New site proposed for low-barrier homeless shelter in South Bend

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - Here we go again. Another possible South Bend site for a low-barrier homeless center has been identified.

The city last proposed building the intake center off Bendix Drive by the South Bend Community School Corporation’s bus garage. That proposal received extensive community pushback from business owners. Today brought the first solid indication that city officials were willing to consider an alternate site.

The new site lies off Old Cleveland Road to the north or the airport.

Adrian Strong just bought a home in the neighborhood about a month ago and had no clue there was interest in placing a homeless intake center there.

“In downtown it makes sense, right? They have places they can go; they have places they can walk to.  Out here, it’s just open,” Strong says. “I don’t really see the purpose of sending them out to an open area. Where are they going to go?  Where are they going to get there? It doesn’t seem like we’re fixing the problem. It seems like we’re relocating the problem.”

In this case, the 15-acre relocation site lies off Old Cleveland Road north of the airport. There are only a handful of homes in the neighborhood, and those residents living there are already living next to the city’s organic resources facility, and a foreboding fenced-in department of corrections re-entry center for parole district 8.

“My sense is that those organizations don’t have a great impact on the surrounding neighborhoods, business or otherwise. I would that we would largely be the same,” said Sheila McCarthy with New Day Intake Center.

Word of the Old Cleveland Road site was not formally announced by the city. Rather it was mentioned in a legal advertisement in a request for a release of HUD funds for the project.

Meantime, the current site of the Hotels for Now program has 120 residents, a 12-month waiting list, and a need to be rebuilt somewhere.

“I think that it’s still on the bus line, that it still is walkable to stores, that there’s places to work nearby, heavy factories and things, but that it’s a more peaceful, tranquil environment,” McCarthy said. “A place really of restoration. We say that housing is healing.”

About $11.8 million has already been raised to build the new center.

A fundraising drive is now being launched to secure the final $4.4 million needed to move forward with the project.