Have a fun fourth and help support Greensboro’s homeless day center:
The IRC will be making a splash in the Fun Fourth parade this Saturday, July 3! The parade begins at 9:30 a.m. at the corner of Greene and Bellemeade and goes down Greene Street and up Church Street to end at the Children’s Museum.
Read more on Have a Fun Fourth, eat free, get your car washed AND help the homeless!…
The Interactive Resource Center, Greensboro’s day center for the homeless, could use donations of the following items:
Read more on Greensboro Homeless Day Center Needs…
I wasn’t surprised to learn that there’s a homeless refugee in Greensboro. But I am surprised to hear that he’s the first.
image credit: Nelson Kepley, News-Record.com
Read more on From refugee to homeless: The first of how many?…
I wrote about the guys on the block (and more) for the News & Record: “When there’s nowhere to go,” by Michele Forrest; published Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009. It’s online here, and reposted below:
On the block. Image credit: Michele Forrest / ChosenFast.com
My ministry partner, Audrie Keen, and I provide a street outreach to the homeless in Greensboro, and we’ve made a lot of friends along the way. We eat together, go to church together and have cookouts. Sometimes our homeless friends stay with us. We visit formerly homeless friends in their homes.
When we say “homeless friends,” we really mean friends.
Two Friday mornings ago, we visited “The Block” at Lee and South Eugene streets. It had been 11 days since my last visit, when we’d talked about the artistic bench installed, then removed, from along the new stretch of the Downtown Greenway in that area. Neighbors said the bench attracted drug addicts and prostitutes.
The guys on The Block dismissed that notion. One said: “The problem is not as serious as they say it is on the news. And the bench has nothing to do with it.”
Read more on When there’s nowhere to go…
Good editorial in today’s News & Record: “Clearing out The Block”:
Greensboro police last week stepped up loitering enforcement and effectively cleared the place known as “The Block.” Just like that.
Read more on N&R Editorial: Clearing out The Block…
"The block" at Lee & Eugene Streest; image credit: News & Record
A friend contacted me yesterday to tell me that police were no longer allowing people to stand on “the block,” a well-known and long-time gathering spot at the corner of Lee and Eugene Streets near the homeless shelter, soup kitchen and health clinic. Traditionally, most of the people who stood out on the corner were homeless, and many of them spent their time on the block drinking. Today, I received reports from a number of sources with information about what may have led to the clearing of the block.
Read more on Alston meets with residents; Bellamy clears block; day center gets $275K…
Future downtown day center building
The opening of Greensboro’s new homeless day center, tentatively scheduled for this fall, has been pushed back to allow board members to raise additional funds. In March, the Strasser family donated the Southern Plate & Window Glass Co. building at East Washington St. and Murrow Blvd., but the building will have to be renovated to suit the needs of the day center.
Read more on Lack of funds delays day center opening…
Be sure to read Lorraine Ahearn’s News & Record article, “Benches highlight a bigger problem”, which begins like this:
“The location of artistic benches, which were removed from the Downtown Greenway on Friday after neighbors complained, looked good on paper but ignored some basic urban topography. Just a stone’s throw from where the benches were removed, amid complaints that they drew drunken and lewd behavior, sits ‘The Block.’ At the southwest corner of Eugene and Lee streets, at the entrance to HealthServe clinic and Greensboro Urban Ministry’s night shelter, this stretch of sidewalk has been a magnet for loitering, drugs and prostitution for 20 years….”
The benches were never the problem, so removing them won’t solve it. The problem on the block is primarily addiction. People drink there, and buy and smoke pot and crack. And where you find crack, you find dealers and prostitutes.
Read more on Bilbro benches gone, next target: homeless on the block?…
Via email, from Action Greensboro:
“… As you may know, Action Greensboro is spearheading a public/private partnership to create a Downtown Greenway…
Construction… will displace those living in this area…”
Cotton
Read more on Homeless in the path of the greenway: Cotton…
On Friday night, May 15th, hundreds of area youth are expected to sleep outside at Grace Community Church on Lee Street to raise awareness of homelessness, in an event sponsored by New Jerusalem Cathedral (see video). They will sleep in safety, protected by Greensboro police officers, on the same grounds that church leaders voted to post with “no trespassing” signs last year, in response to large numbers of homeless people sleeping on the property. Irony. (Grace also housed dozens of women inside this year, in a winter emergency shelter.)
Read more on Awareness-raising teens to sleep outside where homeless can’t…
Photo credit: Mark Horvath
“Hardly Normal at Prado Day Center,” a story in photos and words.
“The Prado Day Center is the only day center serving the homeless population in the region. Every day, between 90 to 120 people seek refuge and assistance at the Center. Over 30 percent of the Center’s participants are now women and children…”
» See the photo story here
Read more on “Children should never be homeless…”…
Credit: Rob Brown / News & Record
The corner of Lee and Eugene streets near downtown Greensboro is often called “the block” by homeless people. Every day, people line the sidewalk there, just past the entrance to Greensboro’s largest homeless shelter. They wait for the bus, or watch out for someone driving by looking for day workers. They hang out, talk, laugh, argue, smoke, cuss and drink 40s. Just a few hundred yards away sits Shiloh Baptist Church.
Read more on Shiloh Baptist: From “keep away” to “welcome”…