I want to draw your attention to something happening in
Springfield. It is the mistreatment of a group of people who are trying to
rebuild their lives. We are disenfranchising and marginalizing people who have
amazing things to offer our community without giving them a chance to reach
their full potential, and it is reprehensible.
Springfield City Council is currently attempting to change
how the city handles what they are calling, “Group Homes, Corrections.” They
are defining them as, “a facility for the housing and rehabilitation of
unrelated mentally or physically handicapped persons who may be on probation or
parole, or who may be under supervision of State Board of Probation and Parole
or a similar agency, and who reside under the supervision of trained staff.”
Staffers are currently writing up an ordinance that requires
“group homes” to be at least a quarter mile from residential districts,
schools, parks, other group homes, substance abuse treatment facilities,
transitional service shelters, soup kitchens, jails and other detention
facilities. Council members want the distance to be even greater than ¼ mile and
argue that a conditional use permit allowing them to be in multifamily
residential neighborhoods be removed from the ordinance.
In effect, we are taking people who traditionally are from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds unable to afford adequate housing and placing them in
industrial zones when they are at their most vulnerable. How does that help
them foster dignity or gain hope they can overcome the struggles they are
facing? Does that send the message we believe in them and know they can change?
Hardly, instead we are telling them they are unfit to live
among us and we feel unsafe and threatened by them. We are relegating men and
women who already feel worthless and hopeless to some of the least habitable
areas in Springfield where no housing currently exists. As money continually
gets cut for prevention, early intervention and treatment who has the funding
to buy land and then build houses or apartments in industrial zones. I don’t
see anyone stepping forward soon to do it.
We have men and women who are someone’s sons and daughters,
mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles trying to get their
lives back. This can be an arduous task under the best of conditions. I cannot
begin to imagine how strenuous it will be if we allow this ordinance to come
into effect. Taking advantage of a group that is silent and unheard, beaten
down and continually maligned is beyond deplorable.
I hope you know what people in recovery are capable of. I am
in long-term recovery, not having used in over 6 years. My organization, Better
Life in Recovery (BLiR), did almost 2,500 hours of community service last year
and is looking to improve on that number this year. All of the service work to
better our community was done by people in long-term recovery. We repainted
elementary school playgrounds, cleaned the James River and picked up trash from
local parks, places you are telling us we cannot live in. Does that make sense to you, because it leaves me
baffled?
In the United States that are 23.5 million people in
long-term recovery. There are 1,000’s of us in Springfield, as well. We are
doctors, nurses, paramedics, carpenters and teachers. We are resources to our
communities and have a passion for not only improving ourselves but helping
those around us become better as well. All we need to reach our potential is
people believing in us. The passing of this ordinance will in no way engender
those feelings in the people we cast to the industrial zones of our beautiful
town.
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