Poetry Street Mourns Loss of John Lewis Community Services

The news in the last couple of days that Davenport’s premier homeless shelter, John Lewis Community Services, will be closing is sad news indeed. Even their Web site is not working this morning; the main page reads only that the site is under construction. The men, women, children, teens and veterans who have come to rely upon JLCS will soon find themselves literally out in the cold in a Midwestern winter.

John Lewis, which began as a food-providing facility called John Lewis Coffee Shop in 1989, not only provided services to the homeless, but it provided services with dignity. JLCS, which was named one of 300 Things That Make the Quad-Cities Great in 1998, committed a fatal gaffe when it proposed and steamrolled through the building of Cobblestone Terrace—a housing project that was adamantly opposed by neighbors. The ill-conceived plan won the legal disputes that the community instigated and pushed the project through despite the feelings of most Davenporters. These actions alienated the support John Lewis had basked in, and ruined its position of trustworthiness in the community. Along with the trust, donations also dried up.

Cobblestone Terrace required an expenditure that was both unneeded and unwanted in the Davenport neighborhood where it ultimately was placed. The project, which purported to provide home-ownership opportunities for families that might not otherwise be able to do so, entered into territory best covered by organizations like Habitat for Humanity. The housing units were planned to begin their lives as rental properties—something of which there is no shortage in Davenport—and were intended to be rent-to-own townhouses. The problem with the very idea of rent-to-own was this: the units were intended for families, but the families would be required to live there for 15 years before being able to actually purchase the properties. As someone who has been both a single, poor, welfare mother and a person who has experienced homelessness, I found the idea ridiculous, and it seemed to me to be simply one way for some developer to make some quick cash. Consider this scenario: I am a single mother with three children, the youngest is 5 and all three are in elementary school. I am offered a place in this project. I must first prove that I have a reliable job, and that I am credit worthy. But people who have jobs and are credit-worthy DON’T NEED HOUSING SERVICES! If I had had good credit and a reliable job when I was homeless, I could have rented or purchased a property without any help from social services agency.

The second problem with the plan was the 15 year residency stipulation. Before I can even THINK about buying the home, I have to have lived in the residence for 15 years. Let’s do the math. My youngest child would be 20 by then—and the chances are that all three children would be on their own, in college, married, in the service, or otherwise living lives of their own making. Now I no longer need a 3-bedroom housing unit supplied by a social services agency across from an elementary school; I no longer have dependent children. Why would I want to purchase a home in a low-income family development at this stage of my life? Perhaps now I will want to go back to college myself, or move into a one-bedroom place. Ok, I know that life doesn’t always work that way, but the plan itself is so long-term it is likely to fail. Most people won’t be content to wait 15 years to purchase the property they live in. Why not make home purchase available within two years? Five? Why not use a fraction of the money it took to build the project and refurbish existing homes in established neighborhoods? Or provide no-down-payment mortgages for what are now rental properties? In addition, the project provided housing for only 35 families. The project also did not address any environmental or sustainability issues; it provided only standard-construction tract homes. It seemed like a poor solution which addressed problems that were entirely imaginary.

Yet the project was pushed through and now we see the cute little townhouses with their neat little patches of lawn sitting quietly between Friendly House and Jefferson Edison Elementary School, a hollow victory. The lost goodwill and financial obligations of this project have now completely destroyed all the good work that John Lewis Services ever accomplished. It is a community tragedy and begs the question, what will happen to those poor people who so relied upon JLCS for so many things?

I hope the people who originally thought that Cobblestone Terrace was a good idea saved enough money to take their lawyer and the developer to lunch. The folks in Davenport in real need of the services from John Lewis Community Services won’t be having lunch there anymore.

Here at the Poetry Street Project, we mourn the loss of the good works JLCS has done for our community and can only shake our heads at the foolishness of this ill-conceived plan. But now, more than ever, those people affected by these events need a voice in the community, a place to express their sense of loss and rage through writing and creative works, a place to inform the rest of us of the dangerous power homelessness has over people’s lives.