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Homeless shelter OK’d to expand after cleaning up.
Gloucester Daily Times, July 31, 2006, Richard Gaines,
page A1
Action,
an anti-poverty agency, has won the city’s permission to
add four independent efficiency units to its homeless
shelter on Main Street.
The
apartments will be built at the back of the building at
370 Main St. with no entrance from the shelter.
There
was no opposition to the expansion, and members of the
Zoning Board of Appeals made clear in approving it last
week that better behavior by the shelter’s residents and
better management of the program weighed heavily in the
decision.
Three
years ago the board rejected Action’s application to
expand the number of shelter beds from 20 to 26 after
many neighbors complained about obnoxious and illegal
behavior.
In the
harsh winter that followed, Mayor John Bell signed an
emergency order to expand the number of legal beds at
the shelter.
But
Ralph Johnson, Action’s director of housing, said the
critics were right.
“I
don’t think it’s fair to say that any of the complaints
were unfair,” Johnson said.
Since
then, he said, Action has imposed a case management
system, requiring long-term residents of the shelter to
remain sober and involved in job-training programs.
“This
is not a flophouse,” he said.
“I’m in
awe that not one neighbor came to oppose this,” said the
board’s Virginia Bergman.
The
shelter’s rules require that residents leave each
morning. They cannot return until 5 p.m. when it’s first
come, first served for the 26 beds.
Before
the case management system was instituted, some
residents hung out at the little park at the Head of the
Harbor a few yards east of the shelter and others set up
in the Sawyer Free Library.
The
apartments are intended for residents who need a place
to live once their lives are stabilized, Johnson said.
In
addition to the four apartments to be built at the back
of the shelter at a cost of $350,000, Action operates 31
others – 11 in a sober house at 95 Prospect St. and 20
scattered around the city.
“I’m
glad you’re not aware of 95 Prospect,” Johnson said. “I
like to hear that you don’t know we exist.”
Johnson
told the board that four shelter residents qualified
last year for independent living and have moved into
subsidized apartments. An additional seven, he said,
“have cleared all hurdles” and are ready for independent
living but, for now, there are no vacancies. “We’ve got
too many people,” Johnson said.
He
described the apartments as “carrots” to encourage
residents to move toward independent living. He said
Action hopes to have the four efficiency units ready for
occupancy in the fall.
Action
has packaged federal, state and local grants and loans
to finance construction.
He said
the agency will apply for project-based Section 8
vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development to help subsidize the apartments.
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