On October 18th, the planning board released a 2 page document on shelter standards which does nothing to satisfy the petition request from the town council.

The Town Council receives this report on Wednesday, January 19th at 7pm. 

Watch this youtube video for an overview of the major issues presented at the 11/16/2010 Planning Board Meeting.

If the town council adopts this report...

• The Town will still have No Plan for locating shelters, drug detox, drug recovery, soup kitchens, other at-risk facilities
• No At-Risk Facility Proximity Limitations
• No At-Risk Density Limitations
• Nothing to prevent Soup Kitchen from being co-located with proposed facility
  
• Nothing to prevent any future 100, 200, 400 bed Mens Shelter from being co-located
  
• Nothing to prevent expansion of existing facilities
• No Protection for Schools
• Not Even A requirement to validate ID for background check when shelter near a school
• No Restriction on shelter allowing Drunk and High men near a school
  
• No Protection for Parks
• No Protection for Neighbors
• No “Fair Share” Requirements nor even any Recommendations
  
• No Requirements for Public Criteria and Public Process
• When Land is leased by Town
• When Town-Issued Grants pay $500,000 or more of project
• No Requirement to Negotiate Lease Publicly
  
• No Oversight of At-Risk Facilities
• No Mechanism to Revoke operations of a facility gone bad
• No Annual Reporting back to town council
  
• No Guidance to developers
• No Ordinance
  
• Guidelines have No Teeth
  
• Developers only do REQUIRED items
• Ordinances have flexibility with public finding
• But Town Council knows public finding will require writing fiction
  

Interestingly, the report pulls the "magnetic effect" stipulations from the Gilroy, CA document that we provided to the subcommittee but IGNORES the fact that IFC's proposed Homestead site would be ILLEGAL in Gilroy, CA due to proximity to schools, proximity to the park, and proximity to other at risk facilities (violates 3 of the Gilroy stipulations).  The report also fails to mention that the Gilroy, CA document and the "Sample Shelter Zoning Ordinances and Laws" were compiled and provided our members.

Here's how the committee used the Gilroy, CA document:

• Closeness to transportation, professional service, grocery stores, medical clinics, libraries
• Prohibit siting within 1000 feet of school
• Prohibit siting within 1000 feet of park
  
• Recommend that homeless shelters be at least 2 miles apart
• Do not shelter men who are under influence of drugs and alcohol.  Require drug testing if suspicious.
  

One of the most serious violations of public process occurred when the subcommittee ignored crime statistics based solely on an opinion from a private chat between a subcommittee member and police personnel.  We asked in the subcommittee meeting and in multiple emails that the statement from the police either 1) be provided in writing or 2) be stated in a public subcommittee meeting.  The subcommittee ignored our request without justification nor comment.

We asked the subcommittee to interview our neighbors, the Rainbow Heights residents, to hear first-hand the impacts of Freedom House to their daily lives, but the committee was uninterested in validating the issues that the residents have shared with us.

The subcommittee also decided to renege on its promise to have a public information session and take a yet-to-be-written draft straight to the planning board without even reviewing it in a subcommittee meeting.

IFC created a map of ALL the social services in Chapel Hill in an attempt to say that every facility has the same impact. 
But there is no comparison between a 5 person residential handicap home and a 52 bed men's homeless shelter which takes an additional 17 or more drunk and high men.  There is no comparison of the impacts between a 56 bed women's shelter which has 60 police incidents in the last 7 years and the Ronald McDonald House with 5 incidents in 7 years.   Click here for the map and detailed information.


Background: The Planning Board created the Shelter Standards Subcommittee to discuss shelter siting, licensing, public process, and design standards.  We attended all of the meetings this summer, provided police incident statistics, maps, sample ordinances and results of our research.

The committee has not yet posted the report, but we are making it available now via this link.  November 2 Agenda Materials.

Please check back to see updates to our analysis.  Subscribe to the email list to be notified.