Lauren Justice
The Salvation Army helped Darcia Bell-Roosevelt find housing in a few months.
When Darcia Bell-Roosevelt moved to Madison in September 2012, she was trying to get her family out of a bad neighborhood in Chicago. “I knew I needed a change of scenery,” she says. “To run your daughter to school because they’re out there shooting at 7 in the morning is really bad.”
But at first, Madison wasn’t any better. The family was unable to stay where they had hoped so Bell-Roosevelt, her fiancé and daughter were all out on the streets.
“We came with $20 in our pockets and had nowhere to lay our heads,” remembers Bell-Roosevelt, 33. “I thought, for the rest of my life this is where I’ll be, going from house to house and car to car.”
The family found a lifeline at the Salvation Army on East Washington Avenue. The Salvation Army offered more than just beds. “The first thing they had to do was calm me down. I had never been to a shelter before, and I had my daughter,” she says. “They calmed me down and let me know that anybody could [end up] here.”
The organization then outlined the steps needed “to get out of here, and be in a stable situation,” she recalls.
By that December, the family had found an apartment. Bell-Roosevelt now works for the Salvation Army, helping other families get on their feet.
The Salvation Army would like to improve its facilities, with a major renovation and expansion of its East Washington Avenue shelter. But plans are in limbo as the organization works its way through the city planning process.
The Salvation Army of Dane County currently operates two facilities, its shelters at 630 E. Washington Ave. and a facility at 3030 Darbo Drive, where it offers community services.
The group had intended to sell the East Washington property — where a development boom is currently under way — and use the proceeds to help pay for expansion and consolidation at the Darbo location, says Brad Zeman, one of the group’s board members.
“We don’t need to be on East Washington Avenue,” Zeman says. “We need to be in a neighborhood where we can serve people. We’re willing to forgo that prime real estate.”
However, the city dissuaded the Salvation Army from this plan, he says. “The mayor felt we were best suited for East Washington Avenue. There was a change in the zoning code [at the Darbo site], so we no longer fit the definition for mission housing there.”
Zeman says the city has pledged to buy the Darbo property, which is appraised at $5.3 million, for a neighborhood center. There is money earmarked in the city’s capital budget that could be used for such a purchase, says Natalie Erdman, the city’s new director of planning and community and economic development. But the Common Council needs to approve it.
Ald. Ledell Zellers notes that the city is supposed to come up with a plan for neighborhood centers before it creates any new ones.
“The council put in a requirement that before we proceed with the purchase of sites for a community center we have to have a plan,” Zellers says. “In the past, it’s been kind of ad hoc. If some property would happen to [become available] or an alder would push hard, that’s where the next neighborhood center would be. We need to be more thoughtful, because once we purchase it there are operating costs.”
The expansion process is moving much slower than the Salvation Army would like, Zeman says.
“We wanted to break ground this fall, but with the delay and the change of direction from the city, that hasn’t happened,” he says.
The shelter space currently isn’t much to look at. The East Washington building is a former Catholic school. Single women sleep on mattresses on an old gym floor. There are about 30 mattresses, although the shelter squeezes in more during the winter.
The emergency family shelter consists of a few rooms and a hallway, with one bathroom and shower. This has 18 beds. There’s also a transitional family shelter, with 18 rooms, where families can stay for up to 90 days. “Family shelter is always full,” says Melissa Sorensen, the Salvation Army’s director of social services. “In our emergency family shelter, we’re often denying” people.
The shelter also operates a soup kitchen, medical and dental clinics.
The facility is about 22,000 square feet. Zeman says the Salvation Army would like to renovate and expand this to 36,000 square feet. This has been estimated to cost about $10 million, about half of what Zeman says the city has pledged to pay for the Darbo property.
The Salvation Army also plans to construct 60 units of supportive housing for women in its parking lot behind the East Washington building, at an unknown cost.
The organization is eyeing a fall 2016 groundbreaking, although plans are still being developed.
It plans on applying for tax credits from the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) next year. But the expansion is happening without a major fundraising campaign, he says.
The reason, Zeman says, is that it would take too long. “It would take us two or three years to get that [campaign] into motion,” he says. “We feel we don’t have time to wait.”
Instead, board members are looking for wealthy donors — either individuals or companies — to help pay for the project.
Erdman has been meeting with Salvation Army officials to help shepherd the project, which will likely need a special conditional-use permit. Zellers — whose district includes the East Washington site — says that she supports the Salvation Army’s mission and agrees there’s clearly a need for more affordable housing. However, she says some in the neighborhood have concerns about the expansion and that she cannot support it until she learns more details.
“[Expansion] would have to be done with good communications with the neighborhood, some reassurances about management and how that would go forward,” she says. “Until many, many things are done, I can’t say ‘yes, go ahead.’”
Before she needed the Salvation Army’s help, Bell-Roosevelt didn’t know much about the organization or what it did.
“It was amazing to me when I came down here and saw they were actually willing to help,” she says.
Two weeks ago, the Salvation Army took a simple step to help boost its profile, by painting its building in its iconic red, a step to broadcast its presence to the city.
“We see ourselves as the quiet nonprofit. People only know us for the kettle campaign,” Zeman says. “We’ve always been really quiet about our mission and realized we need to be more vocal.”
