All posts in category Homeless Shelter

Honor Council

Not long ago, a few members of Duke University’s Honor Council spoke with students at McDougle Middle School about the roles of morals and ethics in making good decisions. Honor Council members set up a scenario for the moral dilemma all of us have faced more than once in our lives — You see someone […]

We need a hero

It looks like the UNC Board of Governors may be celebrating Black History Month by closing down UNC’s Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity. The 27% of blacks in North Carolina who live below the poverty line is more than twice the 12% of poverty-stricken whites in our state, which makes the timing of the […]

Respect for good neighbors

The bulk of tonight’s Town Council meeting will consist of discussion about the Good Neighbor Plan in connection with the IFC’s transitional housing facility and emergency shelter that will open next year on Homestead Road. The negotiations have been excruciating for both sides, and passions continue to run hot. Expect many people to speak out […]

New year resolutions?

Council meetings resume one week from tonight. Here’s a glimpse of what may grace the agenda in 2012: Homeless shelter’s Good Neighbor Plan: A Better Site representatives are participating in the meetings, but IFC won’t allow the proceedings to be recorded. A Better Site wants teeth to the plan, consequences if the tenets are violated; […]

Food fight

The transparency shoe is on the other foot for Chris Moran of the IFC. At different phases of the re-siting of the men’s shelter on Homestead Road, Moran has been accused of a lack of transparency. Now, he wants transparency from PORCH, a local nonprofit in the business of collecting and distributing food to the […]

A step toward peace

Congress could learn from this: At last night’s Town Council meeting, council members engaged in a gusty and at times contentious discussion, ultimately brokering a compromise between two opposing factions – Chris Moran, representing IFC, and Mark Peters, spokesman for ABetterSite.org. Three meetings into crafting an effective Good Neighbor Policy for the shelter on Homestead […]

Bad start to be good neighbor

The plan to move the IFC homeless shelter from West Rosemary Street to Homestead Road got off on the wrong foot. With its process of crafting a Good Neighbor Policy, it continues to try to dance with two left feet. At tonight’s Town Council meeting, IFC will give a report on progress of the GNP […]

Lawsuit filed

Commercial and residential property owners filed suit against the Town of Chapel Hill today to obtain information that may show whether some Town Council members should be disqualified to vote on the IFC shelter special use permit application. Dogwood Asset Management, the owners of Homestead Station, the shopping center on the corner of Homestead Road […]

IFC won’t leave

Three lawyers sat on the dais at last night’s Town Council meeting, but the only person who showed any knowledge of negotiating skills came from a retired businessman. On several occasions, council member Matt Czajkowski knifed through the rhetoric to ask pointed questions. The answers came back in the form of telling silence or obfuscating […]

Power of compromise

In the 1950s, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower said the strength of the U.S. was in its ability to compromise. How far we’ve strayed. The public hearing on the IFC’s application for a special use permit to build the Community House men’s shelter on MLK Boulevard and Homestead Road continues tonight. The main sticking point of the […]