Last Friday we suggested another alternative to locating a PADS homeless shelter at St. Paul of the Cross: Locating it at the Park Ridge Senior Center, where there are no children and where the hours of operation are more compatible with the PADS operation.
PADS supporters Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and one of his more generous campaign contributors, local attorney Jack “Mr. Insider” Owens, are both reportedly Senior Center members, so we’re pretty sure they could convince their fellow members to put a PADS shelter there. Plus fellow PADS supporter Dick Barton is the Park Ridge Park District Board president, so the three of them should be able to work some intergovernmental cooperation magic with the Senior Center, a Park District facility, if they really want to.
There’s a Park Board meeting this Thursday (July 17) at 7:30 p.m. at Park District headquarters (the Maine Leisure Center, 2701 Sibley). If anybody wants to sound out Mr. Barton and the Park Board members about whether the Park District would support the Senior Center as an alternative to St. Paul of the Cross for a PADS shelter, that would be a good time to do it.
Meanwhile, we received the following 12-point proposal from one of the Concerned St. Paul parents, and it appears to have even more merit than the Senior Center – because it takes the Palatine-based PADS corporation (PADS to HOPE, Inc.) out of the equation and puts local resources totally under local control to focus on our local homeless:
1. We DO NOT INVOLVE the PADS people at all. Their screening is not satisfactory and their program has been dangerous in other towns. Their system only offers one night of undignified help and invites in homeless from other towns. PADS will increase the homeless population in Park Ridge. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
2. The Park Ridge Police Department would locate and identify the PARK RIDGE HOMELESS (which likely number 6-10 individuals). The PARK RIDGE HOMELESS are then fingerprinted to ensure that none of these individuals are a danger to us or our children.
3. Every church in PRMA would shelter one homeless person per night. This idea eliminates a large group assembling around a church before and after they are sheltered.
4. The homeless would be sheltered in the rectory or another location in the church, but not in an area used by children.
5. Volunteers (and there are many) would be scheduled to come to each location, actually meet the homeless person, and bring a warm meal. Many volunteers and their families may want to spend time with the guest, have dinner with them, and engage them in meaningful conversation. (Rather than just “supervise” them as PADS volunteers do.) This would be a great way to teach children about how to care for others.
6. An additional volunteer can take the persons clothing home to be washed and returned fresh and clean (something else that is lacking in the current plan.)
7. With this system, the homeless can also spend time with one of our priests and discuss our faith (something that is actually prohibited by PADS policy).
8. Unlike the PADS idea, the homeless would not be forced to share a bathroom with 10-20 other homeless people, or wait in line for a toilet.
9. A comfortable fold out bed can be purchased for the guest to sleep on, in a dignified location, rather than on a hard mat or cot on the floor of a gym.
10. The guest could have access to a shower, a television set, and caring people. The PADS system would require the homeless to wash themselves in a sink in the boys bathroom.
11. In the morning, the guest would have breakfast and leave – showered, wearing clean clothes, and feeling that they just spent time with good Christian people who truly care about them. Their experience would be far more meaningful and dignified than any PADS shelter could offer.
12. Finally, as the guest leaves, he would be told which church to go to that night. That would ensure that only one person shows up at each location. It also ensures that we take care of the Park Ridge homeless, and not people from Chicago and other suburbs.
Additionally, this program addresses the issue 7 days a week. PADS only addresses it for one day. This program spreads the homeless out at numerous churches, rather than a large number at one location.
Frankly, this proposal sounds a whole lot more “Christian” than the one-night-per-week, feel-good-with-minimal-inconvenience PADS version that the Park Ridge Ministerial Association leaped to embrace for reasons we still can’t quite understand, unless all those “Christians” running the PRMA really were looking only for a no muss, no fuss turn-key operation that required the least possible commitment and accountability – a Christianity “Lite” version more concerned with expanding the PADS franchise to a new community then with actually solving our local homeless problem.
And better yet, the Concerned Parent proposal would be more likely to maintain the local homeless people’s ties to this community, thereby increasing the chances of their escaping homelessness at rates that exceed the meager results that PADS has been producing from its “if it’s Tuesday, this must be Schaumburg” musical-communities model.
Plus it looks to us like the Senior Center proposal and the Concerned Parent proposal could be pursued on parallel tracks simultaneously. That’s good, because either of them appears to be a substantial improvement over the current St. Paul PADS plan.
Well done, Concerned St. Paul Parent! And another good idea produced by the NIMBY mentality.