Los Angeles Inspires Cincinnati To Build Service Mall
There is an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer about a new social service mall being planned. It will be a one-stop center that includes key services for homeless people—housing, employment, healthcare, mental health care, education, etc. It will even include a coffee shop, gift store, and a barber shop.
Unfortunately, like most neighborhoods, there is a NIMBY (Not in my backyard) faction. Hopefully, the vision of multiple services will prevail.
It is patterned after the PATH Mall, here in Los Angeles. Here’s what the article states:
Inspired by Los Angeles
The inspiration for CityLink is 3,000 miles away, in Los Angeles. PathMall is a one-stop center where the homeless can literally shop for services - job training, a beauty salon, drug treatment, help with government assistance.
A delegation of Cincinnati agencies read about PathMall, and even visited there in September.
"After looking at PathMall, we formed CityLink," said Rodger Howell, executive director of an inner city ministry called CityCURE that will be joining CityLink. "We believe that we can build better relationships with our clients if everything is handled under one roof.
"We deal with people who have many needs. It is better for them if we can refer them across the hall for counseling or upstairs for job training, rather than having them walk three or four blocks away to another agency."
Here's the article.
posted by LA's Homeless Blog at
12:28 PM
4 Comments:
It is 2.5 times the size of pathmall and they estimate they need 2.5 times the funding.
Pathmall utilizes a couple of dozen organizations, many of them government organizations. CityLink combines only 5 different ministries.
The Pathmall handbook says that you need government support in planning and funding a development like this. CityLink has not partnered with the government or the community.
They are placing this facility across the street from 3 schools and a playground. Of all the possible locations, this seems to be the worst possible.
Citylink and Pathmall have very little in common.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051231/EDIT02/512310353/-1/back01
[b]CityLink must answer tough questions
[i]Saturday, December 31, 2005
Laura Kleckner[/i][/b]
The proposed West End CityLink project exposes incredibly complex social issues for which there are no easy answers. Citing two years of research and a Los Angeles-based model, CityLink organizers claim to have a foundation waiting to be molded into a solution using the community's input.
But CityLink organizers have yet to share the specifics of their research and, in their communications with the media and the community, have shown a blatant disregard for the opinions and insight of residents of the West End and surrounding communities.
CityLink organizers cite PathMall, a Los Angeles "one-stop shop" for homeless support as the model for the center. A couple of noteworthy facts:
PathMall includes about 20 social services agencies - nearly half are government services. CityLink includes 10 agencies - none are government services.
PathMall is a 40,000-square-foot facility. CityLink is a 98,000-square-foot facility, with 38,000 square feet of transitional beds alone.
Community members can't help but question why Cincinnati needs a space 2½ times that of PathMall's site to serve a homeless population one-tenth that of LA's. And how does this affect the existing social service agencies? If no plans are made to reduce existing social services, won't Cincinnati become a magnet for surrounding areas to dump their "under-resourced"?
CityLink's closeness to three schools is also concerning. To placate the opposition, CityLink organizers have described a tightly controlled environment (with registration/security procedures akin to a compound or military institution), yet program participation is voluntary. They can't have it both ways.
When asked, CityLink organizers again cite their research, yet they offer no specifics. When pressed, Crossroads ReachOut Director Tim Senff admitted CityLink's poor dissemination of information and expressed a desire to work with the community going forward. Yet in a Dec. 21 Enquirer article, CityCure Executive Director Rodger Howell stated, "It doesn't matter what the [West End Community] council says." The council unanimously voted to oppose CityLink. How can we not be concerned?
[i]Laura Kleckner is a board member of the Clifton Heights/University Heights/Fairview(CUF) community council and the Clifton Heights Improvement Association.[/i]
Great article! Thanks.
Thanks for interesting article.
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