The meeting was billed as a dialogue between Springfield residents and Ability Housing of Northeast Florida officials. A series of questions and answers about a 12-unit apartment complex in the historic neighborhood to assist homeless veterans.
But there was anger. Calls of purposeful deception. An “enough is enough” attitude.
Close to 200 people showed Thursday evening to the town hall-style meeting to talk, vent and lash out about the nonprofit’s plans to bring a 12-unit apartment complex on Cottage Avenue to serve homeless veterans.
Ability was notified it would receive $7.3 million from the state in mid-March for the Springfield project and one other.
Ability Housing would serve as the landlord and use the Veterans Administration and other providers to select the chronically homeless who would live in the complex. Springfield veterans would have priority and if no veterans qualified, others who are homeless or at-risk could be picked.
Area residents had myriad concerns, tinged with anger: Why weren’t they notified sooner? Will there be on-site supervision? Are mental health and drug treatment mandatory? Why Springfield?
Shannon Nazworth, Ability Housing executive director, and members of her staff were on hand to take the heat.
She apologized to the crowd several times for not contacting neighborhood leadership sooner. She did so after the grant was awarded in the past couple of weeks, not when the nonprofit applied for the state funding late last year.
As for on-site supervision and mandatory treatment, there will neither. Ability Housing would connect tenants with the area service agencies to provide help on a voluntary basis. Nazworth said national best practices show that voluntary, not mandatory, treatment work best when helping those at-risk and rehabilitating.
Having full-time, on-site staff isn’t financially feasible because the project is smaller than others the nonprofit oversees, she
said.
The group has 255 units throughout Jacksonville, including the 83-unit Mayfair Village on the Southside for low-income families and the homeless; a 52-unit apartment community called Renaissance Village in the Longbranch neighborhood for the homeless and those at-risk and the 60-unit Oakland Terrace complex on the Eastside for rental assistance.
Springfield has a concentration of treatment and group homes, enough that a zoning overlay change was approved by City Council more than a decade ago to prevent any additional “special uses.”
But, with no on-site supervision nor requirements for treatment, the Ability Housing project is considered multifamily, not special use.
Jack Meeks, a resident and member of the Downtown Investment Authority, told the crowd the project is a special use and he has hired a lawyer to make the city enforce its rules.
He said he had no problem with the nonprofit’s mission, but didn’t want it in Springfield.
“Take it someplace else,” Meeks said.
He said he and his wife, JoAnn Tredennick, would continue to pursue the matter to the full extent of the law, which received a standing ovation from many in the room.
Calvin Burney, city planning director, told the crowd he had not seen the application for the project, but from what he has heard it would be deemed multifamily, though any changes during the process could alter it.
Throughout the two hour-plus dialogue, others voiced similar sentiments as Meeks.
Despite the outcry, Nazworth afterward said she will continue to communicate to dispel any misconceptions with residents on the issue. She said the trust will come with time.
“It’s going to take time for them to see what we have done,” she said. “It’s my firm belief that once we are up and running … it will be just like a regular apartment building and they’ll realize it’s a benefit to the community.”
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