September 3, 2004/Elul 17 5763, Vol. 55, No. 50
Campus gives homeless helpMultimillion-dollar facility to offer 'a real alternative'
MICHAEL MIKLOFSKY
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 An artist's rendering of plans for the Human Services Campus. The campus hopes to be open by December 2005, assuming that it is able to raise the rest of the money that it needs. Photo courtesy of Margaret Daniels |
That is the message that Martin Shultz is trying to promote and his strategy for raising funds to complete construction on the Human Services Campus.
It has been more than a year since the ceremonial groundbreaking of the campus on Aug. 22, 2003, and Human Services Campus LLC, the company putting together the property, is still $5 million short of its goal to finish construction. The campus completed financing for the first phase of the campus on Friday, Aug. 27, which will allow construction to continue while the remaining funds are raised.
The campus will synthesize the efforts of several different community organizations and provide housing for some of Maricopa County's estimated 10,000-14,000 homeless men, women and children.
One homeless person who has already benefited from the campus' services at its Day Resource Center is Bill Cannon, a 37-year-old man who has been a homeless drifter since he quit high school at age 18. During that time, he spent periods of time incarcerated for burglary and theft, which assisted his drug habit. He continues to suffer from chronic depression and has otherwise had substance abuse problems.
Since the center opened in April 2004, when he came there, 16 clients have moved to permanent housing. Now, the center is working with 142 people in different stages of care. Bill has moved into the Working Men's Shelter at Arizona Shelter Services and enrolled and completed the Substance Abuse Treatment Program through Community Bridges.
Cannon now works for the center as a security and custodial technician and has reunited with his estranged mother.
"It's more individual attention instead of sort of a mass housing operation and it's going to provide services ranging from treatment services to health care services, to job placement services (and) training before that," says Shultz, who as vice chairman of the Phoenix Community Alliance has been working to revitalize downtown Phoenix and at the same time reduce the number of panhandlers on city streets.
"Eventually we get to the all-important housing component, not only the temporary phenomena of housing for homeless, which is hopefully temporary, but affordable permanent housing," he adds.
As part of the plans to develop a capital mall in Phoenix, the homeless situation needed to be addressed, he says.
"When you are dealing with sexy visible projects like transportation or the development of the civic plaza, or downtown, that's one thing, but I think real community spirit is also in the area of helping the homeless and helping the misfortunate and helping the unfortunate."
Shultz's community service to the Valley stretches back more than 20 years. He served on the board of directors for the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix and Temple Beth Israel for six years each, and for more than 20 years on the Jewish Community Center of Greater Phoenix's board, before it became the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center.
In addition to his work with the alliance, he is the vice president of Pinnacle West Capital, the parent company to Arizona Public Service, and chairman of the Human Services Campus capital campaign, among other affiliations.
"In order to really develop the capital mall area in our Valley as we develop the downtown, we needed to attack the homeless problem, and for years in our community, I'm talking 30 years, this problem of homelessness is sort of not anybody's problem," Shultz says. "There's no statutory responsibility in Arizona that gives the solution or the responsibility to one single government entity."
So, Shultz says, he thought, "You know what, in order to deal with this, we, the private sector, are going to have to sort of take leadership, pull the parties together and figure out a solution."
That gathering of the parties has included the Maricopa County government and the Maricopa Association of Governments' Conti-nuum of Care Regional Committee on Homelessness. For the past three years, these groups have worked on plans to centralize the public service organizations that provide care to the homeless and other populations in need of additional assistance, which have been scattered throughout the Valley.
The major service providers will include Central Arizona Shelter Services, Maricopa County Health Care for the Homeless Program, Northwest Organization for Voluntary Alternatives Safe Haven, St. Joseph the Worker and St. Vincent de Paul. All of these organizations will jointly provide clothing, counseling, education, health care, job readiness training and temporary shelter.
"Until you deal with the root cause of homeless-ness or street people you are not going to get a marked improvement on getting people off the street," Shultz says.
"There are some people that are going to be on the street because they want to be on the street, but for the most part, people do not want to be on the street," he adds. "They find themselves on the street because they do have health problems, mental challenges or economic challenges."
Annette Stein, director of the Maricopa County Health Care for the Homeless program, has been involved in the construction and development plans since before the company broke ground on the site and says, "It was important that we got together and joined in meeting the needs of the population.
"This is an incredible representation amongst faith-based, private and nonprofit government and community organizations."
The campus, Shultz hopes, will provide the homeless population with the resources they need to rejoin society, rather than offering them a quick buck or two, which does nothing to help, he says.
"My personal preference is not to give them money, I don't think that's the answer," Shultz says. "If a person wanted to give them help, give them the address of the Human Services Campus, give them the address of St. Vincent de Paul, give them the address of a place where they can get some help, if you really want to help somebody on the street.
"I think you need to give them an opportunity to deal with 'why are they panhandling?' And that's usually because they need a meal," he adds. "We are thinking this may reduce the county's homeless population because we are actually giving people a real alternative, not two bucks."
The campus is being built at 1209 W. Madison St., Phoenix. For more information on the campus or to make a donation, visit www.maricopa.gov/hscampus or call 602-256-6945, ext. 3141.
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