IFC Community House meets the neighbors

The IFC held the first of three scheduled community discussions tonight. These discussions are designed to facilitate better communications with the community. The meeting began with three short presentations to update everyone on the current status of the planning process and to provide a brief synopsis of the expectations IFC has for the new facility. 

The new facility is being designed to serve 52 men on a full-time basis with room for 17 emergency cots on white-flag nights. As Chris Moran said, the Community House will serve as transitional housing for homeless men. Emergency housing will need to be provided through the efforts of the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness group. 

The facility is laid out with the first floor devoted to counseling, health and dental services, and other resources to help the residents transition out of homelessness. The second floor provides sleeping/living rooms. The men will start off living in a dormitory-type room with around 10 occupants per room. There are two of the large dorm rooms. As the men progress toward their goals they will step down to a 4-occupant room and finally to a 2-occupant room.

The Community Kitchen currently located at the Rosemary St facility will not be moved to the new Community House. The IFC is working on a CUP to move the kitchen to their property on Main St in Carrboro.

Following this brief informational portion of the meeting, the (hired) facilitators broke us up into small groups and asked that we address the following questions:

1. How can IFC and Community House be good neighbors?

--What expectations or concerns do you have about Community House as a neighbor?

--How can IFC help address these expectations and concerns?

2. How should IFC keep neighbors informed about Community House?

--What questions do you have and what additional information would you like to know about Community House?

--How would you like to receive this information?

After 30 minutes, representatives from each of the 10 groups summarized their group discussion. Not surprisingly, the primary concern expressed by most groups involved safety. There were also questions about the demographics of expected residents. For example, will residents come from the local community, will local residents be given any priority status, etc., will sex offenders be admitted, etc. There was also interest expressed in knowing what criteria were used to select the MLK Bldv site, why the University is being so generous, and why there is so much desire to cluster social services into one area of town. Several groups recommended that to be a good neighbor, the Community House should be located at a different site. (Residents from the immediately surrounding neighborhoods came to the meeting wearing red shirts. They did that at the last town meeting too. What's the significance of the red shirts?)

No answers were provided to the questions, but promises were made to address these concerns on the IFC website and to send out emails to those who signed up.

Two more meetings are scheduled and Chris Moran vowed to hold as many as the community desires. The next meeting is April 5 at the Southern Human Services Center.

The IFC website is: http://www.ifcweb.org/

There's also an I Support Chapel Hill's New Community House page on Facebook.