In many instances, when some entity wants to put something in a neighborhood, there's a certain amount of NIMBY -- not in my backyard -- reaction. Someone wants to do hair in a one-chair salon in their garage, and some neighbor will likely oppose it. If nothing else, it's ugh, the traffic.
The proposal to put a homeless shelter in a neighborhood, however, is quite a bit more complicated.
Let's first consider the proposal's journey through the city government process. The structure is a fourplex apartment at 304 W. 16th Ave. The proponents of the proposal say it is not a homeless shelter but a shelter for people who are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless. We will let the reader parse that.
Anyway, the proposal went before the Planning Commission in late September and was turned down by a tie vote of 3-3. The matter was then sent to the Pine Bluff City Council last month, and the council sent it back to the commission for further review. The commission did that and then voted unanimously to deny the request.
The Economic and Community Development office in Pine Bluff, which is sponsoring the proposal, apparently not willing to take no for an answer, has now appealed the measure back to the City Council once again, and the next council meeting is this coming Monday.
As all of this has been going on, people who live around the proposed site of the apartment complex have been organizing, signing petitions and making their thoughts known. In short, they believe the creation of a shelter for the homeless would not be good for the neighborhood.
The crux is that the neighborhood where the shelter would be located is already on the edge between making it and not. We certainly understand that concept, and we imagine other Pine Bluff residents do as well.
One of the leaders in the fight against the shelter is Chris Warrior, who, with his sister, Pamela Williams, has been vocal in his objections. Warrior said there is a fear that such a shelter would lead to a rise in transient traffic through the area, an increase in drug dealing, prostitution and other criminal activity, as reported by the Pine Bluff Commercial's Dale Ellis.
"We have youth activities in our neighborhood, we have block parties, the whole nine yards," Warrior told members of the council's Development and Planning Committee recently. "For homeless shelters like this, they have a 400-yard radius that everybody's going to have problems, stealing, robberies, people breaking in, that's from homeless shelters. We're here to say please don't allow this to happen to our neighborhood."
Matthew Pate, who holds a doctoral degree in criminology and who has lived for many years in the area where the shelter would go, said homeless shelters rarely do anything positive for neighborhoods, especially those that are already unstable, which this one is.
Pate said that in the 25 years since he moved into the neighborhood, it has declined significantly.
"There are some studies that show dramatic increases in property crime, drug crime, vice-type crimes and even some violent crimes when homeless shelters are placed in such predominantly residential neighborhoods," Pate said.
The thing is, those who spoke against the proposed shelter all said they were for helping people who might need to live in such a shelter.
"Society does have a moral obligation to help people who are the most vulnerable among us," Pate said. "However, the location that they've chosen for this particular shelter further imperils a neighborhood that is already teetering on the brink of absolute dysfunction."
Council member Joni Alexander, who also lives in the area, put it succinctly.
"I'm totally against it," she said. "Community Development is always talking about how they want community input. Well, the community, the people in this neighborhood, are telling you we don't want it here."
The larger question is then, how does society help these people? If not in this neighborhood, where? Maybe the answer is in size and not location. Perhaps a single-family dwelling would be more acceptable than a fourplex. And if that was workable, why not sprinkle them around in all neighborhoods, including the affluent ones? We all have a responsibility to help others, and that responsibility should not be less for those in more expensive neighborhoods. If anything, the responsibility is greater there.
For this moment and this argument, however, one has to consider the effort by these neighbors to oppose the shelter. The fact that they are coordinated in their response is a good indicator that they are the glue in their neighborhood and they know whereof they speak. And it is our belief that the city should listen. No one is going to benefit if, by locating this shelter in this neighborhood, the city accelerates the decline of an area where neighbors are trying valiantly to save it.