County officials form task force to seek alternative home for low-barrier homeless center

SOUTH BEND — Armed with their own list of alternative sites, St. Joseph County commissioners announced Wednesday that they’re forming a task force to suggest another place to put a low-barrier homeless intake center — away from the land on the city’s northwest side that they’ve been opposing.

Commissioner Derek Dieter, who’d lead the task force, called on the city of South Bend’s Redevelopment Commission to delay its vote Thursday on whether or not to purchase a lot in the 3000 block of Bendix Drive for the intake center.

Give them another 30 to 45 days, Dieter said. The task force would give feedback on about 20 sites that he has in mind, some of them jotted down in his notebook, and possibly suggest other sites.

But on Thursday the city's Redevelopment Commission went ahead and voted 4-1 to purchase the land. However, this doesn't guarantee that the city will use this particular site for a homeless center.

Redevelopment Commission on Thursday: Amid mixed feelings, South Bend to vote on proposed site for low-barrier homeless shelter

At the same press conference Wednesday in the County-City Building, businessman Kevin Smith offered to use enFocus, the consulting group he’d helped to found, to do the long work — for five years, even — of bringing people together so they see both the need for low-barrier services as well as the social issues that drive homelessness.

This, he said, springs from the strong, “divisive” comments — both for and against the Bendix site — that he heard in a public hearing that stretched on for three hours Tuesday at LaSalle Academy.

The community, he said, is now in a “reactive” state, and he wants to shift it to become “proactive.”

“My goal is to treat everybody with respect,” Smith said. “I believe it is completely solvable. … Let’s pull us together and combine the community into a positive effort.”

Dieter and county commissioners President Carl Baxmeyer said they were seizing on South Bend Mayor James Mueller’s comment that, even if the city buys the Bendix site — paying the South Bend school district $277,750 for it — the city would still consider other options, too.

"It doesn't mean we're no longer open to alternative sites," Mueller had said earlier Wednesday. "We're going to run down and make sure we find the best site possible for this critical service in our community."

“The City is glad to hear county officials acknowledge the need for low barrier homeless services in our community and would welcome back a County-City partnership that existed until last year,” city spokeswoman Allison Zeithammer replied by email Wednesday after The Tribune asked if the city would welcome the task force’s input and whether the Redevelopment Commission would move ahead with its vote Thursday. “We urgently need a site and cannot delay forward motion.”

The Catholic-based Our Lady of the Road would run the 80-bed New Day Intake Center.

Republican county council members Amy Drake and Joe Thomas would be part of the task force, along with council Democrat Rafael Morton and South Bend Regional Chamber CEO Jeff Rea. Dieter said he’s reached out to a couple of members of the South Bend Common Council, too, along with others and expects to announce other new members on Monday.

Dieter and Drake called it a “bipartisan” effort.

Drake has denounced the low-barrier model, which houses the homeless even as they carry on drug or alcohol addictions. The idea is to first keep them alive, with services directly on hand to help them toward sobriety and recovery.

Would she even agree to another site?

“I’m always hopeful we find another solution,” she said, hoping that another model surfaces.

While she understands a desire “to be more gentle with the rules,” she also doesn’t believe in the way Motels4Now, which the center would replace, currently operates.

“If you’re on drugs, what incentive do you have to use wraparound services?” she asked. “I think it creates a bigger homeless problem.”

Dieter and Baxmeyer pointed to vacant, county-owned land just east of the Juvenile Justice Center and north of Ivy Tech Community College that they’d offered for the intake center. The city wasn’t interested.

Zeithammer said that site wouldn’t “deconcentrate services.” It’s close to other homeless shelters and social services for people living on the streets.

Also, she said that the county’s site is behind a center for at-risk youth and across the street from the Boys and Girls Club and Success Academy, estimating them at 300 feet away. It's also 600 feet from Southeast Neighborhood Park and small businesses. By contract, she said, the Bendix site is about 600 feet from Boland Park, 2,100 feet from Corpus Christi School and 2,200 feet from Growing Kids Learning Center.

“We hope the County’s process moves swiftly, and the County Commissioners reconsider County-owned sites like Portage Manor,” Zeithammer added in her email.

But Dieter quickly said that he’d rather avoid the kind of homeless encampments that he’d worked to clean up in recent years in the woods near Portage Manor.

Although Smith said he would get the five-year process with enFocus started, he said he hopes to find supporters from the private sector to help pay for this avenue for community understanding along the way.

"This is a social problem that won’t go away,” Smith said. “This discussion is just starting.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: County officials start task force for alternative homeless center site