CONWAY -- There is little dispute that Conway needs another homeless shelter, but few businesses or residents, if any, seem to want one in their backyard.
In July 2015, a proposal to put a shelter at the site of the former Second Baptist Church at Harkrider and Polk streets in downtown Conway died for lack of a motion when the plan went before the City Council.
Among the opponents then was businessman George Covington, formerly a longtime president of the Conway Downtown Partnership.
"Let's face it, this could be the kiss of death for Conway," Covington told aldermen, according to an article at the time in the Log Cabin Democrat newspaper.
More than two years later, the issue arose again in a heavily attended City Council meeting Sept. 12. The nonprofit charitable group Soul Food Cafe asked to rezone property on South Donaghey Avenue near homes and an elementary school for a homeless shelter. A Soul Food Cafe board member has since withdrawn the proposal.
"We would rather withdraw this request and go back to the drawing board on where this shelter needs to be rather than cause this much dissension and fighting," board member David Hogue said later. "We need to ... make peace with the neighborhood and the city."
"Because we withdrew that request, we are desperately seeking somebody in town or several hundred people in town to [provide] some property or some money to help us establish an emergency shelter for Conway," Hogue said.
"The biggest problem is that nobody wants it right in their backyard whether it's businesses or residences," Hogue said. "I'm not criticizing anybody for not liking the ideas, but ... give us another option. ... Give us some constructive help instead of just opposing our efforts."
Ideally, a shelter should be in an easily accessible area since some homeless people do not own vehicles and Conway doesn't have public transportation.
"We absolutely have a homeless issue," said Mayor Bart Castleberry, who said he's talked with other mayors around the state and it's a problem "not just in Conway."
Castleberry said a task force, the City Council and he are looking for a suitable location for a shelter.
He said the city also is going to look at the possibility of using community development block grants to help address the problem in 2018. This year's grant money has been spent.
Peter Staiger, who lives near the most recently proposed site and whose children attend the nearby school, said he couldn't believe that location was even considered.
With all these [vacant] hotels in the area, he said, the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce and city officials could come up with "a great remedy."
"I've been homeless. I know what it's like. ... I sympathize," Staiger said. "But I also know for a fact that it takes one con man to harm a child."
Conway has some homeless shelters. The best known is Bethlehem House, but it is a nonemergency shelter, where people stay for weeks or longer. It does not take people for just one night.
"If somebody's house is flooded and they need one night and then don't have a hotel [room] or whatever, we don't have that available in this town," Hogue said. "If someone is just passing through and they don't have a place to stay" or if a tornado ruins someone's house but the damage isn't widespread enough to turn one of the city's sports centers into temporary shelters, then "we don't have a place."
A shelter such as the one Soul Food Cafe hopes to establish would be an emergency shelter for those in immediate need of a place to stay -- for those "people who say, 'I can't see any further in my life than tonight or tomorrow night,'" Hogue explained.
Established 25 years ago, Bethlehem House provides shelter to men, women and children. About four years ago, it moved into a new building in downtown Conway.
"We did not have any opposition at that time," said its executive director, Judi Lively.
Bethlehem House also offers a nightly meal for anyone who's hungry.
Lively said the facility has room for 40 people.
"While we may not be exactly at capacity, we are always in the process of interviewing for the beds that are open," she said in an email.
"There is definitely a need for an emergency shelter in Conway," Lively said.
She said the shelter identified 85 unsheltered individuals during an annual count earlier this year.
"And, we know those counts are low," she said. "Many people living without shelter do not want to be identified."
Further, she said, "There were just as many homeless individuals that are sheltered at local shelters."
Lively heads the city's Homeless Task Force, which plans to meet with the City Council "in the near future."
"People are afraid of what we don't know. And generally we don't know the homeless," Lively said.
"There is a general belief they are all drug addicts or mentally ill. And, some of them are," she said. "But there are also people who've fallen on bad times, gone through a divorce or an illness and have become homeless as a result. And, of course I believe everyone deserves another chance."
On Tuesday, outside First Church of the Nazarene near downtown Conway, Soul Food Cafe handed out boxes of food -- browning bananas, packaged salads and much more -- to the needy. The church also opened its doors to hundreds of people who lined up for a weekly hot lunch. Some were young; some old. One man wore a T-shirt that read, "Army." He stood but appeared to have only parts of both legs.
It's not known how many of the 308 hot meals served the previous week went to homeless people, but some did, said Rick Harvey, director of Soul Food Cafe.
Among those there this week was Carolyn Pfaus, 52. She lives in a tent near a Conway business with her husband and their 14-year-old pit bull. She said they'd had the dog since it was 3 weeks old and are "not getting rid of him" even though she doesn't know of a local shelter that will accept a pet.
She quickly ate a hamburger and other food. She paused to bow her head during grace and said, "Amen."
She and her husband were managing some small apartments when they lost their jobs. "This [will be] my third winter" to be homeless, she said. They've been able to find only occasional odd jobs.
"All my family's gone. My mom and dad passed away, and my brother was killed in Iraq," she said.
She got to the church Tuesday in a Soul Food Cafe van. She picks up some food to take back to the place she now calls home, and one of the mission's volunteers keeps perishable food for her in a refrigerator. A fast-food eatery near her home gives her occasional free meals if she hasn't made enough money panhandling that day to buy it or if someone hasn't given her a gift card to the eatery.
"People are cruel sometime," she said. "They'll say, 'Get a job,'" but don't know how hard it is for someone her age to get one.
She's tried and still tries, she said.
"I don't choose to be homeless," she said. "You're all one paycheck away from being in my shoes."
One resident working on the homeless problem is Phillip Fletcher, who founded City of Hope Outreach, a nonprofit ministry that runs a small house where up to six men can live. The organization hopes to open a home for women as well.
Fletcher said he is surprised that a city with such a "high concentration of churches" has moved so slowly toward a solution.
"I would expect that, based on the teachings of Jesus, this would be a no-brainer, that those who attend those places ... would have an eagerness and a willingness to find a solution," he said. "But [that] does not appear to on face value" be the case.
"This compassionate city has to come together" to start another shelter, Fletcher said. "It didn't happen downtown because businesses didn't want it." It didn't happen in a residential area because residents didn't want it. "All of us are going to have to give up something to benefit another group of people."
"The City Council needs to demonstrate some leadership and put forth some vision and guidance on what are appropriate facilities to open" to the homeless, Fletcher said.
State Desk on 09/28/2017