The Armoury-Quadrangle Civic Association recently welcomed public safety officials to its March membership meeting. According to secretary Anna Brandenburg’s notes (Word doc):
Specifically regarding the downtown homeless population, [Police] Commissioner [Edward] Flynn commented on the [Police] Department’s attempt to compile a "census" last year, and the ensuing accusations of harassment. He expressed his feeling that Springfield is an "enabling environment" in which it has become extremely difficult to address the issue of our "permanent street population."
The word "enabling" came up when I spoke with Commissioner Flynn in January about the challenges we face in downtown Springfield. Flynn told me that he was grappling with a "subset" of homelessness related to "people who pretty much conduct all of their lives on the street." He said he was encountering a big push-back from the advocacy community, which he characterized as refusing "to buy into the notion that the conduct of certain people who happen not to have permitted homes is public business, and its regulation is an appropriate thing for the government."
Court House Walk alongside 31 Elm Street in downtown Springfield
"It’s a very frustrating set of discussions to have," Flynn continued. He said if he attempts to regulate such public behavior, he is perceived as "anti-homeless, and on a slippery slope to being disconnected from the needs of those less fortunate."
"It’s not a bad thing," he said, "to point out that having a homeless shelter next the Hall of Fame, and a soup kitchen next to the courthouse, and another soup kitchen next to the library and the Dr. Seuss parks, are not good for the perception of this city as a safe and well-governed place."
Downtown Springfield’s Riverfront Park near the Hoop Hall, with a sleeping person in the grass
Flynn described "enabling behavior" as feeding and sheltering people "with no expectations for improvements in their behavior. They can spend the rest of the day trying to get money so they can get drunk and pass out, and then I have to deal with them. How is this solving the street homeless problem?" He described finding passed-out people on the sidewalk, their coat pockets full of empty nip bottles.
"How is attracting [those services] to our downtown helping the city be viable enough to take care of people in need?" Flynn asked rhetorically.
At the AQCA meeting, Carol Costa, who is a downtown resident as well as a board member of AQCA and Friends of the Homeless, which operates a shelter on Worthington Street, shared some information of interest. From the meeting notes:
[Costa] reported on recent RFPs which have gone out for the development of additional supportive housing and services for the homeless. There is a consensus that additional services should not be concentrated solely in downtown Springfield, and proposals for developments in other neighborhoods/towns will be given stronger consideration.
Commissioner Flynn remarked that it is the combination of realistic supportive housing options, combined with conduct-based enforcement, that has allowed other cities to succeed in reclaiming their downtown.
While this is just a minor collection of sentences in meeting notes from a civic association monthly meeting, I find it highly meaningful and symbolic of tremendous change.
One of the chronic social dysfunctions Springfield has suffered from is its difficulty at all levels of government and society in having a consistent, balanced ability to judge our capacity, to know when we may need to refuse certain offers or perceived "opportunities."
I have been involved in groups or activities where a seemingly blind, collective desire to please was much stronger than the ability to discern capacity.
Thus the city and the people living in it have, seemingly over decades, taken on much more than we could handle, setting ourselves up for failure after failure. In addition, out of impatience with ourselves for such failures, we may exasperatedly give up easily, so that some of our most promising attempts fizzle out, whether because we run out of energy to keep requesting grant funds, or because are only a few people championing the attempt, and they become exhausted or otherwise retreat.
Pearl Street in downtown Springfield, just northeast of Apremont Triangle
We very much need to set ourselves up for success, and this absolutely must entail some assessments, based on reality rather than the desire to please, of our ability to function at certain levels. It is far better to experiment based on likely success in very small stages, than to take on an enormously new prospect for which we have no glimmer of a notion for whether it can be sustained. This is why, for instance, the Urban Land Institute recommended seeing what the market may bear for both Union Station (after prepping for development) and the York Street jail site (after razing). In learning any new skill, small attempted stages can lead to greater confidence, and increased signs of encouragement and promising innovation. Before you can run, learn to walk, and all that.
Such assessment of our capacity, in part, is a matter of letting ourselves believe in our worth, our nobility, as a city, as a civic entity with our own unique set of eminent assets and justifiable liabilities. The city can stand up straight and tall, no matter how tattered and worn, and insist on a dignified, professional means of interacting in all of its affairs, from the upper reaches of its government right on down to its individual schoolchildren. The city needs standards, guidelines, limits; such boundaries necessarily include sometimes saying, "No, thanks." Our potential to be everything we might dream to become as a city is real, but it doesn’t mean we can get there all in one step. We have to pace ourselves.
The idea that Springfield is an appropriate location—and its downtown, of all places within this place—for so many concentrated services for the most poor and needy of the region has to change yesterday. Increasing numbers of people must begin to believe in the city as a place worthy of respect, which includes those very poor and needy, as well as the not-poor-or-needy people who live and work downtown. This is perhaps a cultural shift for the region, to discuss and frame the central city itself as a dignified place, regardless of its current appearance, and to get a sense of its own spine.
