The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

The city of San Antonio, in conjunction with the downtown business community, has opened a facility for the homeless called Haven for Hope.

It's stated intent is "to reintegrate San Antonio’s homeless population back into the community through a structured transformation process." This includes providing food, shelter, and "a wide array of social services to combat the root causes of homelessness in a convenient central location."

Sounds like a good thing, right? Government and business uniting in a common cause to address a pressing social need. That should make liberals, conservatives, and even libertarians happy. Hallelujah! Cue the rainbows and chorus of angels.

However, since Haven for Hope opened there have been a few small problems.

There are many in the homeless population who say they are reluctant to use the services or stay in the dorms.

"Haven for Hope is built like a jail, it's operated like a jail and so it's the last thing these people want to do is return to that type of environment," said (homeless person) Edward Rodriguez.

The food offered by the shelter is less appealing than what the homeless can obtain on the streets.

When Haven for Hope opened its gates to the homeless this year, officials cast the lure of food as the center's primary enticement. 

Their philosophy: Eliminate feeding in the streets, and the homeless would seek meals at Haven's Prospects Courtyard.

But that approach in some cases has proved less than alluring, officials say.

More than three months after opening, the facility is operating at less than 50% capacity. One reason given by the homeless is that they can eat better on the streets.

(Assistant City Manager) Zanoni said he has grown concerned about complaints among the homeless in the streets about the cold food in the courtyard and that he encouraged Haven to change its policy.

“The homeless went from three, four hot meals a day (on the streets) to one bologna sandwich,” he said. “That's not going to cut it.”

Concerns about security inside the shelter are surfacing.

The Haven for Hope has been operating for months on the near west side of downtown. Now, reports are surfacing that life inside the mega-homeless shelter can be dangerous.

Haven for Hope has its share of the mentally ill, those in withdrawal and others with a multitude of problems. And some said this population tends to be violent at the shelter.

"They're not helping you,” said John Humphrey, a homeless man who left the shelter. “And it's a dangerous place to be in my opinion."

Let's review. The food is worse than the homeless can get on the streets, it's more dangerous than the streets, and it's run like a prison. What's not to like?

Granted, some of these problems might be attributed to the newness of the facility. A period of appraisal and adjustment is not uncommon nor unexpected in new ventures. That's why new ships have shake-down cruises.

In this case, however, there seem to be more systemic issues prowling under the surface.

Existing charities are being squeezed out or pushed aside.

The efforts to help more people in need could actually lead to fewer people being helped. The expansion of SAMM Ministries to Haven for Hope has made their costs so high, they say they can't afford it.

SAMMinistries is an interfaith ministry dedicated to providing shelter and care to the homeless of San Antonio. Until Haven for Hope opened, SAMM was the largest provider of food, shelter, and social services to the homeless in San Antonio. As a reward, SAMM is now being marginalized by the government/business mega-shelter.

Next came the food police.

Robert Smith sat on the porch of Catholic Worker House on Wednesday morning, hungry and sipping a cup of coffee.

The nonprofit, close to downtown, had been a reliable source of free, hot meals for hungry people for 25 years until the city's health department showed up in August and warned it to shut down because it lacked a licensed kitchen.

Metro Health officials paid a visit Tuesday evening to those handing out food under U.S. 281 at Ninth and Austin streets ... a popular feeding spot at which hundreds of the homeless and the merely hungry gather throughout the week for free, hot meals.

“They told me next time we serve a meal, we must have a permit, and it cannot be home cooking,” said Red Simpson, director of operations for Church Under the Bridge.

A city ordinance prohibits the distribution of food not prepared in a licensed kitchen.

Another ordinance requires anyone who sells or gives away food on downtown streets to possess a “special event” permit. But requiring such a permit now is akin to shutting an operation down — the city makes only 27 of them available at a given time, and all are currently in use, said Melody Woosley, assistant director of city initiatives.

“In order to get one, somebody would have to give one up,” Woosley said.

City officials for months have been fine-tuning a plan to relocate the homeless population to the new Haven for Hope campus, in part by moving clothing and feeding programs there. But officials deny that Tuesday's warning or the city's August visit to the Catholic Worker House is related to that effort.

Yeah, right. We're from the government and we're here to help.

Jim Grossnickle-Batterton, house coordinator for Catholic Worker House, is suspicious.

About two months before the health department showed up, he said, the number of visitors to the nonprofit more than doubled, rising from about 60 to 140 a day.

The increase occurred around the same time Haven for Hope opened.

“Most of the folks were coming from Haven,” Grossnickle-Batterton said. “They were tired of the cold food over there in the courtyard. So it obviously made us a much bigger target.”

“The city has found a way to decide where people can be by food availability,” he said. “I think that using food in general to make people do anything is just really bad.”

Perhaps the best capsule summary of the situation can be found here.

David is on the streets in San Antonio, Texas. He works day labor jobs to survive. It didn't used to be so bad in town, but then Haven for Hope opened, he says.

Close to 80 local organizations collaborate to provide services at the massive Haven For Hope shelter. I only spent a little time there. Although the facility is impressive, their solution seems more like institutionalizing homelessness.

I don't mean to belittle the individuals and organizations involved with Haven for Hope that are truly motivated by the desire to help the homeless. But in the back of my mind lurks a teeny tiny suspicion. 

The majority of the homeless population was/is centered on downtown San Antonio. The new facility is located on the western outskirts of downtown. Could the underlying purpose of the new facility be to move the homeless presence away from downtown, with its tourist attractions (the Alamo, the Riverwalk, etc.) and businesses to a more remote location?

Naw, government never has ulterior motives ... does it ...?