finding employment was not going to be easy for many of them, even with a rosier economy...
...The food stamp office was four blocks away and the temporary employment agencies were also downtown...
...When heavy rains pelted Phoenix in early February, City Hall granted St...
...Vincent's shelter reaches capacity at 275 visitors, people are still sleeping at Tent City...
...It plans for the construction of more low-income housing, possibly even a farm where people who will never get back into the mainstream would be able to perform simple chores, such as growing food for themselves...
...Even a spokesman for the Salvation Army joined in...
...Only downtown liquor stores highlighted the cheap wines bought by the transients...
...Mike, a Vietnam vet in his twenties, a camp resident who'd left his wife and kid in Idaho while looking for work, said, "If you sit here for awhile, you get to recognize people by their coughs...
...MICHAEL HIGGINS, a native New Yorker now living in Phoenix, works for the city of Phoenix human resources department specializing in tenant advocacy...
...Tent City sat across the street from both St...
...When the St...
...The preponderance, 89 percent, were men...
...The Salvation Army had moved those with children a few weeks before, sensing the danger...
...They line up holding tin trays, not unlike Depression scenes...
...Vincent's in running the shelter, a far cry from the wait and see posture they assumed a couple of months before...
...Vincent De Paul's dining room and the Salvation Army headquarters...
...They weren't courted as were the con-ventioners who sleep a mile away at the Hyatt...
...In fact, beginning in 1981, Phoenix did everything possible to keep people like Morrill or Pope out of its downtown...
...His wife lives back in Mississippi...
...A lean woman whose face radiates both kindness and perseverance, Stark calls it time for government to recognize the severity of the homeless situation and get involved...
...Vincent De Paul Society announced plans to convert a nearby warehouse into a 270-bed shelter, a number of downtown businesses filed complaints with the zoning board in an effort to block the shelter's opening...
...Stark...
...City Councilman Barry Starr called the step the city's first positive one...
...One speaker compared the abandoned lot to a concentration camp and said, "All they need are the ovens...
...They huddle around campfires as the evenings drag on and use fire hydrants for sinks...
...A study sponsored by Arizona State University and South Phoenix Mental Health profiled the city's homeless...
...IT BECAME clear that the homeless preferred to remain downtown...
...Another group of homeless were also early evacuees...
...Vincent's or the Salvation Army...
...The black churches of Phoenix took direct action to ease the plight of the homeless...
...Sensing a no-win situation, the City Council voted the plan down, deciding instead to expedite the approval of St...
...Taking the advice of a City Council-appointed task force which recommended removing the support system of the indigents, the city forced the closing of most of the area's shelters, alcoholic dry docks and residential hotels...
...The third and final tier would be long-term...
...At that time, City Councilman Calvin Goode's authorization of portable toilets in the occupied area were roundly criticized by his fellow City Council members...
...Their numbers increased as the nation's economy worsened...
...Zoning changes and the powers of condemnation were used...
...The city called a meeting to discuss the plan...
...Nearly half the transients had military experience, and a third admitted to daily alcohol use...
...Vincent's shelter...
...City officials were asked who would be liable for property damage caused by transients in the area...
...Job training would be conducted and entitlements applied for...
...Dr...
...A fund was set up to assist the homeless, its goal $225,000...
...The city had to maintain order, even if the care of the indigent might not be its domain...
...Circus tents would be set up to house them on city property...
...A Salvation Army spokesman lost the crowd when he assured them the camp would be something they would be proud of...
...An anthropologist, Dr...
...It took awhile for the Mayor and her City Council to get used to their poor visitors...
...Flyers were delivered to neighboring homes the day before the meeting and the whole neighborhood, mostly black, showed up...
...Vincent's the right to open the shelter on a temporary basis, weeks before the scheduled zoning decision...
...Vincent De Paul shelter, now officially opened, was a hub of homeless activities...
...The study concluded that the homeless were "a very heterogeneous group . . . they don't fit into one or two pigeonholes...
...Local churches intensified their help...
...Mayor Hance and the City Council realized that changes were going to have to be made...
...Phoenix's homeless situation didn't look as bleak anymore...
...Participants would be selected only after an evaluation by either St...
...A little less than a quarter of the homeless were classified as C.M.I.s (chronically mentally ill), while 38 percent were physically disabled...
...Vincent De Paul shelter...
...The center of the storm, the St...
...63 percent were white, with a median age of thirty-five...
...High grass and blue skys provided the backdrop as contented pigs sipped from a stream the transients saw daily...
...A local community college scheduled courses in reading, writing, and job interview training for the homeless, to be held at the shelter...
...These families were provided with motel rooms, at the Salvation Army's expense...
...It was a reaction to the deteriorating conditions at Tent City, many of whose residents were in no condition to weather heavy rains...
...Louisa Stark was named director of St...
...Episcopal Bishop Joseph Heistand headed a committee of church leaders seeking assistance...
...Tent City was located on Salvation Army property...
...A permit was granted, over the objection of local businessmen...
...They sleep in tents, sometimes made of cardboard, often just plastic garbage bags resting on sticks...
...When Phoenix forced the closing of its downtown residential hotels, "flophouses," or rooming houses, as they may be called, they dislocated many elderly men, the majority of whom relied on their monthly Social Security checks as their sole income...
...Churches also began signing up for an interdenominational program, tentatively called Adopt a Person...
...Fearing a much delayed zoning approval, city officials and the Salvation Army joined forces in a plan to transport the homeless to a vacant lot near a landfill in south Phoenix...
...Mostly young people, serious about finding employment and avoiding violence, this group called their new camp, located under the Maricopa Freeway, Camp Swappy...
...It was a drawing on the wall of Farmer John Meats, a neighboring business less than thrilled with the onslaught of transients in the area...
...These hotels, while not attractive to most of us, served a purpose for many of the elderly men who resided there," according to Dr...
...Morrill, Pope and as many as six hundred other homeless people have taken refuge in a squatter's block just a brisk five-minute walk from City Hall...
...The chronically mentally ill could be placed in halfway houses...
...Using donated food and an oversized steel kettle, Pope cooks nightly dinners eaten by as many as 200 other indigents...
...Many of them come to Phoenix because they lost their jobs, and there are more jobs here than in Detroit or Akron...
...The folks there still cough a lot...
...They were happy with a room and access to a communal day room...
...Meanwhile, the federal government announced a plan which would allow cities like Phoenix the free use of vacant federal buildings as shelters for the homeless...
...Her plans for a rejuvenated downtown didn't include Tom Pope and his small family either...
...Both survived but it was obvious that a rowdier atmosphere was prevailing and something would have to be done...
...Jill Holcomb, an ex-teacher who had previously run a temporary employment agency in Denver, started a jobs program in the center...
...Stark said...
...Confident that something could be done for all the area's indigents, Stark, through her eloquent appeals for understanding in the plight of the homeless, has received recognition as a national spokesperson for the cause...
...Why should the city spend $300 for toilets, they'd objected...
...The Catholic diocese stood firmly behind the St...
...Then one night, two men were shot at the camp after a late-night dispute...
...His last steady job was as an attendant at a gas station in Riverside, California, before it burned down...
...Tent City Half the transients were found to be from the greater Southwestern region...
...Pre-screened members of the homeless community would be provided with room and board in the homes of church members during their difficult period of re-entry into the job market...
...As the weeks rolled by, the situation at Tent City became more dangerous...
...Finally, the blood banks, often their only employer when times were bad, had downtown locations...
...A shining star in the economy of the Southwest, Phoenix, Arizona, has been forced to confront the problem head on...
...This seems to be happening...
...Vincent's shelter opened, an ill-fated attempt to move the transients from Tent City had backfired...
...How would they like it if we put a couple of toilets on the steps of City Hall...
...In Arizona, a powerful state legislator pushed through a plan to open a second shelter...
...Pope, an ex-used-car salesman from Banning, California, sleeps under the stars every night, rising early to make applications at places like the dog track, the state fair and restaurants, but to no avail...
...Over fifty arrests were made during January, mostly for public drunkenness and disturbing the peace...
...The transients didn't disappear, however...
...She helped form a consortium of thirty-five social agencies, religious groups, and government agencies which developed a three-tier model to aid the homeless...
...Two years ago the New York City-based Coalition for the Homeless arranged for her to spearhead an effort to help the homeless of Phoenix...
...Church members brought food and clothing to residents of Tent City and Camp Swappy on an almost daily basis...
...At a City Council hearing the following day, even the homeless spoke against the plan...
...Robert Morrill is 25...
...Drugs did not seem to be a major problem...
...Only now, the rest of the city hears them...
...The second tier would be geared to six-month occupancies...
...Louisa Stark, one of the study's authors, cites economics as the main cause of the current homelessness...
...Many of the older men downtown didn't want an apartment or a house...
...This "overflow" shelter, to be staffed by the Salvation Army, would be located on state property...
Vol. 110 • September 1983 • No. 16
