The idea — Mayor Shirley Washington’s idea — behind the Opportunity House homeless shelter is not to interminably provide housing for people. Instead, it is to provide housing for someone in a desperate situation and then to work with them to get them stabilized and back out into the world in a better place.
Maybe they have or had a substance abuse problem, a mental health issue or emotional problems and because of those issues, they lost all contact with the real world: no Social Security card, no identification, no attachment to public aid in whatever form that might take.
Once stabilized, then there is maybe some job training and help finding work with someone watching over them to make sure they are operating in some type of a normal range.
The question was how to make that happen. The city got hold of the old First Ward School and some grant money. But who is going to take the dream and turn it into reality?
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Well, it would appear that Depaul USA can handle the task. The nonprofit met with organizers of Opportunity House last week and made a pitch to become the first operator of the Pine Bluff shelter. And from the sound of the presentation, the literature they provided and poking around on the internet, they do it all at a level of professionalism that Pine Bluff would be proud to have.
What they want to charge is a little more than the city wanted to spend. But does that not happen every single time you see the perfect thing, whether it is a house, a car or that filet on the menu? And it is not as if they and the city are that far apart on the money.
But that is getting ahead of things a bit. The organizers will now digest what the Depaul representatives presented and go from there, with the next stop being the City Council.
The city will likely continue to have quite a bit of skin in the game if this goes through. More than half of the yearly tab, which is north of a half-million dollars, could come from outside sources, meaning not from the city’s general fund. However, some would likely come directly from city resources. Then there is the upkeep on the building and the utilities, the combination of which could be significant.
If the city is going to have a shelter of this type, let us do it up right. Right now, that would appear to be with Depaul running things. Oh, and if it helps to convince the doubters, this outfit has been doing this type of thing in several states for more than a decade and in several other countries across the world. It is exciting to think of what they can accomplish here.