{"id":2253,"date":"2012-11-21T09:09:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T16:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2253"},"modified":"2012-11-21T13:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T20:01:00","slug":"thanksgiving-thought-housing-the-homeless-at-9th-and-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2253","title":{"rendered":"Housing the Homeless at 9th and Colorado?"},"content":{"rendered":"

While doing a Patricia Calhoun<\/a> check this morning I came across her post-mortem on the Walmart War at 9th<\/sup> and Colorado<\/a>\u00a0entitled \u201cWith Walmart Out of the Way, What Should Fill the CU Healthcare District?<\/a>\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Patricia has some tongue-in-cheek suggestions, including one for a \u201cHomeless Hotel\u201d:<\/p>\n

The homeless check in, and they’ll definitely check out…your neighborhood! Yes, the homeless have been booted off the 16th Street Mall<\/a> and sidewalks across town. They now roam around the Ballpark neighborhood, the Golden Triangle<\/a>, all along Colfax Avenue<\/a>, and everywhere else they can avoid detection. Why not just consolidate the city’s entire homeless population in one large complex, complete with male, female and family housing, transitional apartments, soup kitchens, small industry for job development, and drug and psychological treatment facilities? Neighbors might whine, but the old CU complex already has a state-of-the-art psychiatric center that deserves to be saved.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Development Possibilities for 9th and Colorado (Westword)<\/p><\/div>\n

Actually, a “Homeless Hotel” isn\u2019t such a bad idea if you’ve been keeping tabs on developments in the construction of affordable public housing for the poor and elderly nationwide. \u00a0The New York Times<\/em> architecture critic\u00a0Michael Kimmelman<\/a>\u00a0has been doing so from the very beginning of his tenure,\u00a0<\/strong>just like his predecessor\u00a0Nicolai Ouroussoff<\/a>\u00a0did from time-to-time before him. \u00a0Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s most recent piece on the subject, \u201cDesign as Balm for a Community\u2019s Soul<\/a>,\u201d considers a couple of projects in San Francisco and Oakland from the standpoint of their aesthetic, psychological, financial, and social impact.\u00a0 Here\u2019s Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s money quote about the award winning\u00a0<\/strong>Drs. Julian and Raye Richardson Apartments<\/a> in San Francisco, designed by David Baker+Partners Architects<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe building respects the neighborhood, the residents, and all this is reciprocated,\u201d as Brian Quinn, who manages the apartments for Community Housing Partnership, put it to me. The organization worked with Mercy Housing, a nonprofit developer, to construct Richardson.\u00a0 The cost? $27 million.\u00a0 The value?\u00a0 As with any subsidized housing project that spends a little extra for quality architecture, some advocates for the homeless questioned whether the money might have been better spent on more units. But health and safety go hand in hand with pride of place and a sense of dignity. San Francisco\u2019s public health department said the city saves up to $29,000 a year on former homeless residents in supportive housing, and in general nearly $10,000 per resident a year, which jibes with Community Housing Partnership\u2019s numbers at Richardson. That\u2019s not counting the contribution Mr. Baker\u2019s work has made to rising real estate prices in the area<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>[emphasis added].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Drs. Julian and Raye Richardson Apartments, San Francisco (Mathew Sumner)<\/p><\/div>\n

Concern about real estate values was a central factor motivating neighborhood opposition to the construction of a Walmart at 9th<\/sup> and Colorado.\u00a0 Filling the 9th<\/sup> and Colorado space\u2014at least in part\u2014with signature residences for homeless and formerly homeless people along with some \u201ctransitional” services to support them could be a win-win for the city and the neighborhood. \u00a0Ever since the Walmart War ended the Do It Right at 9th<\/sup><\/a> Facebook page has presented no substantive ideas for developing the site. \u00a0Local city councilwoman and Denver City Council President Mary Beth Susman appears to be uninterested in using her Town Hall meetings<\/a> to solicit alternative development suggestions.\u00a0 Housing for the homeless is a credible alternative. And it might also bring<\/em> some soul to a local neighborhood that, in my view, desperately needs some<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While doing a Patricia Calhoun check this morning I came across her post-mortem on the Walmart War at 9th and Colorado\u00a0entitled \u201cWith Walmart Out of the Way, What Should Fill the CU Healthcare District?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Patricia has some tongue-in-cheek suggestions, including one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9th-and-colorado"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-Al","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2253"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2265,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions\/2265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}