[Hpn] Shelter requires clients to sell street newspaper. Your opinion?

[Tom Boland]

A shelter in Hollywood FL "REQUIRES CLIENTS TO DON ORANGE T-SHIRTS AND SELL
THE HOMELESS VOICE NEWSPAPER at street corners as part of its fund-raising".

Do you support this requirement?  Why or why not?


http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000151696,00.html
FWD  Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel / Web-posted: 9:53 p.m. Dec. 29, 2000

     HOLLYWOOD SHELTER'S MOVE WOULD COME WITH CONDITIONS, BORAD SAYS

     By JEFF SHIELDS      

HOLLYWOOD [FLORIDA USA] -- The Helping People in America shelter will be
asked to meet a list of conditions before it moves from its residential
neighborhood to an industrial area on Dixie Highway.

A special committee overseeing the move of the controversial shelter
-- a privately funded organization that eschews the strict controls of
traditional social-service providers -- will meet Jan. 9 to finalize a set of
requirements to be met before making a recommendation to the City
Commission. The shelter and its parent corporation, COSAC Inc., are
looking to move from 2707 Lincoln St. to Dixie Highway between Taft
and Roosevelt streets.

COSAC's relationship with its neighbors has been rocky, and the
North Central Hollywood Civic Association wants the shelter gone.
While the city supports the shelter's move to Dixie Highway -- still in
the North Central Neighborhood -- residents are insisting on written
conditions that can be enforced to govern the shelter's operation.

Those conditions include building a wall around the new facility,
enforcing a curfew on residents, and putting a cap on the number of
shelter beds, said Dick Blattner, who chairs the subcommittee of the
city's Human and Social Services Advisory board.

One of the committee's greatest concerns is that, under current
zoning, COSAC could fit about 700 people into the new shelter.
COSAC's founder, Sean Cononie, has become the county's largest
provider of emergency shelter because he makes a point of rejecting no
one.

Cononie has bristled at some recommendations, including building
the wall and the curfew. He has agreed to the idea that the shelter won't
accept walk-up clients, hoping to prevent the sight of the homeless
lining up on Dixie Highway for a bed.

"Some of those things will have to be ironed out," Cononie said,
though he added that the differences were negotiable.

COSAC, which requires clients to don orange T-shirts and sell the
Homeless Voice newspaper at street corners as part of its fund-raising,
has taken in $135,000 so far, needing $800,000 to buy and renovate the
buildings that now house Built-In Vacuums, Dixie Lil Apartments and
Roosevelt Terrace apartments. Cononie said he was confident the center
will have enough money to close on the property June 1.

The new shelter would change the way Cononie does business. He
has been awarded a $423,000 federal Housing and Urban Development
Grant for transitional housing, the first time COSAC would operate
with government funding and the oversight that comes with it.

Cononie has envisioned a new shelter with about 175 beds, but
Blattner said the committee would like to limit it to about 140.

The HUD grant would fund 60 beds for transitional housing, which
requires its clients to move toward independence. Helping People in
America, which provides services and referrals to its clients, does not
require them to participate in job training or drug-treatment programs as
a prerequisite for staying at the shelter. Part of the new shelter's focus
would be on job training.

The shelter will require a special zoning exception to move to Dixie
Highway, and the subcommittee will advise the City Commission
whether it should approve such a measure.

Blattner said though no one wants a homeless shelter in their
neighborhood, the committee will recommend approval if Cononie
complies with its demands.

"If he accepts the conditions that we're still working on, and he
accepts that the facility will be for transitional housing, then we have to
give him the chance to do it," Blattner said.

END FORWARD

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