|
| |
02/03/05 Homeless
Shelter Saga
These are some
some notes
I
took at
the February 2, 2005 City Council meeting. I left at noon because
it
was a work day for me.
I said the following during my speech:
"Today,
I come before you to request that you honor the recommendation in Mr. Tom
Dunning's Task Force on the Homelessness Report. Most of you agree with Mr.
Dunning's
recommendation because homeless assistance downtown is working in other
large cities. I,
too,
believe it will work in downtown Dallas.
Some want this facility at one of two locations on Harry Hines (9713
or
the hotel at Mockingbird
and
Harry
Hines).
Either
location
would be unwise for the future of the
Stemmons Business Corridor or NW Dallas.
After years of fighting to remove Sexually Oriented Businesses
(and finally
winning),
we have a chance at last to grow to our full potential. A Homeless Shelter
anywhere on Harry Hines would be detrimental to the SW Medical Center
District, the Love Field Master Plan, Southwest Airlines Headquarters,
Stemmons Corridor businesses, the Asian
business
community
and all the families
who
live nearby.
Madam Mayor, I urge you to invite religious leaders in our city to work
together and be part of helping these unfortunate people. Homelessness will
only end when they are helped to become productive citizens. Each one of us
can do something to help end this serious problem in our society. I myself
promise to help any way I can.
In closing, I plead with all of you not to be swayed but to do what is best
for both the city of Dallas and the homeless. Each one of you has a great
responsibility building a facility near agencies that
already
help the
homeless. Please do the right thing,
which
is to build a facility on the site in downtown Dallas selected by the
Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness recommendation". |
After my speech,
Galavision interviewed me
in Spanish. After my interview,
Judith Sturrock (the woman
who
is at City Hall every week because she wants the facility
to
be on
Harry Hines) asked for equal time. She does not speak Spanish. Below is some
of what she said during the interview.
|
"I am
the lady with money". I have been working the last 18 months as the
Executive Director of People Assisting the Homeless. My group is willing to
give the city
$4
million dollars to purchase one of the two facilities on Harry Hines. The
9713 location has enough buildings to house one for men and the other for
women. Plus,
it could house offices needed for such a facility. The city should accept
my offer because moving them out of downtown would raise the tax base for
the city. (What would this do to ALL of our tax base, business's and
homeowners?) |
She ended the
interview by saying that her organization wants to take homeless people into
facilities that take them away from their environment
How kind and compassionate of these people. To bad that they are not honest in
saying that four million dollars is an investment on the hundreds of millions of
dollars that they plan to make if the homeless are no longer downtown.
Hope this information helps you understand what happened today,
and that
it is not over. We need to continue getting as many people to sign our
petitions as possible. Tomorrow I will write about some information regarding
the finances on a Homeless Shelter facility.
By the way for the next few weeks we will need people to step up and speak at
City Council meetings.
You
can speak only once every 30 days. We
need to speak up every week reminding all City Council people not to vote for
either
Harry Hines locations. To sign up you need to call the City Secretary's Office
at (214) 670-3738
- no
later than
Friday
before the next Wednesday council meeting.
(Thursday is
the best day).
Mary Lou Montes Zijderveld
| |
|
