Bridge construction forcing homeless from Southern Indiana sites

Story done by Courier Journal on July 6 2013

Construction of a new bridge next to the Kennedy Bridge is forcing dozens of homeless people to flee their makeshift camps near Jeffersonville, Ind.
“I know it’s coming through here but I don’t know where we’re going to go,” said Michael McKell, 51, as he and about a dozen other homeless people stood under the Interstate 65 overpass in their Seventh Street encampment on a 90-degree day late last month.
McKell, an Army veteran with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, has lived under the overpass since January. But McKell and others will have to leave when the area is closed next month, along with other nearby roads.
Paul Stensrud, director of Jesus Cares at Exit 0, a nonprofit agency that served about 22,000 meals to the homeless last year, said he’s had to move its meal distribution site about five blocks north, evidence that the bridge project is pushing the homeless farther into the city.
There is only one homeless shelter in Jeffersonville, Haven House,which is north of downtown and often has a waiting list.
And homeless people from Southern Indiana often have a tough time getting into Louisville shelters because they need a card that proves they’ve been tested for tuberculosis, a requirement under Kentucky law. Indiana does not have such a requirement.
Last week, Stensrud asked Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore for his blessing to use city-owned land for community meals, such as the former Park and TARC lot at Ninth Street and VFW Boulevard.
But Moore said this week that the city isn’t interested in encouraging the homeless to congregate near a “front door” to the city. He wants it to focus on projects that help attract downtown business in hopes of filling dozens of properties the city bought before he took office for a previously planned canal.
“We’re not there to solve the problem” of homelessness, Moore said. “They’ve gathered a lot of good volunteers from area churches to serve in the ministry.”
Network of aid
The Exit 0 ministry has about 300 volunteers — most are members of one of about three dozen area churches that support the ministry — that help with meals and cleanup efforts.
Stensrud said he understands Moore’s goal of making downtown look nice, but he wishes the city would allow the use of one of the vacant buildings it owns downtown, adding it would at least help keep some of the homeless off the streets during the day.
The City Council last year denied a rezoning request that would have allowed the outreach ministry to set up a transitional community center inside the vacant, city-owned building on Michigan Avenue that formerly housed J&J Video, which has since become a fitness center.
“There are plenty of large facilities sitting vacant in downtown, but who’s got $135,000-$200,000 to get it going?” Stensrud said.
On his outreach missions to the homeless, Stensrud drives a former Ramsey Fire Department ambulance stocked with food, medicine and hygiene products. He also brings a laptop with a wireless router that he uses to help the homeless apply for public housing, Social Security and other aid.
He and his wife, Michele, regularly update a database of roughly 50 homeless people, gathering as much information as they can about each individual, including their mental, medical and financial problems.
Other agencies in the city help the homeless as well.
Gilt Edge Baptist Church provides a free lunch to about 125 people each weekday through its King’s Table Ministry, up from about 110 a day last year.
“We get a lot of people who live under the bridges off Eastern Boulevard and Stansifer Avenue,” said Wilma Sadler-Morton, who coordinates the King’s Table.
In June, when Exit 0 temporarily stopped providing community meals for a month because it needed to find a new site, “we saw people we have never seen before,” Sadler-Morton said.
Rick Kopple, director at the Community Kitchen at 1611 Spring St., said its numbers have increased dramatically this summer as well, with more than 250 some days. About a third of them have been young children. It served about 200 daily each weekday last year, or roughly 53,000 meals.
Helping the poor
Kopple said Moore and other city leaders should be more compassionate about the problems plaguing the poor.
“They have addressed the problem but it hasn’t gone away. If there’s accommodations down there that are not being utilized, by gosh, let’s use them,” Kopple said.
Faced with criticism last year over city workers removing tents and other belongings near the interstate, Moore halted Jeffersonville’s practice of sweeping the homeless out of their makeshift shelters.
After a task force was formed, the city’s Board of Public Works adopted a policy in February that requires city workers to give homeless people 48 hours’ written notice before they remove any items. And the city must hold any items that are seized for 30 days before declaring them abandoned property. During that time, the owners can call a phone number listed on the notice to retrieve the items.
The policy also calls for the city to make “reasonable efforts” to notify organizations that serve the homeless, such as ¬Exit 0.
Stensrud said this arrangement has worked well, allowing him to talk with homeless people after a complaint has been made to let them know they need to find another location, as he has done in neighboring Clarksville.
Moore said the city will continue to notify the homeless and advocacy groups like Exit 0 if there is a problem as construction of the downtown bridge ramps up in the coming weeks and months.
“We’ve got a city we’re all proud of and the entrances to our city will be something we’re proud of,” Moore said, adding he won’t “let anything impede bridge construction.”
The need for jobs, housing
Stensrud said more and more of the homeless his ministry helps are Hoosiers who’ve simply fallen on hard times or haven’t adapted well to living in confined spaces.
Stensrud said treatment for drug use and mental issues are among the top immediate needs for those living on the streets, but the only real solution for keeping them off the streets, he believes, is to help them locate housing and jobs.
Exit 0 has a volunteer doctor and nurses who treat those who show up for meals and the homeless in camps.
And Seven Counties Services recently agreed to send a social worker into the camps to help the homeless get connected with mental health and other social services.
Gwen Cooper, spokeswoman for Seven Counties Services, said the organization does similar mental health outreach in Louisville, going into camps daily with two other homeless ministries to see which services are needed and getting people on the road to recovery.
Kyle Eisenhower, 25, who was living on the streets with his girlfriend in November, said Exit 0 helped him obtain financial aid that he’s using to begin taking classes at the University of Louisville.
“It wasn’t magic,” Eisenhower said. “They helped me through fellowship and by giving me food and a little money when I needed it.”

Reporter Charlie White can be reached at (812) 949-4026 or on Twitter @c_write.