USA: Common Ground
13 min 35 secs - 8 December 2003
COLGAN: Steeped in southern charm and old money, this is New Orleans, Louisiana. But this is the wealthy side of town, just a short ride away from poverty-stricken, crumbling New Orleans. A city polarised by the haves and have nots.
REVEREND TOBEY PITMAN: We turn people away every night. I mean once our beds 21:00
are filled we have no choice but to turn people away of course. 21:35
COLGAN: Every day its the same story here at the Brantley Baptist Center, one of the few emergency shelters in the city. Homeless men start queuing late afternoon. Inside, the women are already being fed before being given a bed for the night. In the morning, each will be back on the street fighting for a bed here the next night. 21:41
REVEREND TOBEY PITMAN: Probably the average stay is about six weeks but whats disheartening for me is that when someone comes here and 22:09 they seem to be caught in a cycle in which they just are seemingly unable to wrestle themselves out of homelessness. 22:15
COLGAN: New Orleans is suffering crisis fatigue with as many as nineteen thousand people homeless, its stuck in a cycle of short-term sheltering and few long term solutions.
JIM PATE: One problem has been that no one has focused on a single solution. I think the approach of the government here locally has largely been 22:24 to give money to the service providers in hopes that if you adequately provide services and this type of thing, that homeless people will evaporate into the mist. 22:47
JIM PATE: What were going to be building here and theres actually four lots, were going to have four, roughly eleven hundred square foot, three bedroom houses. 23:10
COLGAN: Jim Pate and his group Habitat for Humanity have been battling to help a different group of homeless. They build houses for the working poor, families with an income so low they still cant afford a roof over their heads. 23:20
JIM PATE: Were probably talking about somewhere in the neighbourhood of sixty, seventy five thousand people when weve got approximately forty six percent of our children who live at or below the poverty level. 23:41
COLGAN: New Orleans has had its share of funding for the homeless but like many cities, too much of it has been wasted.
JIM PATE: Its not simply that theres been a lot of money put in, there have been 23:58 bureaucratic costs and expenses that have reduced it. There have been, frankly, inefficiencies and -- I wont say misappropriation -- but misapplication of funding or unwise application. 24:13
COLGAN: In a room high above the Mississippi River, civic leaders have turned to New Yorker Rosanne Haggerty, a woman with a simple, ambitious mission. 24:40
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: Our organisation is, I suppose, distinguished by our belief that homelessness is a solvable problem. 24:51
COLGAN: The answer it seems lies in New York. Rosanne Haggerty founded the Common Ground Community and its first project was the Times Square Hotel. 25:00
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: The Times Square back in 90 was in bankruptcy and a real wreck, sliding into oblivion 25:19 and we were brainstorming about what would a solution be that would allow the building to be saved and be some type of housing resource for people in need. 25:25
COLGAN: The Hotel was used for years to house the homeless in squalor.
BILL DALEY: It was just rampant drug use, prostitution and we had even mothers prostituting their kids onto the streets and into the video arcades at 42nd Street at the time. It was really quite horrendous. 25:52
COLGAN: Bill Daley was a Director in New York City Mayors Office when Rosanne Haggerty came to see him. At the time his job was overseeing the redevelopment of Times Square. 26:02
BILL DALEY: She came to me because I was then the Mayors representative and basically said, well heres what wed like to do with Times Square. We want to put the 26:13
Bill homeless and veterans and crazy people -- and I said oh my God! I said I dont need this. Not another bunch of do-gooders coming in trying to clean up the neighbourhood, because wed had enough of them, and I said I dont think this is going to fly. 26:21
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: This organisation that was you know saying were going to do this project was about two months old at that point and they were sort of like hmmm you know even if it is a good idea, who are you? 26:35
COLGAN: And did you at times thing am I nuts? Is no one getting this? 26:45
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: Well I was thinking not that no ones getting this but maybe theyre right. Maybe I am nuts. 26:49
COLGAN: It was a massive undertaking. The historic building was derelict. Built in 1922 as a luxury hotel, it began a downhill slide that ended with more than seventeen hundred building code violations in the 80s. A landlord was pocketing subsidies for the homeless in a building where elderly tenants were too afraid to leave their rooms. With Rosanne trumpeting the cause, she convinced big business, the Mayors Office and welfare services to back her vision of supported housing. 27:00
BILL DALEY: I think Rosanne is a great propagandist you know I mean she really won me over very, very easily and I dont know 27:36 whether it was her personality or the force of the ideas itself or the people around her. 27:44
COLGAN: Or a combination?
BILL DALEY: A combination of everything probably and it just seemed like a great idea. I got behind it and so did a lot of movers and shakers in Times Square. 27:48
COLGAN: The first radical step was to offer combined housing for the homeless and local low income workers. ROSANNE
HAGGERTY: We have tenants, all single adults and all single occupancy apartments. Half of the tenants are individuals who were homeless before moving here. We have 220 individuals who are chronically and persistently mentally ill. We have another 50 tenants with full blown AIDS, not just HIV but, you know, AIDS and on the other side weve got 326 low income working people at the time they applied. Everything from actors, musicians, a few teachers, people who work at the hotels in the area. 28:12
COLGAN: Is this a standard room like most rooms? 28:47
AARON DOBISH: Yes this is a pretty average size room.
COLGAN: It could be an explosive mix, if not for the hands on approach.
AARON DOBISH: Generally the largest problem that we have is people who are not paying their rent and usually thats a sign of something else. Its a sign that theyve relapsed and are using drugs again or not taking their medication and so on. So well actually work with them pretty heavily and pretty, you know a lot before well take them to court.
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: You have to pay your rent 28:58
Rosanne on time and you have to be a good neighbour. So if your behaviour is disruptive, if it puts anyone else in the building at risk and its not addressed and corrected upon notice, we will utilise the court system. We hate to, but we will. 29:17
COLGAN: So successful has the Times Square model proved, its been used on three more premises, including New Yorks historic Prince George Hotel on 28th Street. 29:38
Joe Carr is living proof the scheme works. Actor and bartender, hes been at the Prince George for 18 months and is now training to be a physical instructor. 29:53
JOE CARR: I just got an A minus in Kinesiology and I just want to know why I didnt get an A, but thats OK.
COLGAN: Its hard to believe hes been anything but a pillar of health and moderation, but two years ago his was a very different story.
JOE CARR: At that time I was in a shelter 30:14
on Wards Island, its up near Harlem in Manhattan which is really, its one step away from the penitentiary. Its really close, and not trying to work my way out of the problem, not addressing the fact that I had drugs and alcohol issues. 30:26
Joe and Colgan While I was still in the shelter Id gotten a job tending bar and I had also gotten some acting work and I had lost both due to excessive drinking, and something in my head just kind of clicked. 30:44
Joe shows room This is my home. Pardon the mess but Ive been studying like crazy. 20:56
COLGAN: Yeah, so Bachelor Pad?
JOE CARR: Yeah.
COLGAN: Everything here is yours and its your space? 31:07
JOE CARR: Definitely my space. Its sometimes not kept as well as it should be but its mine to be able to do that.
COLGAN: Its a course of pride his father got to see him sober before passing away. 31:17
JOE CARR: This was from my dad [holding medallion].
COLGAN: Common Ground he says helps you help yourself.
COLGAN: Did you think two years ago youd be getting an A minus in 31:29
JOE CARR: I never thought they would accept me to school. Actually I went over the grades again to make sure it was right.
COLGAN: It may be small but its home and its his. He has the lease to prove it. 31:39
JOE CARR: Ive been an actor all my life, you know. I live on 28th Street Manhattan. Its a dream come true, you know. So as long as they let me stay Im here. 31:45
COLGAN: The Common Ground approach gives the homeless a roof and a community. Theyre no longer societys cast-offs. Making it work, though, has taken a lot of fine tuning. The right building, the right tenants and the on-site services they need. Bought with a low interest loan from the city, the Times Square Hotel survives with clever financing, corporate investors are attracted by a reward of tax savings. Each resident gives a third of whatever they earn. The poorest bring in rental subsidies.
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: This type of model solves a lot of problems. 31:59
Rosanne I absolutely believe this is a model that not just can but has proven itself able to travel. 32:52
COLGAN: Common Ground has made a dent in New Yorks homeless numbers but its still fighting for a policy shift away from short term bandaids towards long term solutions. 33:01
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: There are more people in New York who are homeless now than at any time since the city shelter system has existed over the last 23 years. The city has vast resources tied up in their emergency systems, spending over a billion dollars a year in housing families and individuals in emergency shelters and in housing.
COLGAN: Back in New Orleans the city has all the empty buildings it needs to house the homeless and now for the first time, all those needed to make it happen have come to the table.
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: Weve got to share 33:39
Weve got to have a common strategy. Weve got to get focused on getting people into housing instead of getting people into shelter. Woman at meeting: Yes, we could do more. We all in this room could do more. Man at meeting: We need to start today. Okay, with the people in this room, getting the room out. 33:53
JIM PATE: Its my hope I think and the hope of a lot of people here that if we use a model such as Common Ground or our own local variation of it and we all come together and we get a project done, were all going to sit there, pat each other on the back and say OK whats the next project? 34:12
13 min 35 secs - 8 December 2003
COLGAN: Steeped in southern charm and old money, this is New Orleans, Louisiana. But this is the wealthy side of town, just a short ride away from poverty-stricken, crumbling New Orleans. A city polarised by the haves and have nots.
REVEREND TOBEY PITMAN: We turn people away every night. I mean once our beds 21:00
are filled we have no choice but to turn people away of course. 21:35
COLGAN: Every day its the same story here at the Brantley Baptist Center, one of the few emergency shelters in the city. Homeless men start queuing late afternoon. Inside, the women are already being fed before being given a bed for the night. In the morning, each will be back on the street fighting for a bed here the next night. 21:41
REVEREND TOBEY PITMAN: Probably the average stay is about six weeks but whats disheartening for me is that when someone comes here and 22:09 they seem to be caught in a cycle in which they just are seemingly unable to wrestle themselves out of homelessness. 22:15
COLGAN: New Orleans is suffering crisis fatigue with as many as nineteen thousand people homeless, its stuck in a cycle of short-term sheltering and few long term solutions.
JIM PATE: One problem has been that no one has focused on a single solution. I think the approach of the government here locally has largely been 22:24 to give money to the service providers in hopes that if you adequately provide services and this type of thing, that homeless people will evaporate into the mist. 22:47
JIM PATE: What were going to be building here and theres actually four lots, were going to have four, roughly eleven hundred square foot, three bedroom houses. 23:10
COLGAN: Jim Pate and his group Habitat for Humanity have been battling to help a different group of homeless. They build houses for the working poor, families with an income so low they still cant afford a roof over their heads. 23:20
JIM PATE: Were probably talking about somewhere in the neighbourhood of sixty, seventy five thousand people when weve got approximately forty six percent of our children who live at or below the poverty level. 23:41
COLGAN: New Orleans has had its share of funding for the homeless but like many cities, too much of it has been wasted.
JIM PATE: Its not simply that theres been a lot of money put in, there have been 23:58 bureaucratic costs and expenses that have reduced it. There have been, frankly, inefficiencies and -- I wont say misappropriation -- but misapplication of funding or unwise application. 24:13
COLGAN: In a room high above the Mississippi River, civic leaders have turned to New Yorker Rosanne Haggerty, a woman with a simple, ambitious mission. 24:40
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: Our organisation is, I suppose, distinguished by our belief that homelessness is a solvable problem. 24:51
COLGAN: The answer it seems lies in New York. Rosanne Haggerty founded the Common Ground Community and its first project was the Times Square Hotel. 25:00
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: The Times Square back in 90 was in bankruptcy and a real wreck, sliding into oblivion 25:19 and we were brainstorming about what would a solution be that would allow the building to be saved and be some type of housing resource for people in need. 25:25
COLGAN: The Hotel was used for years to house the homeless in squalor.
BILL DALEY: It was just rampant drug use, prostitution and we had even mothers prostituting their kids onto the streets and into the video arcades at 42nd Street at the time. It was really quite horrendous. 25:52
COLGAN: Bill Daley was a Director in New York City Mayors Office when Rosanne Haggerty came to see him. At the time his job was overseeing the redevelopment of Times Square. 26:02
BILL DALEY: She came to me because I was then the Mayors representative and basically said, well heres what wed like to do with Times Square. We want to put the 26:13
Bill homeless and veterans and crazy people -- and I said oh my God! I said I dont need this. Not another bunch of do-gooders coming in trying to clean up the neighbourhood, because wed had enough of them, and I said I dont think this is going to fly. 26:21
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: This organisation that was you know saying were going to do this project was about two months old at that point and they were sort of like hmmm you know even if it is a good idea, who are you? 26:35
COLGAN: And did you at times thing am I nuts? Is no one getting this? 26:45
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: Well I was thinking not that no ones getting this but maybe theyre right. Maybe I am nuts. 26:49
COLGAN: It was a massive undertaking. The historic building was derelict. Built in 1922 as a luxury hotel, it began a downhill slide that ended with more than seventeen hundred building code violations in the 80s. A landlord was pocketing subsidies for the homeless in a building where elderly tenants were too afraid to leave their rooms. With Rosanne trumpeting the cause, she convinced big business, the Mayors Office and welfare services to back her vision of supported housing. 27:00
BILL DALEY: I think Rosanne is a great propagandist you know I mean she really won me over very, very easily and I dont know 27:36 whether it was her personality or the force of the ideas itself or the people around her. 27:44
COLGAN: Or a combination?
BILL DALEY: A combination of everything probably and it just seemed like a great idea. I got behind it and so did a lot of movers and shakers in Times Square. 27:48
COLGAN: The first radical step was to offer combined housing for the homeless and local low income workers. ROSANNE
HAGGERTY: We have tenants, all single adults and all single occupancy apartments. Half of the tenants are individuals who were homeless before moving here. We have 220 individuals who are chronically and persistently mentally ill. We have another 50 tenants with full blown AIDS, not just HIV but, you know, AIDS and on the other side weve got 326 low income working people at the time they applied. Everything from actors, musicians, a few teachers, people who work at the hotels in the area. 28:12
COLGAN: Is this a standard room like most rooms? 28:47
AARON DOBISH: Yes this is a pretty average size room.
COLGAN: It could be an explosive mix, if not for the hands on approach.
AARON DOBISH: Generally the largest problem that we have is people who are not paying their rent and usually thats a sign of something else. Its a sign that theyve relapsed and are using drugs again or not taking their medication and so on. So well actually work with them pretty heavily and pretty, you know a lot before well take them to court.
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: You have to pay your rent 28:58
Rosanne on time and you have to be a good neighbour. So if your behaviour is disruptive, if it puts anyone else in the building at risk and its not addressed and corrected upon notice, we will utilise the court system. We hate to, but we will. 29:17
COLGAN: So successful has the Times Square model proved, its been used on three more premises, including New Yorks historic Prince George Hotel on 28th Street. 29:38
Joe Carr is living proof the scheme works. Actor and bartender, hes been at the Prince George for 18 months and is now training to be a physical instructor. 29:53
JOE CARR: I just got an A minus in Kinesiology and I just want to know why I didnt get an A, but thats OK.
COLGAN: Its hard to believe hes been anything but a pillar of health and moderation, but two years ago his was a very different story.
JOE CARR: At that time I was in a shelter 30:14
on Wards Island, its up near Harlem in Manhattan which is really, its one step away from the penitentiary. Its really close, and not trying to work my way out of the problem, not addressing the fact that I had drugs and alcohol issues. 30:26
Joe and Colgan While I was still in the shelter Id gotten a job tending bar and I had also gotten some acting work and I had lost both due to excessive drinking, and something in my head just kind of clicked. 30:44
Joe shows room This is my home. Pardon the mess but Ive been studying like crazy. 20:56
COLGAN: Yeah, so Bachelor Pad?
JOE CARR: Yeah.
COLGAN: Everything here is yours and its your space? 31:07
JOE CARR: Definitely my space. Its sometimes not kept as well as it should be but its mine to be able to do that.
COLGAN: Its a course of pride his father got to see him sober before passing away. 31:17
JOE CARR: This was from my dad [holding medallion].
COLGAN: Common Ground he says helps you help yourself.
COLGAN: Did you think two years ago youd be getting an A minus in 31:29
JOE CARR: I never thought they would accept me to school. Actually I went over the grades again to make sure it was right.
COLGAN: It may be small but its home and its his. He has the lease to prove it. 31:39
JOE CARR: Ive been an actor all my life, you know. I live on 28th Street Manhattan. Its a dream come true, you know. So as long as they let me stay Im here. 31:45
COLGAN: The Common Ground approach gives the homeless a roof and a community. Theyre no longer societys cast-offs. Making it work, though, has taken a lot of fine tuning. The right building, the right tenants and the on-site services they need. Bought with a low interest loan from the city, the Times Square Hotel survives with clever financing, corporate investors are attracted by a reward of tax savings. Each resident gives a third of whatever they earn. The poorest bring in rental subsidies.
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: This type of model solves a lot of problems. 31:59
Rosanne I absolutely believe this is a model that not just can but has proven itself able to travel. 32:52
COLGAN: Common Ground has made a dent in New Yorks homeless numbers but its still fighting for a policy shift away from short term bandaids towards long term solutions. 33:01
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: There are more people in New York who are homeless now than at any time since the city shelter system has existed over the last 23 years. The city has vast resources tied up in their emergency systems, spending over a billion dollars a year in housing families and individuals in emergency shelters and in housing.
COLGAN: Back in New Orleans the city has all the empty buildings it needs to house the homeless and now for the first time, all those needed to make it happen have come to the table.
ROSANNE HAGGERTY: Weve got to share 33:39
Weve got to have a common strategy. Weve got to get focused on getting people into housing instead of getting people into shelter. Woman at meeting: Yes, we could do more. We all in this room could do more. Man at meeting: We need to start today. Okay, with the people in this room, getting the room out. 33:53
JIM PATE: Its my hope I think and the hope of a lot of people here that if we use a model such as Common Ground or our own local variation of it and we all come together and we get a project done, were all going to sit there, pat each other on the back and say OK whats the next project? 34:12