Bizgirl,

I guess some candidates are listening to the citizens about the Problems with the plan.

.. include both those with addiction issues AND the mentally ill (studies give 60% to 80% of chronically homeless having mental illness). In fact, if you do your homework, you'll find that a lot of the 'addiction' issues are rooted in mental illness.

I take great exception with Mr. Ownby referring to the mentally ill as "criminals."

I think anyone else who has dealt with mental illness in their family would also take exception to this equivocation of mental illness with criminal status.

Mr. Ownby should formally retract his statement and apologize for it.

Rachel,
There you go again, mixing things up.

Housing the Homeless and Housing the Chronically Homeless are two different issues. The TYP is only working with the Chronically Homeless population that, as you know, in preparation for housing, will not have completed a Detox program, and are not required to be in an intensive Addiction Therapy Program. As you know, according to the TYP, the Chronically Homeless make up only 10-15% of the Total Homeless population in Knoxville.

The remaining 85-90% of the Total Homeless Population are currently not being served by the TYP.

So again, Owenby’s statement is correct, and it seems to be the very thing that is the most concern to Neighborhoods in Knoxville. The plan does not require abstinence, and as a condition of their being offered Housing in a New PSH unit, there are no conditions. This is the basis for the Housing First, “Low Demand” concept.

Sustainability means knowing how and where you are going to find the funding for the Support Services for the PSH. If there is no funding, than this plan will fail.

Most towns have done just this by locating these facilities in industrial areas and areas that the city is trying to reclaim. Knoxville's scattered approach is somewhat scatterbrained. There are ways to do this, but so far no one is willing to move from their base position.

In the case of West Knoxville, one only has to drive the Middlebrook / Cedar Bluff corridor to get ideas. The obvious problem , of course, is that the value of the public asset that would be transferred to the private TYP entity and their heirs would likely be considerably less than a property such as Lakeshore.

in many cases someone's kids or grandparents or brother or sister or mom or dad or aunt or uncle or cousin...etc.

People tend to forget that ALL homeless people are human beings and as such...have moms and dads, may have brothers and sisters or kids...they have families. Sometimes those families have tried to deal with their issues for so long that they can't anymore. Their families have often tried to get help and support for their relatives and time and time again things have gone off track for one reason or another. The families cannot do it all, society has to step up and help. We ALL have a responsibility to our fellow man to help when and where we can, even if our help is only to accept them into our neighborhood in a housing plan like the TYP.

What would you want people to do if the homeless person they were so scared of was you? Or someone you loved, but couldn't take care of? The line between having a home and family and being homeless is thinner than you think, and oftentimes is only one illness away for many, many people...even those in neighborhoods like Sequoyah Hills and Farragut.

Finally, you could have disproved my statement had it been false but you chose the old waste my time strategy instead.

If your statements were true, you'd have no trouble proving them. You can't. So you don't. You choose deflection and dissembling instead.

You say that like it's fact. I dispute it. There are many, many folks involved with the local TYP who are sincerely interested in helping the homeless. I have not always agreed with their implementation methods, but I won't question their motives.

If you are correct then someone needs to step up. I have to give Bob Becker credit though. He stood tall and listened to my concerns after the meeting tonight. One thing that is becoming increasingly clear is that , for better or worse, if anything is going to be done someone needs to start straight talking to people.

For instance, during the course of explaining how two caseworkers per twenty four clients was sufficient it was noted, by a caseworker no less, that there would be three different caseworkers working with the single client that was one of her twenty four. Now the ratio has changed from 1/24 to 3/1. And while I understood what she was saying and was certainly happy that the level of client service was moving in a direction I considered more realistic, this semantics game of "Well that's a different kind of casework" loses both the people primarily concerned with the budget and those concerned with service. There is no credibility once you start playing loose and free with your facts. Like the insurance commercial says, "Even a seven year old knows a lie."

The people at the top Rachael, are concerned about helping themselves and I believe that.

Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (a coalition of homelessness organizations), says neglect of serious mental disability is “more common than not” in a big box. Managers often fill buildings with people who share similar disabilities and assume tenants all have the same needs. Such segregation is still legally defensible, even though the 1999 Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. L.C. held that people should not have to live in segregated places in order to receive treatment. In this environment, it becomes particularly easy to skimp on service spending and to neglect individual needs. If one tenant needs more help than others, the response is not “What else does X need?” but “Does X belong here?”

"The big-box environment also encourages creaming—choosing people who are the easiest to help. Michael Allen, a Washington, D.C.-based civil-rights lawyer formerly with the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, says HUD has encouraged creaming by demanding measurable results in federal homelessness programs, such as tallies of successful graduates who move on to conventional housing. He says property managers pick tenants who are “easiest to serve and [have] the best attitude” and label people with mental disabilities or tendencies to assert their rights as troublemakers. Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director at Bazelon, says many supportive- housing programs impose such rigid behavioral rules on tenants that “you basically can’t have a mental illness” to stay there.
Boden says some programs foster “inherent creaming by understaffing and under-funding the support portion of the program.” Managers don’t have adequate resources to serve the most disabled, so they reject or evict them. He equates this breakdown in care to “a system where the nurse goes out to the emergency room and sees who’s got the least amount of injury and brings them in because there’s no doctors. Does that make the nurse an asshole? I no longer agree that it does. I used to think it did.”

One of my worst fears is that this practice will occur in West Knoxville. This would appear to be the practice our model and the sales pitch given the community is leaning towards. The obvious problem is that once ownership of the facilities are transferred and there is no longer a direct line of culpability and the facilities become nothing more than flophouses for indigents that won't make waves. No one gets help and property values around these projects deteriorate.

By lumping all positions in this discussion into "pro" and "anti" TYP the two most radical factions of this discussion will continue to stalemate the process for all.

Excellent. Now stop lumping me into the "pro" faction.

From the first meeting I attended back in March I made it clear that I felt that if I wasn't adamant about neighborhood issues they would be ignored.

Believe it or not, other neighborhoods have been talking about neighborhood issues and the TYP for quite a bit longer that that. You just weren't paying attention because it wasn't in your neck of the woods.

... that gave us convenants in Knoxville neighborhoods against "selling your house to Negroes or Jews" up until about 50 years ago.

(Actually, I've heard tell some neighborhood covenants recorded at the courthouse still have that language and have never been updated....)

The contradiction of a strict property-rights person is that as an individual, should be allowed to operate a toxic waste dump on my property without the consent of my neighbors, but if a majority of the public (through elected representation) elects to buy a piece of property, then we ALL have to be unanimous in the decision of what we can do with that property, or that the will of a minority of propertyholders should be held above the will of the majority of the community. It's completely illogical.

[And before you go off about the waste dump analogy, I'm using it as an edge case to depict the 'strict property rights' mindset.. if you don't like it, think of all the other crazy but perfectly legal things that I can do on my property that would annoy my neighbors and drive their property value down if I really wanted to, like, oh I dunno... operate a landscaping business with diesel trucks pulling out at 5am?]

Considering the residents of the Southside have fought the Flenniken Project for over 2 1/2 years, and as you know, just received another delay, via MPC's requirement that David Arning go back to MPC and redo the Use On Review for Flenniken.

It seems a bit premature for you to be saying things like "Vestal wasn't able to get Flenniken stopped" and "some parts of town have more power over what goes in their neighborhoods than others".

I believe that your neighbors on the Southside, may disagree with you comments.

The MPC meeting is on the 12th of August. I am sure your neighbors will be happy to see you there, so you can vote as you have stated on this blog several times, and support your neighbors in their fight to stop the Flenniken Project.

Actually a sinkhole making Teaberry unbuildable stopped that project. TYP had the zoning and TYP was ready to roll in. That's why I focused on infrastructure. It's not a question of whether this will happen, it's a question of what we'll get.

I don't mean to sound unconcerned about Knoxville in general. I've worked and played in most parts of town and am looking forward to bikesploring the parts I don't know.

One part of this whole discussion has been very irritating to me though and while we have a little calm I'd like to comment on it.

Our written document, Ten Year Plan for ending chronic homelessness is actually one of my favorite plans that I read. I loved how Dr. Nooe left broad areas open for interpretation and creative implementation. I can't help but wonder what would have happened with a different group of personalities and a different focus of the business aspect of things. Often, the way the semantics of the discussion have occurred it is hard to discern between the plan and the organization.

How have the people of Vestal been communicating their displeasure? I haven't been able to get a read on what the community is thinking. Who is speaking for them and where? When I checked out the site, I found it to be a tweener. I would have preferred more sidewalks, and more clearly defined bicycle lanes, but it's not my neighborhood and the bus service looked decent. I could see problems, but here is the thing, like Teaberry, those problems can be addressed.

I think that perhaps one reason the Kinston Woods opposition seemed so formidable is that we all focused on what we knew and what we believe. Personally speaking, I never worried about homeless people living near me. We have over 600 units of eligible HUD housing within a mile of the neighborhood. Probably double that within 2 miles. It was about the developers, period. Still is.

Finally, Vestal has a legitimate gripe. That area has more section 8 and subsidized housing than other part of town. I'm not convinced that more building projects are the answer to this issue. I can talk to people in Vestal if you wish about my views on civil disobedience and what a citizen's role is in this situation.

I'm not convinced we have power beyond the force of our argument and our will to stand up. Thank you for thinking so though.

This is partly what I mean by political power. Guess which precinct routinely (and by that I mean it almost every election) turns out more voters than anywhere in town - 24Q, Sequoyah Hills.

Guilty as charged. I voted at Downtown West last week and did some looking around. I had some thoughts about solutions for homeless vets and common areas and of course bike trails and sidewalks, streetlights and thoughtful annexation. You know, the normal stuff fifty year old guys think about.

It was a pleasure meeting you and I wish you well on your announced endeavor. I hope you can separate the plan and it's goals from the personalities and money issues.

Bob Fischer