The IFC's Executive Director confirms our White Flag Estimate
Homeless shelters have developed a "white flag" program to provide emergency shelter beyond regular sleeping capability on inclement weather nights. IFC introduced this term to Chapel Hill in November of 2009. The newly proposed facility has been positioned as mainly a transitional program shelter but the new facility will remain the county's only men's emergency shelter.
The Orange County Five Year Strategic Plan Draft for housing shows no plan for additional emergency shelter capacity anywhere in Orange County; the IFC facility will be the only emergency shelter in the county.
The Excel table linked below shows National Weather Service data for 2009. Based on IFC policies, we calculated 206 "white flag nights" for Chapel Hill. This means the shelter will open beyond regular capacity about two hundred nights each year making it much larger than suggested. In April the IFC announced their tally for 2009 was 197 nights, which is a mere 9 nights off of our estimate!
Note! We have recently calculated 2010 figures according to the National Weather service data and there were 224 white flag night for Chapel Hill.
The IFC will not provide the fire marshal's maximum occupancy for the new building but we estimate the building could support 150 men as an emergency shelter. A local newspaper estimated 70 men could be housed on emergency nights at the new shelter.
The IFC says white flag nights will have capacity for 17 men. The land lease is for 50 plus years. Will this number always remain the same?
A social worker and longtime IFC volunteer, shared her experiences with shelters at the IFC question-gathering meetings in April 2010. She said when there is only one location for emergency shelter, people will go there regardless of whatever policy has been set. She also expressed doubt IFC would properly turn away men who come to them in the middle of the night. She says that the IFC has always taken in men, particularly on cold nights, regardless of the written policy. When someone comes knocking, they are let in.
"Wet Shelter"
On January 10, 2010, the IFC Shelter Director, Laurie Tucker explained that many successful transitional programs do not have emergency beds or white flag nights because mixing recovering drug and alcohol addicts with using addicts threatens the sobriety and recovery of men in the program. At the same meeting, Ms. Tucker said men who are high or drunk are allowed to stay in IFC's shelter but are evicted if they become disruptive or violent. This policy increases safety inside the shelter for residents but the disruptive men then become the neighborhoods' problem.
According to incident reports provided by the Chapel Hill police department, about 60 men have been charged with trespassing since 2003 at the current shelter. Trespassing is charged when men return to the shelter after being told not to return; of the 60 incidents, only 12 were arrested. The majority of trespasses occurred when public transportation was not running, which means men had limited transportation to leave the area. Again, this may pose a risk for nearby neighborhoods'.
We advocate for a process to provide a better site allowing the IFC to shelter all men without restriction and without compromising the saftey of neighborhoods.
For a full look at the dataset click here: White Flag Night Data