‘Project HERO’ Gets Cold Reception
The former Days Inn motel at Tucker & Washington Ave underwent a $14 million dollar renovation recently and it emerged as the Washington Ave Apartments with 94 units.
St. Patrick’s Center, a provider of services to the homeless, is working with the city and Veteran’s Affairs to rent 45 of the units to homeless vets.
Many downtown residents are upset they were not included in the planing before it went forward. More than 20 formerly homeless vets have been residents in the building since June 2008.
It is true many of the homeless vets have addiction issues. But would we prefer they be sleeping in our parks and doorways?
A participant must:
- Be an honorably discharged veteran. Men only.
- Undergo weekly drug testing.
- Pay 30 percent of income toward rent and utilities.
- Not possess alcohol on premises.
- Not have violent crime or sex offense convictions.
- Do daily morning check-ins in person or by phone with a staff member of St. Patrick Center.
- Not have overnight guests unless it is the tenant’s minor child.
- Leave his Project HERO apartment after a maximum of two years.
About the building:
- Key card access 24 hours a day to track who is coming and going.
- Security cameras in hallways and common areas.
- No loitering outside the building. A courtyard not visible from the street is available for tenants. The building also has a community room and free use of laundry facilities.
- Apartments come with kitchens. There are no communal meals.
- A St. Patrick Center employee lives in the building.
- Frequent and random visits by a case manager, which includes a check for alcohol and drugs and proper upkeep of apartments.
I personally welcome this as a means of providing housing to those in need who are trying to rebuild their lives. I do agree it should have been handled more openly. The risk, of course, is that if it had been more open it might have gotten squashed.
I’m glad to see the building being occupied. The tiny apartments were not leasing too well so these men may be the perfect tenants. These units can be a good first step to getting these men back on their feet and part of society.
The important thing is not not stigmatize the building or corner. To a degree these is no different than when a black family would move to a formerly all white street. People jumped up and down and talked about a drop in property values. The drop in values came as a result of the panicked selling cheap so they could flee mixing with someone outside their comfort zone.
I’m going to take a wait and see approach. I already like seeing ligts on in the building at night and increased foot traffic in the area. To me this will be 45 more working residents adding to the mix downtown. It will be more users of transit. The potential positives outweigh the potential negatives. So guys, I’m glad to have you as a neighbor! Welcome to downtown.
Steve,
Thanks for covering this and I’m glad you support this project. It’s frustrating that some would claim the desire of ‘diversity’ as a benefit of living downtown yet shun a project like this. This is part of urban life!
Some downtown residents would turn it into Chesterfield or other suburban area from which they hail.
As with many things political, for too many people, (false) perception IS reality. Homeless equals a drunk, filthy panhandler – the most-visible form of homelessness. HERO seems to be a great operation (based on your description), but suffered/s from an all-too-common St. Louis assumption, that the neighbors/larger community either don’t need to know or don’t care (so why bother asking). I went through a similar process, probably 15 years ago, when Urban Peak (http://www.urbanpeak.org/) wanted to open a shelter for homeless teenagers in my neighborhood in Denver. To their credit, they reached out to us beforehand, addressed many of our concerns, and have proven to be good neighbors since opening (and expanding to a second location). Have there been “issues”? Sure, there have, partly because you’re working with an at-risk popualtion. But they were, and continue to be, addressed appropriately and quickly, much like how they’re doing/planning to do here. The reality is that the members of any population with “problems” come from all strata of society and have all shades of grey when it comes to their needs and how negatively they impact “normal” society. In a managed environment, like either one of these, the residents / clients can both be assisted and their negative impacts minimized. The alternative is likely on the street – this is much better for both the men and the neighborhood!
Ok. This is St. Patrick’s Center. This isn’t Larry Rice. I’m not completely in-the-know about St. Patrick’s, but what I do know speaks highly of them.
This is very similar to the SRO hotels revitalized in California (heavy concentrations in San Diego and SF), especially the compact size of the apartment units (formerly hotel rooms). This is a great way to put underoccupied city dwelling units into service, and to provide a decent home for those obviously in need. The social stigmas are unfortunate, and are the product of ignorance, but a properly run SRO (and not a flophouse) can work in many neighborhood contexts. Please see the past and recent archictural work of both David Baker and Rob Wellington Quigley.
There will be a follow-up meeting this coming Tuesday night at the St. Patrick Center at 7pm until 8:30. Since the meeting two weeks ago, a group of about 20 downtown stakeholders have been discussing and meeting to address downtown issues and open a dialogue with the various city entities (this is the group that Jeff Rainford suggested at the end of the last town hall meeting) so that we have a voice at the table. Those who attend Tuesday will hear the basic outline of issues we believe are central to downtown residents and business owners as well as a plan to make the Hero program a success in our neighborhood.
To comment on John W’s Wash Ave Apts is in no way an SRO. These men have to sign leases and pay monthly rent. They are also heavily involved in the Hero Program which, as Steve stated earlier, has a strict regimen which they must follow. The Mark Twain downtown is an SRO and is run very well.
This is AWESOME, Steve! Thanks for writing about this! As a Chaplain in the National Guard, it breaks my heart to see vets without opportunities like this. This is only a good thing for them and their (new) neighbors! Seriously, you just made my day…
Steve, thanks for reporting on this issue. I’m an Americorps VISTA working for the St. Patrick Center and I can tell you personally that homeless veterans from St. Patrick Center appreciate the opportunity they have received to live in their own apartment. True, the St. Patrick Center should have been more vocal about their intentions, but like you said, if they had, some members of the “neighborhood” would have objected. Can’t have homeless veterans around our fine establishments, condos and apartments, now can we? If only some of these rich former suburbanites/yuppies could understand what the St. Patrick Center is trying to do for their fellow man then maybe they wouldn’t object so much. Unfortunately, some of them probably would want the former Days Inn condemned anyway.
>>If only some of these rich former suburbanites/yuppies could understand what the St. Patrick Center is trying to do for their fellow man then maybe they wouldn’t object so much.<<
To at least a certain extent, I think this is a commendably apt statement, only I would follow it by saying, perhaps:
If only rich suburbanites could understand (and cared about) what the St. Patrick Center is trying to do for their fellow man in this region, then maybe they wouldn’t assume that it is exclusively the role of slowly revitalizing urban neighborhoods to carry the banner for the poor, underprivileged, and disenfranchised.
Very good point studs lonigan. On a personal note, I’m truly grateful to work at the St. Patrick Center for a full year. I’ve always thought and been told that I’m a grounded individual but after my experience here at the St. Patrick Center, I will be buried in the earth. I feel that everyone needs to either work or volunteer at a homeless shelter/outreach center just once and it will change your perception of homelessness forever. In fact, I would want every elected official or city employee to come to the St. Patrick Center for a week to see what happens here every day. Maybe then the city of St. Louis could fight the good fight (and give SPC some funding) for the homeless and victims of substance abuse in the city of St. Louis.
The concentration of services in the urban core for special-needs populations is no coincidence, nor is it unique to St. Louis. For many of the same reasons that urbanists embrace the core – walkability, density, public transit, big, old buldings, cheap rents, etc., etc., providers of services see many of the same benefits. In a perfect world, every community, from Wellston to Ladue, Festus to Chesterfield, would provide generously for the needs of all of their citizens. We don’t live in a perfect world. A one-way taxi ride is a lot easier to provide and removes the “problem” from too many suburban communities. Big picture, we can work to change this attitude – personally, I don’t have the time nor the inclination to pursue a Quixotic quest. Little picture, we can make sure that providers and their clients are also good neighbors, and that the city does its best to minimize the concentration of services in any one ward or part of town as much as possible. Even some of our “normal” neighbors can be pretty strange or obnoxious at times – no reason to assume that these guys will be any worse . . .
BTW – personal opinion – I think that this mid-century structure is much more deserving of preservation / reuse and is a better example of mid-century modern architecture than the San Luis apartments . . .
They’re both deserving of preservation Jim, and the fact that the Washington Avenue apartments WAS preserved and adaptively reused in a very effective way provides strong, argumentative precedence for the salvation of the San Luis. Whether this building, or the old Days Inn down the street from the San Luis that has found new life as the Hotel Indigo is in the opinion of some more deserving of preservation interest because they are deemed physically better examples of the style doesn’t diminish the value of the San Luis to the street wall along Lindell Boulevard.
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Mike- I did not say the Washington Avenue apartments was an SRO and was obviously built as market-rate occupancy apartments. The physical nature of the building, as described by Steve in this post, is VERY MUCH like an SRO, so I don’t know why you would even bother to make such an absolutist remark. “This is very similar to the SRO hotels revitalized in California (heavy concentrations in San Diego and SF), especially the compact size of the apartment units (formerly hotel rooms).” I made no such comment regarding the administrative process of resident intake, so whether or not a signed lease is required for occupancy is beside the point of my comparison. If you’re somehow displeased with my comparison, I suppose that’s your problem, because I’ll stick 100,000% behind what I’ve said.
Jimmy Z responded to himself again in this thread! I miss the days when the comments section here were actually worth reading and not dominated by such windbaggery.
St. Patricks is a first class operation (unlike some) and after reading the regulations, I am happily on board and supportive of this effort. Good luck to them! Can we turn the Clemens Mansion into one also……….. ?
>>The concentration of services in the urban core for special-needs populations is no coincidence, nor is it unique to St. Louis. For many of the same reasons that urbanists embrace the core – walkability, density, public transit, big, old buldings, cheap rents, etc., etc., providers of services see many of the same benefits.<<
It’s certainly not unique to St. Louis and it is no coincidence. The a.) disinvestment in and flight from cities since WW II reinforces the b.) policy of concentrating poverty in the urban core and containing it there. They are cyclical, deliberate and reciprocally self-fulfilling. For every “provider of service” who contemplates anything in an “urbanist” context, there are likely several others who simply subscribe to this same view of what cities are for. Changing this large perception problem among the general populace may be slow in coming, but it is no more “Quixotic” than renovating a historic building, using/encouraging more public transportation in a region or picking up the fast food trash some pig threw down in front of your property.
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