New home for the homeless
Text 
No comments [ Add Comment ]F
orever ago, in 1999, a group of Ogden business leaders got together and called themselves the Experience Downtown Task Force. They studied how to bring Ogden back from the abyss of declining downtown retail and commercial activity.
They emerged at the end of the process with a few ideas, including the need for downtown beautification, mall revitalization and relocating social services -- the Ogden Rescue Mission, St. Anne's Center, Job Service temporary employment center and Weber-Morgan Health Department -- out of Junction City's downtown.
All those homeless and mentally ill people in the downtown area just didn't mix with the notion of revitalizing commerce.
At the time, however, all involved looked at the price tag -- at that time, St. Anne's was still in a relatively new building, having opened its doors in 1992 -- and decided the mass relocation wasn't going to happen anytime soon.
Flash forward to 2007. Ogden's Chief Administrative Officer John Patterson is floating the idea again, but with a modified approach: Move St. Anne's Center to 12th Street, and build a new, larger $4.8 million building. The reason? To help the homeless and mentally ill -- not to take them out of the downtown area that's finally emerging from the economic doldrums.
"It's our way of partnering to make an effort to help them toward self-sufficiency," Patterson told the Standard-Examiner's Scott Schwebke.
That's the city's story, and it's sticking to it.
But what of the medical and mental health needs of St. Anne's homeless? Patterson says the city would like to see private medical and mental health clinics open up near the proposed 12th Street site.
And all of Ogden's residents, homeless or not, would like to see gold bricks magically appear on their supper plates every night. But to make that happen, you have to get a job to earn the money to buy the gold bricks. If the city has a plan for attracting the private medical- and mental-health clinics Patterson envisions near the proposed 12th Street site -- adjacent to the Mill Creek juvenile jail at Business Depot Ogden -- let's see it.
Furthermore, what would relocation mean regarding transportation to jobs for the working poor? Are Utah Transit Authority routes adequate along the 12th Street corridor? Will severing the symbiotic relationship between the Ogden Rescue Mission and St. Anne's -- virtually next door right now on Wall Avenue -- help or hurt the facilities' clients?
And there's that pesky problem of the Weber Morgan Health Department having so recently opened its new facility on Adams Avenue and 23rd Street in downtown Ogden.
Doesn't it make sense to have it somewhere close to St. Anne's and the rescue mission? If the city's been nursing this idea along since 1999, why didn't someone speak up before now?
There are more questions, too. Is Ogden attempting to cluster St. Anne's -- and eventually the rescue mission -- along 12th Street with the juvenile jail, the Weber County Jail across the street, and whatever private medical and mental health clinics could be enticed to serve the homeless and working poor populations of Ogden and Weber County? If so, what -- if anything -- does this mean for the viability of commercial and retail growth at BDO and the surrounding area?
If, as Patterson says, the city wants to "make an effort to help them toward self-sufficiency," why can't it be done somewhere else in the general downtown vicinity? Why move St. Anne's 14 blocks north?
Maybe the city is serious. Maybe this has nothing to do with clearing the downtown area of vagabonds and homeless families. If so, the argument so far is pretty weak.
