As officials clarify plan, debate shifts from broad questions to shelter’s details
The debate over a controversial City Council effort to deal with the city’s homeless shifted Tuesday from talk of eviction and Constitutional rights to nurses and fans as officials hoped to clarify what their plan entailed.
Councilman Cameron Runyan, who wrote the plan, said at a Tuesday night meeting that the city would not force the city’s homeless population into an emergency shelter, an interpretation that garnered heated debate and national media attention.
Council voted to rescind the Aug. 13 vote that was mired in confusion and spurred the outcry. It also decided to delay the shelter’s opening date to Sept. 24.
Instead of pushing the homeless out, Rev. Jimmy Jones of Christ Central Ministries, which will run the shelter, said the plan would give officials time to devise a long-term fix by opening the city’s winter shelter earlier in the year and keeping it open 24 hours.
“If you are on the streets of this city,” Jones said with outstretched arms, “we care enough about you that we will give you food and shelter until we can get a long-term plan.”
But the shift didn’t quiet debate at the standing-room only meeting, as dozens of people, many wearing burlap patches to show support for the homeless, signed up to speak during a comment period that stretched for hours.
They said they were concerned that plans to get the shelter ready for 24-hour residents didn’t include air conditioning or medical staff, that plans for a kitchen weren’t set and that the shelter hopes to house the homeless for no longer than a week at a time.
Jones said that the shelter would install fans, because air conditioning units would prove too costly — more than $100,000 — and that the fans would reduce the temperature inside by 10 to 15 degrees. Whether the fans were enough would prove a sticky point.
“I think they’d appreciate it,” Jones said of the homeless living on the street.
“He’s wrong,” the crowd murmured back.
Jones conceded the point. “Maybe not.”
Even Jones, a key player in the plan, expressed some concern about the project.
He grew frustrated because the list of expectations for the shelter has grown, but the city’s contribution — $500,000 — has not. Christ Central Ministries is picking up the balance, estimated at about $1.2 million.
Jones told council members that Christ Central’s involvement was an effort to balance fulfilling short-term needs and taking time to devise a long-term solution.
“I would not want to run the winter shelter just to run the winter shelter,” Jones said.
Interim police Chief Ruben Santiago said that the police department would keep “an obvious presence” in the area around the shelter but would not need to hire more officers to do so.
Santiago said that violent crime is down 33 percent this year in the department’s downtown sector, and property crime is down about 8 percent. Still, the city faces an issue of perception, he said — a sense that crime is prevalent and the homeless are dangerous.
The perception issue is one of the many layers of Columbia’s years-old homelessness problem — from affordable housing to downtown restrooms — that the city will seek to resolve and, officials caution, that its current plan won’t.
“The winter shelter won’t solve everything,” Jones said, “but it gives us a starting point.”