Scottsdale's homeless program at hotel 'wasn't an issue until it was an issue.' What are opponents' concerns?
An effort in Scottsdale to house the homeless has faced backlash from both residents and officials since city councilmembers approved it last month, but the pushback is largely based on a misunderstanding of how the program actually works, according to a review by The Arizona Republic.
The current "bridge housing" initiative began last fall when Scottsdale used COVID-19 relief cash to rent out 10 rooms at a hotel in McCormick Ranch. Single-parent families and seniors who were either homeless or would have become homeless without help could stay there for up to four months, giving them time to find housing elsewhere.
The program can serve as many as 120 people each year and staffers said that more than 80% of the participants transition to a more permanent housing situation by the time they leave the hotel, which is why the initiative has been widely considered a success for those who are familiar with it.
But widespread support ceased on June 27 when Scottsdale accepted a $940,000 state grant to keep the program running for another year. It caused some residents to fear for the area's safety because of two terms within the grant contract: that migrant asylum-seekers and those ousted from "The Zone" in Phoenix also be offered rooms.
"I am disappointed that the City of Scottsdale would jeopardize the quality of living and sense of security of families who already live in the neighborhood ... Not to mention the sense of security of families whose students walk and bike to school every day," wrote Christa Reichert, the headmaster of the nearby Cicero Preparatory Academy.
But it's unlikely that Scottsdale's participants will actually present any safety issues. They won't be "chronically homeless" — a category that includes people who have been homeless repeatedly or for more than a year — because the program will solely assist single-parent families and seniors like it has for the past 10 months.
Some will just be poor people who have recently lost their homes, according to Scottsdale's Human Services Director Greg Bestgen, while others will have never even slept on the street but still lack a stable housing situation.
Only three of the program's 10 rooms will be reserved for people relocated from The Zone. And while many of the Phoenix encampment's former inhabitants are chronically homeless, those housed in Scottsdale will likely be members of a minority of The Zone's population, seniors, who haven't been able to find housing on their fixed incomes.
All of them will be vetted by a nonprofit called Community Bridges Inc., which has handled the initiative's participant referrals since the program's inception. None of the participants has triggered a law enforcement call to the hotel in the past.
And as for the migrants, they too will consist of seniors and families, and will be vetted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They will have been granted asylum before arriving at the hotel, where officials expect their stays to be short because they are simply waiting to be transported to their immigration sponsors.
"When we applied for the grant, we just wanted to make sure that we were specific about the clientele that we would be accepting into our particular program over here in Scottsdale, because it directly aligns with the clients that we've already been serving for about the last year through that program," Bestgen said.
But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement in the city process if the program is extended again.
Scottsdale's 84% success rate reflects the participants who transitioned to long-term housing, but doesn't track their status beyond the day they moved out of the hotel.
For City Councilmember Barry Graham, the biggest issue was that Scottsdale didn't hold any public meetings to discuss the program extension even though the grant terms changed certain participant rules.
"How much have we notified neighbors and local businesses about what we're doing here?" said Graham, who cast the only vote against accepting the state grant. "For me it's about doing the process right. That includes notification, giving notice and making sure residents feel informed."
How the program works: A 'very narrow' eligibility criteria
Bestgen described the bridge housing initiative as a "highly case-managed program," meaning "people cannot just show up at a hotel and get a room." Instead, individuals start the process at nonprofits such as Community Bridges, where staffers vet them and craft plans based on their unique needs.
For example, a heroin addict might need housing where drug rehabilitation services are available, while a single 18-year-old might need help obtaining a GED. Neither would be allowed into Scottsdale's program, but they would be placed into one of the dozens of other assistance centers in the Valley.
Bestgen emphasized that the only people Community Bridges will send to Scottsdale will be families and elderly individuals who need guidance on things like collecting Social Security, which he described as the city's "niche."
"Everybody understands what the precepts of the program are and they agreed to it," Bestgen told The Republic about Scottsdale's eligibility requirements, which he described as "very narrow."
In regard to the new grant money, the city plans to spend it in three buckets over the course of the next year: $40,000 will be used to provide food for the participants, while $400,000 will go toward supportive services and the remaining $500,000 to cover the hotel costs.
Bestgen expects that most participants will only stay at the hotel for a month before transitioning to longer-term housing. During each of those stays, city staffers will conduct weekly room inspections and evict anyone who doesn't follow the rules.
"We're doing our part by grabbing people who we can help," said Councilmember Solange Whitehead, who described it as a tailor-made way for Scottsdale to help with the regional homelessness effort. "We as a (region) have to work together because ... if we solve homelessness and Phoenix doesn't, the homeless are going to flow to us."
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'It was never an issue until it was an issue'
The controversy generated by Scottsdale's decision to accept the state grant spurred high profile challenges from people like Arizona state Rep. Matt Gress, a Republican who represents the affected area, and catapulted the little-known program into the public's view.
For many onlookers such as Reichert, the school headmaster, the negative pushback was likely the first time they had even heard of the program and it created a fear of something they had been living next to for nearly a year.
On July 14, about 300 days after the city finalized its contract with the hotel but only eight after Gress published his letter, Reichert wrote in a letter to City Council members that she was "concerned that the city of Scottsdale has contracted a hotel less than one block from our K-12 school to house displaced homeless and migrants."
Scottsdale's decision to accept the grant in late June had nothing to do with renewing or approving a contract with the hotel. The initial agreement doesn't expire for another month.
The delayed outcry suggests the backlash isn't much more than a knee-jerk reaction to potentially disingenuous criticisms of an otherwise successful program, according to Tammy Caputi, who told The Republic that "it was never an issue until it was an issue."
"(People) haven't been aware for the last year as the program has been running, because it's not an issue," Caputi said. "You can do so many good things and you don't get a whole lot of press, but all you have to do is throw out an inflammatory comment that riles people up and suddenly we're having to spend all of our time defending it."
Sources of confusion
Regardless of whether the pushback against the program is justified, the city's process and a lack of clarity around the grant funding's terms probably didn't help stave off resident confusion.
The 39-page grant contract contained just one paragraph that defined Scottsdale's narrow eligibility criteria, for example. It also doesn't clearly state if the same eligibility requirements apply to all participant groups, although The Republic confirmed with Bestgen that they do.
But residents and business owners didn't have the opportunity to get that clarification ahead of last month's vote. Officials defended that decision by saying the initiative was unchanged even though the grant's program requirements were what drove the confusion.
"There was a lot more probably outreach when we (first) started the program," Whitehead said. "All the City Council did was approve a new funding source for an existing program. And the demographics of the program haven't changed."
Graham disagreed, arguing that neighbors should have been kept up to speed as the program evolved.
"We did not tell people in the area or the businesses that this was coming. There was no notification," Graham said. "What if they have concerns? What if they have questions? What if they have ideas for us to learn from and maybe improve the program?"
The process was enough to invite more intense scrutiny of the program's performance metrics, which might not be as rock solid as they seem at first glance.
A participant who leaves the hotel, enters a longer-term program for a day, and then ends up homeless the day after that, would count toward the city's success rate, for instance.
In regard to the figure related to zero calls for service, that only takes into account incidents that occurred on the hotel property itself, not calls in the surrounding neighborhood that might have involved a program participant.
The fact that the program has not been noticed by many locals until now suggests crime probably isn't a big issue, but the city's method could still dramatically minimize the impact of the initiative.
"I asked if staff has looked at all the names of people that have gone to the program and then compared those names to any calls about those people in the city since they went to the program," Graham explained. "They said, 'No, we haven't done that analysis.'"
Scottsdale's leaders will have another year to improve on those issues before the program needs to be extended again next fall. City Council members are also expected to vote on a new contract with the hotel in about a month.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Scottsdale's homeless effort at local hotel drawing pushback
