Posted June 19, 2006
Helping the homeless?
By Betty Bean

It is a steamy June afternoon, and the homeless encampment on lower Broadway has moved under the I-40 ramp seeking relief from the rising heat.

A few are starting the trek north en route to “the River,” an outlaw camp about a half mile away on the banks of Second Creek. They pass the entrance to Old Gray Cemetery, turn left on Tyson Street and walk by the big, garage-style door that constitutes the front of P Smith Signs & Displays.

The door stands open to capture any stray breeze that happens by the little brick building. Patti Smith (known to her friends as P) is inside churning out signage for the upcoming Knoxville Open.

They pass on by without stopping, probably because Smith, an East Knox County native (and daughter of the late Helma Gilreath, owner of the legendary Helma’s Restaurant) is known not to be an easy mark. A schoolteacher turned entrepreneur, she has lived in the 100 block of Gay Street for 12 years, owned the building that houses her business for three years and has a clear-cut philosophy about homeless issues.

“I deal with them 24-7,” she says. “And it is my moral responsibility to do my part to take care of anybody who can’t take care of themselves, whether they’re old, alcoholic, drug-addicts, mentally ill or whatever. I believe that we are responsible for the people of Knoxville and East Tennessee.

“However, it is not my responsibility to take care of people from Washington state, Georgia, Alabama, Texas or New York who came here because they hear that Knoxville is a good place for the homeless. We have been targeted because of our climate and because we are located at the intersection of two major interstate highways.

“Here is my take: Somebody comes in here from Oklahoma, we say ‘Here’s your supper, here’s your bed, here’s your breakfast, and here’s your bus ticket back to Oklahoma.’ The whole system here is overwhelmed, and very little good gets done. The purpose of the (city/county) 10-year plan is to formulate a master plan so that the missions’ programs do not overlap. Why should all these agencies be doing the same thing?”

Smith, who sometimes starts her business day by cleaning up piles of human excrement in her parking lot, served on a city/county task force on homelessness last year and is disappointed because nobody has taken action on one of the group’s prime recommendations:

“One thing that was supposed to happen was to make PSAs (public service announcements) saying ‘Don’t give them money.’ We need to get this entire community to quit becoming enablers.

“What we do in my neighborhood is say ‘No. There are three missions down there that offer all kinds of services. …’

“Most of (the homeless) won’t even do you the courtesy of listening to the rest of what you are saying.”

Although Smith never hands out money for free, she does hire homeless people who are willing to work. She thinks the “church ladies” who come down to the mission district periodically to hand out free food and clothes (thereby duplicating services already available) are adding to the problem.

Three years ago, she read an article about the good deeds of Knoxville’s mega-churches. One pastor said he was looking to “Find a need and fill it.” Inspired, Smith wrote him (and five other prominent ministers mentioned in the story) a letter saying that she had found such a need.

“The downtown shelters need help. They need more space and more money due to the large numbers they are trying to serve. You and your congregation can help by providing shelter, food, clothing, medical care and education for just a few of these families. If the larger churches in our area would take on this responsibility, it would lessen the burden on everybody.

“Also, families would be in a neighborhood and children would be in neighborhood churches and schools. This would be far more beneficial, since Gay Street and Broadway cannot be considered a reasonable place for children.”

She didn’t get a single reply.

City Council member Rob Frost’s North Knoxville district includes neighborhoods that are being impacted by the burgeoning mission district. A couple of years ago, he incurred the wrath of county officials and prominent citizens who sit on the boards of the Volunteer Ministry Center, Knox Area Rescue Missions and the Salvation Army by opposing the county’s move to award a $470,000 federal grant to VMC to buy a building that had been recently abandoned by KARM.

VMC officials said the building could be easily adapted to their use, and the transaction went through over Frost’s objections. Last year, the building that had been described as “uniquely suited” to VMC’s use was demolished.

“It’s the most expensive lot on Broadway,” Frost says. “$470,000 probably rivals the cost of a lot on Bearden Hill or Turkey Creek.”

Frost opposed giving the Housing and Urban Development grant to the mission on a technical, legal issue – flawed public notice – because notice of the grant went out to agencies and organizations outside the city limits of Knoxville and Farragut. He knows he was portrayed as a heartless opponent of the homeless, but is convinced that he did the right thing.

“The easy thing to do is to make somebody out to be a villain. But when you look at the facts, it’s clear that concentration is a problem,” Frost says, citing public officials who have agreed with him, such as Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation chief Alvin Nance and former city police chief Phil Keith.

“The federal government is spending millions of dollars to make public housing projects smaller.

“When folks who are in hard times are surrounded by similarly-situated people, it’s hard to interact with others and have motivation to improve themselves.

“What we have done in this city is locate people, many of whom have disabilities and substance abuse issues, in one area where they are easy prey for predators,” Frost says.
Bill Pittman lives in the neighborhood that is closest to the mission district – Fourth and Gill.

A vice president at DeRoyal, he also partners with his father in Pittman Properties, a family business that owns and maintains rental houses all over the north end of town into Fountain City.

He grew up in North Knoxville, spent his teenage years in Halls, lived out-of-state as an adult, and has never regretted opting for an inner-city neighborhood when he returned to Knoxville.

“By the time the moving van left my Luttrell Street address, I knew more of my new neighbors than in all of the previously mentioned neighborhoods combined. With its unparalleled inventory of historic homes and its close proximity to downtown, I find North Knoxville to be my favorite section of the city.”

Fourth and Gill has a problem with occasional petty crime committed by homeless people, and, like Frost and Smith, Pittman believes that “over-concentration of these services” is the biggest problem.

“From Dr. Roger Nooe’s studies, we know that the vast majority (74 percent) of our homeless population are not from Knoxville and that our huge homeless service industry is a major reason they choose to relocate here,” Pittman says.

“The issue I have with the over-concentration of homeless services is that we have basically created a skid row area directly on our main north-south thoroughfare into downtown. As this concentration occurs, we continue to see the loss of businesses as owners describe how their customers don’t feel safe driving down Broadway.

“As our downtown continues its revitalization, we need to open up the Broadway/Central corridor for expansion of more economical housing options which will fill the need for those who cannot afford the market price for downtown lofts. Instead of realizing this and initiating a corridor study to propel this revitalization, our County Commission and City Council are providing the homeless service industry with a million dollars of taxpayer money to fortify a skid row.”

Pittman says many of his DeRoyal colleagues enjoy visiting Fourth and Gill but would not consider moving there because of the mission district.

“This, however, not only reduces the revitalization rate for our center city and financially harms the city in several ways: wasteful use of tax dollars; removal of valuable property from the tax rolls, as these services do not pay property taxes; loss of tax revenue from businesses which cannot thrive in a skid row environment; lost opportunities to build neighborhoods because people choose not to live within the city; and the incredible emergency response cost associated with over-concentration.

“As I travel the country weekly, I ask residents of other cities where their mission district is located and the normal reply is that a) they don’t have such a district and b) why would anyone want to create such a district.

This is a very logical question since we know from Dr. Nooe’s studies that a high percentage of the homeless have substance abuse issues. I have yet to find an expert who believes that concentrating individuals with similar substance abuse issues is beneficial to anyone. The continued over-concentration of homeless services is certainly not good for the constituents they supposedly strive to serve and is terrible for Knoxville’s center as well as all Knoxville taxpayers.”

‘Like I crossed into another dimension’
By Larry Van Guilder

“Edward,” who asked that I not use his real name, is a 43-year-old African-American man of slight build and melancholy brown eyes.

On this warm June afternoon, he wore a clean blue T-shirt, tennis shoes and loose green shorts. A worn backpack rested beside him on the short ledge that borders one side of Lawson McGhee Library. Were it not for the silver and gray generously sprinkled throughout his neatly-trimmed black beard, he could pass for a much younger man.

When he speaks, it is in a soft, almost diffident voice, but, with some exceptions, his eyes look directly into yours, and his language is that of the well-educated banker, a profession he followed for more than 15 years. The exceptions arise when he speaks of spiritual matters, and then his bland gaze transforms, as if he is looking beyond you at sights only he can appreciate.

Dr. Roger Nooe’s 20-year survey of the homeless in Knoxville and Knox County exposed the fallacy of the “old white male wino” stereotype, and Edward’s story adds emphasis to the researcher’s conclusion that “the homeless population is actually quite diverse.”

Ray Mitchell and Daryl Kercinik, security guards for the library, introduced me to Edward. They deal with the homeless daily and have come to know dozens of them on a first-name basis, even those who fall under the “old wino” heading, like the colorfully named, “Tumbleweed,” who wore denim and sported a battered cowboy hat.

Mitchell’s and Kercinik’s anecdotes about the homeless who frequent the library are a book waiting to be written. Tumbleweed, Daryl recalled, once told him of spending a stretch in a Utah jail for forgery, a crime he confessed to but claimed not to have committed. “Then, why did you confess?” Daryl asked. “Well,” Tumbleweed replied, “it looked like my signature.”

But humor plays a small role in the lives of the homeless. Edward, for example, prefaced his explanation of how he came to be homeless in Knoxville by describing it as a “long, sordid story.”

Born in Asheville, N.C., he was “raised Baptist” by loving parents and studied business at the Charlotte campus of the University of North Carolina. After moving to Atlanta, Edward accepted a job offer from Bank of America, where over the years his responsibilities ranged from commercial banking accounts to minority business investments. In 1998, Bank of America merged with NationsBank, and, as Edward explains it, the stress of reorganization initiated “five years of bad health.”

He was diagnosed and treated for various ailments, including Attention Deficit Disorder and loss of pigmentation in his arms, but believes the medications he received only aggravated his ailments. Although granted a leave of absence, he was never able to return to his job.
He lost everything and drifted to Knoxville three years ago. Now he spends days where he can and nights in a bed provided by the Knox Area Rescue Ministries where, he adds, the prudent “watch their backs.”

Edward is a spiritual man, prone to detect apocalyptic overtones in events both great and small. There is a lingering hint of the supernatural in his confession, “Sometimes I feel like I crossed over into another dimension. I don’t feel like me anymore.”

Near the end of our conversation he recommended a book, Conversations With God, by Neale Donald Walsch. Walsch is the author of several volumes centered around the title theme, and in the preface of the first volume he wrote that “an extraordinary phenomenon occurred in my life. God began talking with you. Through me.”

Reading these words, it was hard not to wonder if God was speaking to me, perhaps to all of us, through Edward, another of the faceless legion of the homeless.

There but for the grace of God.

Ken Adams: Knox has ‘unfair share’ of homeless
By Sandra Clark

Ken Adams agrees that a three-block section of North Broadway is getting “an unfair share” of the homeless.

“We’ve got to take care of our own,” he said, “but in the last few years we’ve seen a concentration of the homeless here.”

Adams runs Graning Paint, an almost 50-year-old family business. His father, the late Paul Adams, was often called the Paint Commissioner for his leadership role in politics and community affairs.

Graning’s location, Ken Adams said, is easily accessible and is well-known to the store’s customers.

“We’ve seriously considered relocating, but we’re trying to hang on and stay here. With the residential growth downtown, eventually this will be a hot spot. We’re here for now and for the future.”
 

From sheep to shepherd
By Shannon Carey

When God called Maxine Raines to help the homeless, she didn’t waste time.

“We started out with a pack of bologna and a pack of buns and some lemonade and hit the road,” she said.

Raines is executive director of Lost Sheep Ministries, a grassroots effort based in Fountain City. Her efforts have grown the ministry from a two-woman operation to an award-winning program.

Raines is perfect for her job. She was homeless from the age of 6 to 15, foraging for food with her younger brother. Eventually, with the help of a pastor from Second United Methodist Church, the pair got off the street. Raines is a retired nurse, and her brother recently retired after 40 years as a Methodist pastor.

Raines decided to help the homeless during a life-changing conference in Washington, D.C. The city’s more visible homeless population and the conference’s message brought up repressed memories of her time on the street.

“I had pushed back the fact that I had been on the street,” she said. “God began to really work with me.”

She was president of Women’s Day Aglow, and she presented her idea to other members. They helped her get Lost Sheep Ministries off the ground. At first, she concentrated on homeless youths, children to college-age, because they tend to avoid missions.

Then, one snowy night on Market Square, Raines and her partner found reason to expand the ministry to all ages: a middle-aged, mentally ill man, wearing only a T-shirt, living in a dumpster.

Now, once a week Raines loads up volunteers, food, tables, chairs and supplies in six vans and heads down to the I-40/McGhee Street bridge. They give the homeless people there a sit-down meal and have a church service. They bring clothes and refer them to agencies for other services. They try to connect.

They only go to the bridge one night a week, Raines said. She doesn’t want to enable the homeless to stay there by feeding them every night.

Other nights, Raines and her volunteers pass out hot dogs in the Old City, near the clubs. They minister to the clubgoers and try to look out for them.

She’s there to save lives and souls. She saved one girl from abduction, other young people from overdoses and violence, others from suicide.

Raines leads volunteers into homeless tent cities and shanty towns. These are all over, she said, in unexpected places, often beside creeks. There is one behind Broadway Shopping Center.

Raines connects with the homeless and tries to fill their needs and soothe their hurts.
Each year, the ministry pays to send about 60 homeless people to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs.

The common thread in her efforts, though, is her faith.

“We try to get them to turn their lives over to the Lord,” she said. “When I was on the street, that was what I needed to climb out of it. We’re out there to help them just like God gave us help.”

When she retired, Raines committed herself to Lost Sheep full time. The ministry’s board of directors gives her a modest stipend for her work, but she said it isn’t necessary.

“Because I always did it without one.

“I recognize and know where I came from. It’s a calling. I’m 69 years old, and I just want to give back. I’ve had a wonderful life. It’s a commitment to God and those who need help.”

Raines pointed to the ministry’s touchstone Bible verse, Luke 15:6. “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.”

“And I was that sheep,” she said.