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Taking the -less out of the homeless

by Matt Edens

Fairly often, if I take the back way from my office in Bearden to my home in East Knoxville, I drive by the Minvilla, which—for those of you asking “the what?”—is more notoriously known as the Fifth Avenue Motel. Sitting at the light, I’ve had time to ponder the building over the years. Recently a developer planning to return the building to a semblance of its former self has removed some of the cinderblock hallway tacked on in the 1950s, revealing brick pillars that once supported a porch roof. I’ve taken it as an encouraging sign. Some folks, however, apparently disagree.

“The loss of single room occupancy housing (SRO),” reads a paragraph in recently released 2004 study of Homelessness in Knoxville/Knox County, “has been particularly devastating... Many Knoxvillians can remember private sector hotels and rooming houses that provided cheap lodging, but many of these have since been razed or converted to condominiums in the apparent gentrification of the inner city.” It’s a shame, apparently, that a private developer is investing $3 million in the building (with some of the units earmarked as “affordable housing”). Personally I find it more shameful that the previous owners gouged the homeless for years with high weekly rents in a building that was essentially a firetrap.

But, then, I’m one of the heartless inner-city gentry whose “intolerance” has caused such consternation among homeless agencies and advocates lately. How much? Well, I’m starting to wonder after reading yet another paragraph from the homeless study. Commenting on the fact that numbers of older suburban motels have been converted to weekly or monthly rentals, the study observes: “An argument might be made that more homeless people reside in suburban Knoxville than in the inner city area, assuming that people who reside in an SRO are considered to be homeless.” The Counter-Reformation, it appears, has begun.

Still, let’s assume those people living in suburban rent-by-the-week motels are homeless. If we do, I’d point out that Knox County as a whole is vastly larger than Knoxville’s inner city. The study itself mentions suburban SROs in such far-flung locales as: “Callahan Drive, Merchants Drive, Raccoon Valley Road, Strawberry Plains Pike, Lovell Road, Campbell Station Road and Cedar Bluff Road.”

For comparison, the study lists 13 providers of “Emergency Shelter” for the homeless, with a total of 913 beds (plus 16 efficiency apartments at the Volunteer Ministry Center). Eleven have addresses listed (the location of two battered women’s shelters are, understandably, undisclosed). Seven—accounting for more than 700 of the total beds—are within a mile of the intersection of Fifth and Broadway. The remaining four are within two miles. The inner city, it seems, tolerates the homeless to a far greater degree than any comparably sized patch of real estate in the community. Oh, and the list doesn’t include the numerous halfway houses and such that are concentrated in this same area, including a large facility for released federal offenders—primarily for drug offenses—also located at the corner of Fifth and Broadway. And, while the study laments the closure of the Volunteers of America Shelter a few blocks east on Fifth, the building remains a shelter. Purchased by another non-profit agency, it’s one of the 13 listed emergency providers.

Still, my neighbors and I who live among these shelters shouldn’t be concerned about expansion, we’re told. When the Coalition for the Homeless rolled out the study at a breakfast reception for government and community leaders, it was implied that emergency shelters are yesterday’s solution, that what’s needed is more long-term supervised housing. I don’t know that I disagree. But two questions remain. First, who pays for it? The service providers are no doubt looking to local government and the business community. The Homeless Coalition dubbed its reception and seminar “Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk,” or, in other words, “cut the check.” The second, thornier question is, if we build long-term housing for the homeless, where does it go? It looks to me as if a golden opportunity to redress the imbalance of those 700 homeless beds piled into a square mile of the inner city. In the past, shelters and service providers have argued that the inner-city concentration was necessary because the services need to go where the homeless are. Seems like a valid argument. But, then, it also seems I recall reading somewhere recently that “an argument might be made that more homeless people reside in suburban Knoxville than in the inner city area.”

October 14, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 42 © 2004 Metro Pulse