Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; November 29, 2024
Last Tuesday, November 26, Tompkins County held a news conference. Its stated purpose was to reveal the County’s intention to purchase a pricey lot in Ithaca’s Cherry Street Industrial Park as the site for a long-term emergency shelter facility.
But that announcement far understates the sweep and significance of what’s happening. Tompkins County has plunged itself into the business of housing Ithaca’s homeless. And from what we can discern from what County officials have said and written, we, ourselves, may have to shoulder much of the cost.
Here’s what to remember: Our local government grew itself bigger this past week. It took on a new societal obligation it may not have needed to undertake. And did anyone ever ask our permission?
“Tompkins County is in a position to significantly strengthen our shelter system, giving as many people as we can a safe place to go and a reasonable path out of negative situations,” County Legislature Chair Dan Klein told the assembled media Tuesday.
“We agree with the vision of making homelessness rare, brief, and one time,” Klein stated. “This requires big thinking and strong partnerships. And it also requires investment.”
Let’s start with that last part. Tompkins County will pay $1.1 Million for a the one-acre lot, tucked away on a lonely stretch of Cherry Street not far from the so-called “jungle,” the place where many of Ithaca’s unhoused dwell in squalid, makeshift shacks and tents. What stands at 227 Cherry Street now is a dingy, nondescript, tin-sided warehouse quartering the “Found in Ithaca” antique mall. (Until now, I’d never seen or heard of it.) The name overstates the building’s allure. No doubt, “Found” would come down to make way for something much better, something in which the unhoused would live.
With the lot’s purchase presumably nailed down during prior closed-door sessions, the Tompkins County Legislature plans to ratify the acquisition at its next meeting, December 3rd.
A County-offered news release states that “more than a dozen sites were examined” before lawmakers settled on the “Found” lot. Its “For Sale” sign still remained prominently at roadside Wednesday.
“Of all the locations available, I believe this is the best site although I thought the price was too high,” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown assessed the purchase in an email to leaders of his constituent municipalities the day of the announcement.
We’re told in the news release that the chosen site’s proximity to “several existing homeless encampment areas and service providers” nearby propelled it to favored status.
Expect the purchase Resolution to receive little debate during the Legislature’s forthcoming meeting. The resolution will likely pass without opposition. For those casting the votes, the deal is already done.
“This Cherry Street development plan gives us a chance to look past the temporary solutions we’ve had to stand up and think big about what’s possible in the future,” County legislator Greg Mezey proclaimed at the media event. “Having a purpose-built facility in the City will allow us to shelter people close to services, even bringing many of those services under the same roof as the shelter,” he said. Expect Mezey to place the purchase resolution onto the Legislature’s floor Tuesday night.
It’s what lies ahead that matters. Buying the land does not build the facility. The $1.1 land purchase is a mere down payment. Bigger commitments await.
“An additional $1 Million is in the Tompkins County Capital Program for the local share of shelter development costs,” a Shelter Development Fact Sheet, distributed to municipal leaders and attached to next Tuesday’s agenda states.
The narrative adds, “Tompkins County will apply for New York State Homeless Housing and Assistance Program (HHAP) funds for up to $6.1 Million in 2025 to develop the shelter.” At least, that’s the plan.
Noticeably absent from the factual narrative, or the news conference itself is any backup plan; a strategy outlining what Tompkins County would do if New York State simply says no.
Current vision calls for a new 20,000 square foot homeless shelter large enough to accommodate up to 100 people. By comparison, the recently-closed St. John’s Community Services shelter on Ithaca’s West State Street provided only 26 beds. What Tompkins County expects to build, therefore, could provide far more residential opportunities for “jungle dwellers”—or other unhoused persons—to relocate, assuming, of course, that they want to do so.
St. John’s officially closed in early-November, although legal actions delayed its shuttering a bit for a couple of its residents. The nonprofit’s exodus followed a falling-out with some Tompkins County officials and Tompkins’ subsequent refusal to renew a contract with the agency that would enable St. John’s to continue to shelter the unhoused.
What Tompkins County plans now is for a private consultant of sorts, MM Development Advisors (MMDA) of Rochester, to come in, see what’s needed, determine what’s best to be built, and then presumably build it.
“Tompkins County will work with MMDA and others to create a vision for the property and manage procedural activities related to land use,” the news release states. It described MMDA as “an affordable housing development partner with experience developing shelter facilities.”
Once the shelter is built, Tompkins County plans to recruit a not-for-profit agency to run it. Nobody’s named the agency yet.
County Administrator Lisa Holmes told the news conference that the shelter’s design phase could commence by the end of 2025, but that “the process is contingent on state funding and buy-in from non-profits.” Holmes is hoping that the non-profit operator “would be ideally part of the development team,” so that, she said, “they can help to develop from the ground up and come up with a plan with which to apply (state) funds.” Holmes’ timetable would have the non-profit recruited this year. Project development would begun thereafter.
Then, again, nothing can ever be assured or assumed, including Albany’s support.
A shelter completion date remains too tentative for anyone to predict. In the meantime, Tompkins County is active on several fronts. It’s retrofitted the former Key Bank building (now County-owned) at downtown’s Buffalo and Tioga Streets to meet state-dictated “Code Blue” requirements for cold-weather sheltering. It’s also paying to shelter unhoused individuals at local motels.
Up to 90 beds for Temporary Housing Assistance clients are being secured from motel operators, we’re told. The County’s Department of Social Services will operate the temporary housing program until a suitable nonprofit operator can be identified and contracted with.
What could complicate things, particularly in seeking State Government’s assistance, is the local preference for the kind of shelter that homeless advocates would like to see built. Their preferred option would employ a so-called “low-barrier” model. Envision it as a shelter where excuses supplant compliance, where exceptions override the rules.
What is your income? Might it be too high for you to live here? Do you plan to get a job or at least train for one? Do you intend to get sober or seek substance abuse counseling? These are fair questions to ask of anyone seeking a warm bed at public expense. We’re told government funders like to hear encouraging answers. In essence, does the unhoused person have a plan for moving out and then moving on?
But some local advocates for the unhoused find it constraining and discriminatory to ask tough questions only to receive equivocal answers. Activists like “low barrier.” It’s more compassionate.
But when barriers pull away, state reimbursements may dry up.
“Under current state law, a low barrier shelter would likely need to rely more heavily on local tax dollars, as it would receive less state funding than a conventional shelter,” The Ithaca Voice’s reporter wrote after Tuesday’s announcement.
And that, of course, is where the local taxpayer swoops in. The property tax is always the funding source of last resort.
The million-dollar land purchase revealed this week may have been negotiated in secret. But to the perceptive and informed among us, preparation for a County-run homeless shelter should come as no surprise. The concept’s been discussed, though largely in abstraction, for many months.
Still, the local taxpayer has never truly been pulled in. There never have been—and there likely never will be—public hearings on whether to build a homeless shelter. Nor will there be any referendum. Tompkins County will just do it. And whatever it does, however much it costs, the unreimbursed balance will simply be tacked onto your tax bill.
For that reason, many important questions demand meaningful answers. And those questions should be raised now, not reserved for after it’s too late to turn back.
First, what is the true demand for this thing? Has anybody ever performed a market study? What fraction of those currently living in shacks in the woods behind Walmart actually want to live in a place with four sturdy walls and a roof overhead that doesn’t leak? If we build 100 rooms will we find 100 willing takers?
Next, especially under the “low barrier” approach, how much of the annual expense will fall on us locals?
And what about the City of Ithaca’s involvement (or non-involvement) in the venture? Ithaca, quite frankly, is where most of our county’s unhoused happen to live. City Government, one would think, should have skin in the game.
“The City’s glad to see the progress the County is making, and we stand ready to continue to partner with them and contribute where we can now and in the future,” Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo told the news conference Tuesday. “What’s clear more now than ever is that we all need safe, accessible, and supportive places for folks to go that we can develop,” Cantelmo said.
But nowhere during the news conference’s nearly half-hour of positivity politics was there ever the promise that City Hall will—or even that it should—contribute meaningful money toward the shelter’s land purchase, not to mention its later construction.
“The City stands willing to work with our County partners; the exact form of that has not been determined,” Cantelmo replied to one reporter’s (inaudible) question. The mayor had gone off-script. “We recognize the City is going to play a junior role in whatever occurs here” Cantelmo admitted.
But why should that be,” those of us in Tompkins County’s rural reaches are tempted to ask. And really, does “junior role” imply lip service, but no cash?
“The City of Ithaca can and should be a place for everyone,” the Mayor proclaimed in his prepared remarks. Yes, just so long as no one else sends him the bill.
One final thought: By purchasing an obscure, out-of-the-way, Quonset-of-a-hovel warehouse in an industrial park for its new homeless shelter, Tompkins County may be doing exactly what some of us may quietly wish for, albeit not tor admirable reasons, We’d be tucking away a community problem into a forgotten corner.
Persons of compassion and charity often allege that what many of Ithaca’s more affluent prefer is to put homelessness out-of-site and hence out of mind. Who sees those people who live somewhere in the swampy woods near the railroad tracks, anyway? No one here to see; therefore, no one here to think about.
A more public-facing alternative, the argument goes, would jar the senses. When County officials last month announced their plans to retrofit a former bank for a “Code Blue” emergency shelter just doors from the Courthouse—it’s a mere one block’s walk from the Commons—neighborhood objections erupted, protestations kept muted at times to retain sufficient political correctness.
Will like complaints arise for a shelter at 227 Cherry Street? Unlikely. Few of us go there. And that in itself raises an issue. If the goal here is to proclaim “We’re all in this together,” and that housing insecurity should be out in the open for everyone to see, maybe the Found in Ithaca Antique Mall is precisely the worst building for our county to buy. But buy it we will.
###