Residents face homelessness as McKinney orders the Budget Hotel to close

by Erin Rice

This morning The Samaritan Inn, an emergency shelter for the homeless in Collin County, forwarded me a letter from Lynn Sipiora, the shelter's Executive Director. According to the letter, The Budget Hotel on North Tennessee Street in McKinney has been given a two-week notice from the city to close down:

Yesterday Cheryl Blackburn, Manager of the Budget Hotel, contacted me to tell me that the hotel was being closed by the city of McKinney in two weeks due to substandard construction. The owner had been told to make repairs in November or be closed down and he chose not to make them. When the hotel closes the twenty people who live there will have no place to go. They are the elderly, mentally ill, developmentally disabled, unemployed and working poor. Rent on the rooms is $185.00 a week and they are in deplorable condition. The roofs leak, the carpeting is filthy and heat appears to be sporadic. People live there because no security deposit or utility costs are required and they can pay on a daily or weekly basis. Clearly, the owner has exploited these people and made a lot of money in the process.

This afternoon Samaritan Inn caseworkers will interview the residents and see who might be eligible for our program. Unfortunately we currently have very few vacancies and many of the residents have issues that we can not manage.

When contacted, Cheryl Blackburn was not as concerned about the closure as she was about Budget's residents. Back in November, when the building was inspected (for the first time she could recall since she started working there five years ago) and deemed "substandard," she asked that should the Budget Hotel be ordered to shut its doors, that the City of McKinney give her fair notice. She wanted to make sure that the residents, many of whom work at minimum wage, would have time to find other accommodations. Now, McKinney has come back and given Budget approximately two weeks, forcing residents to move out between February 12-19.

"I think it's unreasonable for the City to give us only two weeks notice," said Blackburn, "that's just not enough time." As of our phone call, she had not yet approached city officials, but intends to ask for an extension of 30 to 60 days. "That would give our residents time to save some money or to get [an additional] job" to prepare funds for such a move.

According to the Samaritan Inn website, over 200 people sleep on the streets in Collin County every night. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau.

When asked about the condition of the Budget Hotel, Blackburn explained that while there were several leaks in the roof of the building, "there are no open holes in the walls, rats or roaches," or other physical threats to the people living there. According to the letter sent in November, the City wanted repairs made to the roof, electrical, and plumbing that would bring the building up to code. Since then those repairs had not been made, though she did not go into detail as to why. "There is nothing so wrong with the building that it will harm the residents," she stated, "but living on the street in these cold conditions could kill them."

At the moment, Blackburn is preparing a memo for the residents to explain the situation, but when she found out, she went door to door to speak with them in person. The general reaction from those who call the Budget Hotel home was one of shock. Many of them asked her, "where am I going to go?"

Cheryl Blackburn wants to make it clear that she is not asking for the Budget Hotel to be allowed to stay open indefinitely in its current condition. "I'm not trying to cause trouble or keep the hotel at status quo, just to buy a little time for some of these people who society has turned its back on."

The Samaritan Inn will be working with Cheryl and Budget's residents to find housing, but given only two weeks and with The Samaritan near capacity, there may be some more people sleeping on the streets of Collin County soon.

Staff
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Mike Orren, says:

Hmm. Something sounds familiar here...

http://www.pegasusnews.com/search/?q=...

Staff

2 years, 10 months ago
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Erin Rice, says:

Here's a link to some video coverage from WFAA. <a href="http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=117433&catId=104">I hope people will pay attention to this.</a>

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2 years, 10 months ago
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homeless, says:

It's time to be real about homelessness and poverty in our Nation. As Senator and Presidential candidate John Edwards said at a conferance here in Dallas last year, "Poverty is a National shame." I will go one step further, "Homelessness is a National sin." Facing a affordable housing shortage in America, now standing at 4.4 million units, and Texas ranking almost dead last in expenditures addressing every social issue, 2005 Texas Rankings Office of the Texas Comptroller

State Government Taxes & Spending
49th Tax Revenue Raised 2nd Birth Rate 49th Total Expenditures
2nd Teen Birth Rate Per Capita Spending on
37th Prenatal Care 45th Public Health 49th Mental Health 1st Toxic & Cancerous Emissions 49th Water Quality 1st Clean Water Permit Violations 50th High School Graduations rates 9th Unemployment 48th SAT Scores
46th Average Hourly rate 43rd Income Distribution 1st Child Population Growth 50th Government Employee Wage 1st % of Uninsured Children 48th Spending on Child Protection 1st. Number of Executions 1st Number of Gun Shows 50th - % of Population with Health Ins.
2nd Rate of Incarceration 50th - % of Insured low-income children
5th Total Crime 48th - % of Poor covered by Medicaid
11th Violent Crime 45th - Rate of Substance Abuse Treatment 1st Machine Guns Registered Health & Welfare 7th Poverty Rate 2nd - % of Population goes hungry 3rd - % of Population malnourished

,are we not really just putting the blame on the less fortunate to aviod looking at ourselves and the State of our Nation. May 20, 2004 U.S. House of Representatives – House Financial Services Committee Washington D.C. Newly appointed Secretary of HUD, Alfonso Jackson testifies “I don’t talk about housing for the poor because, being poor is just a state of mind, not a condition.” Shock and disbelief swept through the chamber as Mr. Jackson finished his comment. Representative Barbara Lee from California tried to get Mr. Jackson to clarify and possibly change what he had just said, but Mr. Jackson only reiterated his comment. “I defy the Secretary to tell all those people looking for jobs in this horrible economy: all those who spend night after night in the cold: and all those working poor and their families who must live in transitional shelters because the cost of housing is so high that ‘poor is just a state of mind.’ Representative Frank joined his colleague in denouncing Mr. Jackson obvious belief that the poor economic class in America was solely responsible for their plight. “Given the assault HUD has been waging on programs that help people in need, your cavalier assertion that being poor is simply a state of mind could serve as a dictionary illustration of adding insult to injury to poor people in America.”
“Secretary Jackson, your comments are offensive to millions of unemployed Americans who have been looking for work. There are real economic disparities in this country, and these kinds of comments will do nothing to help us bridge the growing gap between the rich and the poor.” Representative Capuano added. Headlines: Dallas morning News 9/9/04 900 Low-income Dallas residents to lose rent aid Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.1967, “Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community? “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is as socially cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” During 1967, 10 million Americans lived in poverty and homelessness virtually did not exist. Today the population of Americans, who live in poverty, outnumbers the entire population of Canada and homelessness affects 3.5 million Americans every year, victims of devastating natural and unnatural disasters, of this population upwards to 1,200,000 will be children, 650,000 will be disabled, 500,000 will be families and 300,000 will be veterans. 744,000 individuals, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness are homeless in America on any given night. 150,000 Americans this year; women, children, men, elderly, disabled, veterans, Our homeless and poor are being offered up as the sacrificial lambs to appease class-ism. Yes, our nation is in the middle of a class war. To remind everyone about history, only 3 classes survive in such a climate, the poor, the miniority wealthy and the Elite rulers. No middle class. "If we can't save the many who are poor, how can we save the few who are rich. John F. Kennedy

James K Waghorne - President Dallas Homeless Neighborhood Association

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2 years, 10 months ago
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Mike Orren, says:

I don't think all that data came from the comptroller's office -- Much of it is in this document, which has citations for a lot of different agencies:

http://www.bayareanewdemocrats.org/fi...

But it's no less sobering...