While Little Rock is working with nonprofit partners on permanent housing solutions to address homelessness, advocates for the men and women living without a roof over their heads are brainstorming quick fixes to help those people now.
City code enforcement officers have posted eviction notices at several homeless camps in response to complaints this year. Officials said they haven't kept a tally of the exact number of camps at which notices were posted.
Initially, the notices to vacate property said the camps' occupants had five days to move somewhere else.
Dozens of homeless people and their advocates protested the evictions with calls and emails to city officials and a gathering on the steps of City Hall.
Aaron Reddin, executive director of homeless outreach with charity organization The Van, led the protest effort and persuaded the city to extend the time period occupants have to leave camps to seven days.
Reddin also negotiated a compromise under which city officials will not evict people from a camp if they get a signed note from the property owner saying the homeless people have permission to stay there.
While Reddin is appreciative of those steps, he's not fully satisfied.
"I'm trying to put something together seriously that will allow everyone at minimum to exist in our community," he said at a recent meeting of the Arkansas Homeless Coalition, at which he was elected co-chairman. "That's a starting point. This calendar year, we have attempted to relocate over 40-something people. These are real people with real lives doing real things. They live a different way than most of us do for whatever reason."
"In the immediate, there's got to be somewhere people can go and exist without fear of having to pack up their camp and move it somewhere in seven days," Reddin said.
Ideas thrown around during the coalition meeting were to get a property owner to donate land for use as a "sanctuary camp site" for the homeless.
Volunteers would need to commit to helping keep the area clean, such as mowing grass and picking up and disposing of trash. One idea was to get an agreement with the city to have its Waste Management service provide trash relief at designated sites.
Mayor Mark Stodola said he's open to hearing the group's ideas, but that creation of a singular tent city won't solve the citywide issue of homelessness.
"I think the issue is going to be cleanliness, and if you read about these things, there's got to be a discipline that is instilled in anybody that is there on a semi-permanent basis," Stodola said. "I'm curious to hear more about that, but I'm interested to hear how many of our truly homeless population out here in the woods really want to go to a particular location to use as a base camp. I suspect there will be some that will, but I also suspect there will be a lot of people who for whatever reason don't want to have to go to that location, are fearful to go, or don't want to be around that many people."
Advocates have said some people without homes need to stay in certain areas of town so they are able to get to work or other nearby services.
Depaul USA, the nonprofit that runs the city's Jericho Way Homeless Day Resource Center, has had a goal of adding a housing component to Jericho Way since taking over management in 2015.
Today, it is a little closer to that goal.
Depaul has secured a grant to retain Little Rock-based Rogue Architecture to design two duplexes that would each consist of two 500-square-foot units with a combined living and kitchen area, a full bath and a bedroom. Each unit would cost $50,000 to build, for a total of $200,000.
The agency already has some of the funding but would need to raise the rest.
"The idea would be, these would be very attractive homes that anyone would be proud to live in," said Chuck Levesque, president and executive director of Depaul USA.
Depaul also received a $200,000 gift from private donors -- a Little Rock couple -- to renovate Jericho Way's basement area to build showers, toilets and sinks and to relocate the laundry facilities so that all of the center's hygiene services are located in a central area. The money also will help convert two upstairs bathrooms into office space and put air conditioning in the kitchen.
The city is working with Depaul to find land for the permanent housing. Stodola said the city has surveyed vacant land around Jericho Way that the city has liens on.
"We are looking at going in there, foreclosing on our liens, acquiring the property and doing permanent housing over there," Stodola said.
The city also sent Assistant City Manager James Jones and Homeless Services Advocate Chris Porter to Denver to learn what that city is doing to aid its homeless population.
"They have a more holistic approach of how they deal with the homeless. They are sensitive to a variety of issues we apparently have been kind of overlooking," Stodola said of Denver.
Denver's homeless population is said to have risen in recent years. Flocks of people relocated to Colorado after a state law made recreational marijuana legal there. Many of them didn't have jobs or housing lined up.
Denver calculated its "homeless-related" costs in 2016 to be almost $48 million. Officials there said they placed 1,000 homeless people in housing in 2015 and 2016, built 250 homeless housing units and added shelter beds. The city also established a 10-year, $150 million affordable housing fund to create or rehabilitate 6,000 units.
Little Rock Vice Mayor and Ward 3 City Director Kathy Webb is also working with advocates on the issue of homelessness. She's also the executive director of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. She recently visited Austin, Texas, where there's a central website that lists the times and dates where there will be feedings for the homeless -- something she said Little Rock could benefit from.
"We have all these groups here and they are all doing their own thing and sometimes tripping over each other. People have not been as collaborative as one would hope they would be," Webb said.
She wants to organize an August trip for homeless advocates and city leaders to visit an Austin community where 27 acres was donated as a village for the homeless. It has grown to 80 tenants -- some living in RVs, others in tiny houses, and some in hard-sided tents.
There's an art study and blacksmith shop on location. Many of the tenants sell their work, because they have to pay rent.
"I'd like to see us look into this down the road," Webb said. "I also think Aaron has a point -- if we could find some land right now where we could have some sort of tented area where people could live and it would be safe, I'd like to see that happen."
Metro on 03/12/2017