How can we communicate face to face with a person to discuss this letter? So far, all we’ve gotten is this.
And a lady that was scared to open the door but said she would pass the letter along, and locked doors and security cameras at other locations. I hardly doubt the three women trying to talk to them are that scary!
I guess we shut down a park! Funny thing is . . . no one else was threatened with tresspassing while walking through the park or walking their dog (guy had is dog pee on stuff we were loading into the truck while he stood there and watched.) Wonder what the pope would say?
You know, they have an virtually empty building every night, they could let people sleep at the education Center on Main St. . . . . just sayin
October 1, 2015
Cathedral Parish
Monsignor Kevin Holmes
404 E Main St
Madison, WI 53703Dear Monsignor Holmes:
We are writing to ask you grant sanctuary or forward our request for sanctuary at Cathedral Square to Pope Francis. We are asking for sanctuary for homeless people who are being displaced from the City County Building steps.
As you may have heard, after many meetings and months of discussion and vigorous public advocacy from the Madison Mayor’s office, a decision has been made by the City County Liaison committee to make it illegal for homeless people to sleep on the City County steps and to store their belongings there beginning at 5:00 on October 1st 2015. The police will ticket people who violate their new rule “No persons allowed on property after 5:00pm weekday and 24/7 on weekends of CCB unless engaged in official business of County or City, or as part of officially permitted events on weeknights or weekends.”
Each night there are between 35 and 60 people who sleep on the steps and the surrounding area of the building. Many of these people do not know where they will sleep at night following this new rule. As you are already aware, many of these people are victims of their circumstances who have done nothing wrong. Many come from traditions of faith, have been upstanding members of their community, and have sacrificed the little they have to support fellow homeless individuals. These are the sick, the poor, and those who have fallen through the cracks of a broken system.
The residents here have found solace and protection sleeping close to one another. Women have felt less of a threat of sexual assault than sleeping alone behind a bush, for example. Others have had previous experience sleeping in front of businesses alone around downtown and being kicked and beaten up by aggressive college students or other downtown patrons who made a game of assaulting people sleeping outside. The security of sleeping next to a community of people for protection and mental/emotional health can go a long way.
The City of Madison and Dane County have systematically eliminated virtually every viable legal place to sleep when people have exhausted their days in shelter. People have been threatened with trespassing tickets for sleeping on many city properties, ticketed for sleeping in city parks and bus shelters and been forcibly removed from Dane County Parks. Private property owners have been threatened with thousands of dollars of fines for zoning code violations for allowing homeless people to store property and sleep on their private property. There is no place in the City of Madison people can put up a tent. County parks changed their rules, making camping in parks as expensive as renting. Most recently the Mayor is proposing fines for sitting on benches for more than an hour. Homeless people have been chased out of nearly every public and private place imaginable. There is no legal place left to go.
Worse yet, after receiving 100s of thousands of dollars for tickets that they can’t pay, the police routinely ask for warrants to put homeless people in jail for crimes of poverty and homelessness. An August survey shows that 16% of our jail population had no permanent address.
As far as we can see, the most likely possibility for a space where this community can continue to live harassment free is at Cathedral Square. It is close to the City County building so people can move their sleeping bags there and there is a port-a-potty close by that people can use. Your website states this property is “available to all our neighbors as a place of beauty for prayer, reflection or rest.” It further states that people are “welcome to visit and pray privately at any time.”
While the ultimate goal is housing for all and short of that, adequate shelter for all, this is a temporary relief to this problem. To many of us, we see this as our last resort in order to keep people safe.
As is the case with most traditions of faith, the Catholic Church and Jesus Christ preach the importance of helping the sick and the poor. Given the church’s mission of creating a world that reflects the innate, God-given, dignity and worth of every human being, we hope that our goals are aligned in helping these individuals seek peace and safety.
The Pope has recently visited the US calling for humanitarian treatment of homeless and oppressed people. This is a step in the right direction to provide a type of “moral and ethical sanctuary” to some of Madison and Dane County’s most vulnerable residents.
We ask that you grant “moral and ethical sanctuary” to this group of people while the City and County find a better solution to homelessness than ticketing people and locking people up in jail.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or to set up a meeting to discuss this matter further.
I am dismayed by this request which I would definitely say is inappropriate. I am a Catholic Cathedral Parishioner and I volunteer every week for many years with the St Vincent de Paul program “Vinnie’s Lockers” safely storing the belongings of the homeless. Our program has seen a decrease in use as storing belongings at the City-County Building became a pressure tactic to make demands. Among my homeless friends are those who were involved in the “Occupy Madison” camp and saw people with injuries from drunken brawling at that camp, heard of all kinds of woes; even its former leadership tell me it was an over-idealistic fiasco that did not work and could not work. The people involved need help with substance abuse, mental health, physical health, work for those who can, and real housing. There is NO WAY that it would serve the homeless well to allow a repeat and it is unreasonable to ask for. I know there had been a push by outreach workers to get people into housing and that some have continued to refuse help they are offered. Those doing marxist-type organizing of the homeless are doing a disservice to everyone and especially to the homeless. Just the other day marxist type journalist Pat Schneider came in Holy Redeemer Church apparently while looking for some other church and had a narrative about the homeless that she was trying to find a story to fit in order to write some article for the national press. I and another person suggested some help to her and people she could contact but cautioned her that both homeless people of goodwill and service providers agree that the homeless need to share space with others in Madison and that this is a population that needs a lot of help–not the most responsible members of the community. Catholics in Madison run Luke House, the Catholic Multicultural Center, St Vincent de Paul, Pro Labore Dei, etc. We care. The homeless camp movement that started with “occupy” is obviously not a good thing. I pray the Stations of the Cross while walking the path at the former Cathedral site every week in good weather ever since the garden was built, with other parishioners. We are happy to be able to use this site for a sacred purpose and when we are finally able to rebuild a Cathedral some day we want it to have facilities for assisting the poor. At this time the facilities on the site are there to help all of us to follow Jesus’ Way of the Cross, not to use as a camp.
I would be happy to discuss it with you face to face, email me or contact me through the form on my blog laetificatmadison.com
Amen.
Is this the Occupy Madison you are talking about? http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/one-year-in-madison-s-village-of-tiny-houses-wins/article_6d1a54cc-343a-5775-b3de-5fa341677580.html
No. Tiny Homes has worked very well for a handful of people who invested in their own future to get out of homelessness. The problems were at the OM site on E Wash, but I think you know that already.
Anyone who imagines the church should take on a population that the city government couldn’t deal when it was living next to the police station is delusional. Part of the reason people who were at CCB now have no place to go is because they trashed the last place they were allowed to be. Moving them to a new place isn’t going to fix the behavioral problems, and unless you fix the behavioral problems, they will keep getting kicked out of anyplace they end up at.