After community pushback, especially from the Saratoga Central Catholic School parents’ community, Shelters of Saratoga has pulled out of plans to move into the Saratoga Senior Center building on Williams Street near the intersection of Hamilton Street. The school uses playing fields at that corner, and family members recently met to challenge placement of the shelter near the school. The county owns the Senior Center Building.
[The Daily Gazette carried a story about the meeting of the school community.]
A social media post on the Shelters website says: "We value your trust in us as a homeless services provider in the greater Saratoga area. After hearing the concerns of the community, we've decided not to move forward with a shelter at 5 Williams Street. We have identified a more viable location to operate Code Blue, and will make an announcement in the near future."
Shelter's Executive Director Duane Vaughn said in an interview today that the group has found another location, and that they will announce it next week once they have worked it out fully with the owner.
"We're just doing our best to make everybody happy here,” Vaughn said today.
The announcement of the move in October was made with city leaders, leaders from the city’s various homeless outreach groups and philanthropists Lisa and Ed Mintzen. Lisa Mintzen is a member of Shelters’ board and a major donor to the project. On hand also was William Dake, of the Dake family foundation. The Dake family owns Stewart’s Shops.
The plan then was to use a donation from the Dake foundation to construct space for the senior center at the Saratoga YMCA, and then Shelters of Saratoga could take over the former senior center building.
[Read the original announcement of the move here.]
"We view ourselves as an asset to the community,” Vaughn said today, and added that his group and others that work with homeless people need to work more to educate the general population about the homeless community in Saratoga Springs.
“It’s a war on poverty,” he said, “not a war on poor people.”
The school community set up a change.org petition to get the city to revoke the plan. It has 1,449 signatures at this point, though it is hard to tell how many signatures come from Saratogians or from people at the school.
“While we support a compassionate solution to provide shelter and rehabilitative resources to the largest homeless population in Saratoga County, we strongly oppose the proposed location of a low barrier homeless shelter next to a school,” the petition says. “As a low barrier facility, Shelters of Saratoga will intentionally attract and admit individuals with no identification, will not perform background checks, will not screen for sobriety, and will permit pets.”
The petition contends that without background checks, no one will know if the homeless people are sex offenders or violent criminals. The petition says the school will face an undue burden to bring more security to its campus.
In a statement released today, Vaughn said: “We’d like to thank the City of Saratoga Springs, County of Saratoga, and community stakeholders for their continued partnership.”
This is a developing story. More next week.