Content from our friends over at Dallas Homeless Network
Friday, February 13, 2009 , Updated
508 Park Avenue in Dallas has been neglected for years
Dallas Morning News, Feb 12, 2009 - Re: "Troubled music shrine could be singing the blues -- Legend Robert Johnson recorded there; now its future is in doubt," Saturday news story.
The owners claim they are unable to find a buyer for their property due to the presence of The Stewpot and the homeless people it serves.
It is a neat explanation to blame a derelict building on "derelicts." In their eyes, the only people who actively choose their fate are the homeless, and the only victims are the owners. But what is their asking price?
I have known this block of buildings extremely well since 1991, when The Stewpot moved across the street from 508 Park Ave. In all that time, I have never seen the property being maintained; I saw it being boarded up. I saw it being neglected.
We have tried to be good neighbors; we daily clean and powerwash the sidewalks. We don't encourage people to loiter, we provide a safe environment and we work with people to get them off the streets.
The Stewpot does not give up on people; that is our mission, and we do it well. Why did the property owners of 508 Park Ave. give up on their building?
Bruce A. Buchanan, executive director, The Stewpot, Dallas
Pegasus News content partner - Dallas Homeless Network
Clay213, says:
It's all fine and well to say you don't 'encourage people to loiter' but it's seriously BS. This isn't some chicken or the egg type situation here.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Rick Yost, says:
A young man in a wheelchair came in late one weekend night. Having spent time in a wheelchair myself, I'm naturally sympathetic to this situation. However, before long, the kid stood up out of his wheelchair and began walking around bugging my customers for money and basically being a nuisance. After several complaints from customers, I asked him to leave but he tried to ignore me. So I grabbed his wheelchair and proceeded to roll it out the door. He followed behind me in protest.
Not all those on the street need to be on the street. I have no answers to this problem anymore than any of you or anyone on the city council does.
All I know is that we live in a capitalist, money-driven society. If I or any other business owner downtown could stay in business while catering to these 'un-fortunates' at the same time, we would gladly do so. I'm not a mean person, and I certainly sympathize with those that have less than the rest of us. But I too will go out of business if I allow these money-bumming, annoying, (and some) potentially dangerous individuals to alienate, and ultimately run off my customers. It's not just what's right and what's wrong- it's economics.
If you check the DPD's website, you see that there is no more crime happening downtown than in other parts of the city. But I talk to people all the time that are basically afraid to venture to the area because the street people scare them.
If we say we really care, then the entire way we structure our society will have to change. Otherwise, we are all (including myself) nothing more than hypocrites.
Verified
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
White guy with a goatee and red wheel chair?
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Rick Yost, says:
Yes, white, late twenties-early thirties, thin, ragged. Don't remember the color of the chair. I was too upset at the basic feigning/crippled/wheelchair sham of it to notice.
Verified
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
That dude has been asked to leave at least 1 place in town for making women feel very uncomfortable.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Rick Yost, says:
Interesting you say that. He was really leaning on the cute girls in the room. I can't blame him for that I suppose, but it was the girls he was speaking to that were asking me to get rid of him. Wonder what he was saying to them.
Verified
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
His M.O. is asking women for a hug relying on them feeling too uncomfortable to say no.
I don't think he is feigning the wheelchair thing. He seems to have something along the lines of MD
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Rick Yost, says:
I'm sorry. In my humble-first hand-experienced opinion, there's only one reason to sit in a wheelchair...you can't walk! It's an instant tug at the heart stings to most of us, and should not be 'used'.
Verified
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
JG, says:
Part of the problem is perception and the press does not help that when it comes to the homeless. The crime rate among the general public is higher but they never miss an opportunity to point out the fact that a person is homeless when reporting a crime involving a homeless person. The Stewpot does not encourage people to loiter no more than you do at your place of business. It is up to the police and safety patrol to enforce that. If the Bridge was open for them to hang out there many or most of them would but they don't allow them to hang out there inside or out from what I hear. The guy in the wheelchair is a scam and there will always be people out there like that. How do you know whether or not he is even homeless? Another part of the problem.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
Part of the problem is people behaving like animals and pissing and defecating in public and on themselves.
If you have no dignity for yourself don't expect the world to have it for you.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
JG, says:
Clay213-anyone who does that is either mentally or physically challenged in some form or fashion. It is not always drugs or alcohol which is any easy cop-out. We have entirely too many mentally ill people on the street and that does not say a lot about this country.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
gtobe, says:
JG is correct. Too many of these people you ridicule are mentally ill turned out on the street to fend for themselves. ACLU made sure we can't force them into care so there is the dilemma. No one in their right mind would want to live like that.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Clay213, says:
So because they are mentally ill that means the owners of the building are wrong? Or because they are mentally ill that gives them license to live like animals?
You people are talking in circles.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
gtobe, says:
No, what I am saying is that it is the fault of the owner or The Stewpot. It is the fault of our system. I have a brother who is mentally ill and the family can do nothing with him. If he ends up on the street there is nothing we or the public can do about it. We can't force him into a mental hospital because the law does not allow that. Too often they are left to fend for themselves in their own sick way or they end up in prison. They don't have a normal thinking process so how can we blame someone who has no idea what they are doing is not normal? They don't know what normal is.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
gtobe, says:
Sorry, NOT the fault of the building owners.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
JG, says:
Correct you are. The police can take them to Parkland. They may be admitted to mental health facility for a short while then turned back out on the street again. These are people that need housing and supervision. It is wrong to blame the building owner, The Stewpot or the mentally ill homeless person. Some of them are so mentally challenged they are as helpless as children and believe me there are plenty of people out there just waiting to prey on them taking their money or abuse them. It happens every day on the streets of Dallas and all over the country.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Jason Rice, says:
::prey on them taking their money
A profit opportunity, you say?
Tell us more
...unless it precludes feeding them to Clay?
Verified
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
JG, says:
They are disabled and many received SSDI checks. A few hundred a month but enough to attract dishonest people trying to get their money the first of each month when the checks arrive. They have lots of friends when the checks arrive. Shameful but true.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
gtobe, says:
One of the things the Stewpot does is provide volunteers who SS allows to represent some of these people to avoid that from happening. They help them find housing and keep their bills paid. I think SS mandates it with some in order for them to receive benefits. Unfortunately that is not the case for many and they get taken advantage of too often which contributes to or causes their homelessness.
Anonymous
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
Jason Rice, says:
Aha! That does explain both Clay's familiarity with them and his rakish lifestyle bordering on that of trust fund baby.
<font size="1">(The bike and DART Pass is a Bohemian cover to piss off his folks)</font>
Verified
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal
alexander troup, says:
The life of culture in that part of town seems to have had a curse placed on it, while in the 1930s that was an important part of town, I can recall from my grandparents, and so how did it become this in the past 25 years, and why should the birth place of dics cut for the blues, have any meaning...
Shrines should be preserved despite the neglect that come in time in a part of town that has a stigma that wont rub off....A/T, SINNING THE BLUES FOR..R.J.
Verified
9 months, 2 weeks agoLink to this comment | Suggest removal