To:
Members of the Board of Directors
United Way of Greater Richmond

Mr. Percy P. Heath
President and Chief Professional Officer
United Way of Greater Richmond

Dear Mr. Heath and Member of the Board of Directors:

I write as legal counsel for ASWAN (A Society Without A Name, For People Without A Home), a group of homeless and formerly homeless people, to ask United Way to put a hold on a proposal from the Richmond City Administration to appoint a board of directors for a new non-profit organization that might have far-reaching powers to influence how public funds are spent on homeless services. ASWAN fears that this new organization would reduce the independence of the non-profit organizations that have done so much for homeless people, and would tend, over time, to lead to selection of more isolated locations for homeless shelters and services.

ASWAN was started in 1996 as a group for homeless people to help homeless people, and to speak up for the interests and rights of homeless people. At its start, this group adopted a temporary name -- A Society Without A Name, For People Without A Home -- until a permanent name could be chosen, but the temporary name -- ASWAN -- stuck.

ASWAN's members on the board of directors of the Daily Planet cast the deciding votes in the Fall of 1996 against elimination of the Daily Planet's Rainbow program for employment for mentally ill homeless people. When it became clear that the program could not survive without new funding, ASWAN organized support for a successful effort to persuade City Council in December, 1996 to approve tens of thousands of dollars in general funding for the Daily Planet, which has been continued, and the Rainbow program has survived.

ASWAN members, who meet every week, spent over fifty hours developing specific proposals towards helping reduce homelessness to no more than its levels in the 1970s and presented that plan to City Council. So far, those proposals have not been pursued by the municipal government, but the work of the group to propose positive proposals was a way of saying that homeless and formerly homeless people want to be part of the solution.

ASWAN does not accept money donations, but does accept donations in kind. ASWAN has a strong ethic in favor of its members getting out of homelessness, and helping other members get out of homelessness, and of its leaders encouraging other members to become part of the ASWAN leadership. ASWAN's by-laws provide that anyone who has ever been homeless can join ASWAN by attending just one meeting. Anyone who becomes a member can immediately veto any action of the group. This reinforces a fundamental ASWAN message -- that rich or poor, sick or well, black or white -- we are all entitled to the same respect.

Richmond's homeless people are disproportionately disabled. They were two-thirds white in the mid-1980s and are now over three-fourths African-American. By late 1996 two out of three ASWAN Co-Conveners were white. ASWAN now has five Co-Conveners, of whom three are African-American. ASWAN meetings have considerable discussions about issues of race. President Clinton would be proud.

Homeless people often suffer from an undeserved sense of shame about their condition of homelessness which, in turn, is often a barrier to overcoming homelessness. The $1 million anonymous offer of a charitable donation in return for control over where substantial public funds would be used to help the homeless, if accepted by any agency providing help to the homeless, would send a disparaging message to homeless people that public funding to help them can be controlled, in material part, for the purpose of enabling the prejudices of those who seek to reduce their visibility in the community's mainstream. This message would distort the use of funds set aside by a generous nation and would interfere with the primary purpose of that generosity -- to help homeless people overcome homelessness.

A major part of the efforts of ASWAN over the past 18 months has been to oppose any public policies which seek directly or indirectly to move homeless shelter and services to the isolated location at 17th Street, away from Richmond's mainstream, and also in a majority white neighborhood.

In the opposition of ASWAN to efforts to isolate and segregate homeless people from the mainstream, the most powerful champions of homeless people have come from the area's African-American churches. For example:

1. The largest African-American church organization in the area, the Baptist Ministers Conference of Richmond and Vicinity ("The Baptist Ministers Conference") in 1993 successfully opposed an effort to rezone downtown.

2. In 1997, 600-700 people came to City Hall to demand repeal of any municipal ordinance that would claim any right to prevent any places of worship from feeding more than 30 homeless people. This was an effort by the faith community, regardless of race, but the overwhelming majority of those at City Hall demanding this protection for homeless people, was African-American.

Richmond, black and white, is a city with one-fourth of its population living on incomes below the federal poverty level. Many families, white and black, whose incomes are above the poverty level, have strong memories of very hard times. Members of the faith community, black and white, have stood very strongly on the side of the rights of homeless people. The Catholic Diocese of Richmond, which is an integrated church that can only be described as both white and black, led the way in capitol contributions to make it possible for the Daily Planet to move some of its help to the homeless from 302 West Canal Street to 517 West Grace Street just before the City would have prevented such a move by rezoning downtown on July 28, 1997. The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, the Richmond Friends Meeting, and the Baptist Ministers Conference made major contributions and pledges towards the fundraising campaign to allow that move to go forward. Each of these communities of faith sent representatives to a celebration of that on Sunday, August 3, 1997 in Monroe Park, sponsored by Food Not Bombs and ASWAN, where they, and scores of people who came for that event, joined hands to sing civil rights songs in recognition that the move to 517 West Grace Street signalled a community statement based on a lesson handed down from generation to generation, that we should honor and not shame the poor.

This move by the Daily Planet came despite a letter of opposition dated June 24, 1997 from the Downtown Neighborhood Association which stated that the Daily Planet continued "to seek locations that stir massive resistance."

I am confident that the words "massive resistance" were written by the Downtown Neighborhood Association without considering that it was duplicating the segregationist slogan of Virginia's state government in the 1950s and 1960s. However, I submit that the use of the words "massive resistance" to express opposition to the presence of homeless people in the midst of those who are more advantaged is one among many indications that Richmond is currently in the midst of a genuine civil rights struggle as to treatment of Richmond's extremely destitute, disproportionately disabled, and overwhelmingly African-American homeless people.

I acknowledge that many people of goodwill would disagree with how I have just framed this issue, and it is clear that there is a real division of opinion in our community on the issue of location of shelter and services for help to homeless people. There has not yet emerged in Richmond a united way to the issue of location of these services. In this present state of division of views, ASWAN, speaking from the viewpoint of those for whose benefit homeless programs are operated, asks United Way to wait for greater community consensus before endorsing an entity, which, although believed by its supporters to have value towards coordination of homeless services, has demonstrated in the process towards its development, that it remains, to date, a divided way.

The homeless community, and ASWAN (as an advocacy group that is part of the homeless community) are deeply grateful to the religious community, to CARITAS, to the Downtown Ministry, to Stuart Circle Parish, and to the other places of worship almost too numerous to mention, who give so much to the homeless day after day, week after week. In the opposition by ASWAN and the homeless community to segregation and isolation of the most disadvantaged of Richmond's citizens from Richmond's mainstream in general, and its downtown in particular, by the construction of some modern-day homeless reservation on 17th Street, ASWAN (and the homeless community) look to the faith community for desperately needed moral support. For reasons that may have to do, in part, with the similarity between segregation of black people in the 1950s and 1960s, and the segregation of homeless people in the 1990s (in many cases segregation literally imposed against the same people), the strongest champions of civil rights on the issue of opposing segregation and isolation of Richmond's homeless people has been the Richmond area's African-American churches.

The Richmond City Administration, through the Richmond Regional Homeless Task Force, has asked United Way to create a new organization for coordination of homeless services, commonly called "The Entity."

ASWAN opposes this entity, in part, because there has not been a sufficient showing that it is needed. Supporters of the entity believe it would prevent duplication of services. However, ASWAN contends that the entity would itself be a duplication of services. United Way has an excellent record in coordination of its contributions to homeless providers, and this, in itself, has encouraged coordination in the continuum of care.

A major reason ASWAN opposes the entity is a fear that it might erode the independence of non-profit homeless providers. Members of ASWAN saw first hand that a crucial factor in the decision of the Daily Planet to stand against tremendous pressure to isolate its shelter and services from the mainstream, by moving them to 1336 North 17th Streeet, was a sense that the Daily Planet had sufficient independence to make its decision based on what it believed to be best for homeless people.

A major problem facing homeless people has been a sense within the provider community that it is dangerous for non-profit organizations to cross City Hall. To give one example -- after the Daily Planet decided to move some of its help to the homeless to 517 West Grace Street, against the city government's wishes, the city manager on November 13, 1997 wrote a letter beginning "Re: The New Homeless Shelter - Replacement of the Daily Planet, 302 West Canal Street" asking a prominent person in the community if he and his "business associates: would contrbute $350,000 for a new homeless facility on 17th Street.

The independence of non-profit homeless providers has been protected by United Way through its panel of allocation volunteers. You preside over perhaps the best United Way in the country, in which there is widespread confidence that providers will be judged as to funding on objective criteria. United Way constitutes a mutual community contract among people of all walks of life in Richmond. It works exceedingly well for many reasons, including the very important sense that it represents a united way, not a divided way, and the conviction that everyone has a stake in that unity.

ASWAN asks you, as the decision makers for United Way, to reconsider the issue of United Way support for the proposed new "Entity" to coordinate homeless services, and that you suspend any action to appiont a board of directors for that proposed new body.

In support of this request, ASWAN submits, for your consideration, facts set out in detail below to indicate that the Richmond City Administration, through its formal control of the Task Force, supervised a process that included actions that contravened the spirit of Richmond's hard earned progress on civil rights.

On December 9, 1997, the Task Force, acting through its chair, Deputy City Manager George G. Musgrove, Ed.D, ruled out of order a motion by one of its members, ASWAN Co-Convener Matthew J. Hilgeford, that five African-American ministers, who helped to lead the recent effort to protect homeless meals programs at places of worship, be added to the membership of the Task Force. The minutes for the Task Force meeting of September 26, 1997 stated, in part, as follows:

Matt Hilgeford motioned to add more black clergy to the Task Force. The motion was denied because the City Council Resolution that created the Task Force only empowers the chairman to appoint members to the Task Force.

The City Council resolution referred to in those minutes is enclosed. There is nothing in that resolution that would have prevented the chair of the Task Force, as representative of the City Administration, from agreeing to add more African-American clergy representatives to the Task Force, as proposed in Mr. Hilgeford's motion, if the City Administration, or the chair of the Task Force, as its representative, had been of a mind to do so.

A petition circulated by ASWAN and signed by hundreds of homeless people, which objected to the process for a proposed development of a homeless coordinating body, described this same event at the September 26, 1997 meeting of the Task Force as follows:

Mr. Hilgeford nominated the following clergy members to be added to the Task Force: Rev. A. Lincoln James, Rev. Darrel Rollins, Rev. Patrick J. Wilson, Dr. Robert L. Taylor and Rev. Henry Garrard. Dr. Musgrove ruled the motion out of order and stated that he "dictated" who would be on the Task Force and who wouldn't be.

At a meeting with a United Way vice-president, ASWAN set forth civil rights concerns regarding the process for development of a proposed coordinating body for homeless services, including the circulation in March, 1997 to Leadership Metro Richmond and officials of Chesterfield and Henrico conunties of a 13-page document with recommendations for development of a proposed coordinating body; the document stated that it was "Presented by the Entity Subcommittee of the Homeless Services Task Force" and listed ten members of that subcommittee -- all white.

At about the same time as the circulation of that 13-page document, a co-chair of that subcommittee invited me to meet with representatives of the subcommittee to express my concerns about the proposed coordinating body. After accepting that invitation, I learned that the subcommittee was all white. Because Rev. Eddie L. Perry, chair of the civic committee of the Baptist Ministers Conference, was its representative on the Greater Richmond Coalition for the Homeless, I asked the co-chair of the subcommittee for permission to invite Rev. Perry to join me in the presentation I had been invited to make.

The co-chair responded that Rev. Perry would be welcome to join me at that meeting, but that a statement would be made at its beginning that I had been the person invited to make a presentation at the meeting. There were at least two telephone conversations between the co-chair of the subcommittee and me devoted to the issues raised by my request that Rev. Perry join me on an equal basis in making the presentation I had been invited to make. The co-chair of the subcommittee, over the course of these conversations, would not relinquish the position that a statement would be made at the beginning of the meeting that I had been the person invited to make a presentation at the meeting. After a sufficient opportunity for this issue to be discussed in some depth, including my expression of concern that the subcommittee was all-white, I interpreted the position taken by the co-chair of the subcommittee to indicate an unwillingness to agree that Rev. Perry and I would enter the meeting to make that presentation on an entirely equal footing. I therefore rescinded my acceptance of the invitation, and the meeting took place with neither of us present.

Subsequently, he and I were both invited, and both appeared and presented our views on an equal footing to the subcommittee, which, in the meantime, had been integrated, and, at that meeting, the subcommittee voted to invite the Baptist Ministers Conference to appoint two representatives to be added to its membership. As a result, Rev. Perry became a member of the subcommittee.

Subsequent treatment of Rev. Perry in this process was part of the reason the Baptist Ministers Conference, on December 15, 1997, unanimously authorized its president, Rev. Barbara E. Ingram, to send a letter to City Council which stated, in part, the following:

(A)fter Rev. Perry was added to the Subcommittee, he was informed that he was not a member of the Task Force. What had been fought for in the Subcommittee [one-third representation of homeless and formerly homeless persons on the board of directors of the coodinating body] was overturned at a later meeting of the Task Force that neither Rev. Perry or ASWAN was informed about. . . .

(A)fter being put back on the Task Force at the meeting on September 26 as reported in the minutes [Rev. Perry] still never received any correspondence from the Task Force that other members received. Therefore, upon learning of the meeting on December 9, 1997, he arrived at the meeting to protest the lack of receipt of the minutes of the information that was to be acted upon on the agenda. When he complained to the Chairman about this lack of receipt, the Chairman's response was "The fact that you are here means that you found out about the meeting." That is not the way we expect our representative to be treated when representing us at a public meeting.

At the last meeting of the Task Forec on December 9, 1997, the documents passed out to those in attendance included a statement of the members of the Task Force. The only representative of the African-American clergy included on that list was Rev. Perry.

Anyone who knows Rev. Perry's wonderful qualities of strength, dedication, compassion, leadership, and gentleness will understand that the he was treated in this process had nothing to do with him personally. This treatment of Rev. Perry was part of a two year process replete with a determination to deny to homeless people the benefit on the Task Force of the effective advocacy on their behalf by their most dedicated champions, the African-American churches in Richmond.

The Task's Force's proposal would provide for sixteen board positions, of which no single group would be reserved more than three seats. The proposal would reserve three seats for "Business and/or corporate community" and one seat for "Neighborhood/Small Business," so that representatives from the business community would be the only group specifically mentioned (even though only on a half-basis) in the reservation of a fourth seat.

This extent of allocation for representatives from the business community on this proposed board would come in addition to the proposed allocation of seats to broad-based entities in which business interests, like other interests in our community, have varying degrees of influence: "United Way" (one seat), "Neighborhood/Civic Organizations" (one seat), "State Government" (one seat), and "Local Government" (one seat). While no one could object to the three seats that would also be reserved for "Private non-profit homeless service providers," leaders from the business community have some voice through membership on boards on those organizations, as well. The proposal for creation of a coordinating body for delivery of homeless services would reserve three seats for "Homeless and formerly homeless persons" and two seats for the "Faith Community."

Of course, the philanthropic concern of business leaders for the welfare of Richmond's homeless citizens, and the participation of volunteers from the business community on issues related to homelessness is a tremendously positive contribution to the community, and makes it much more likely that, at some time in the future, enough people might be helped out of homelesness that the level of homelessness in Richmond might be reduced to no more than its level in the 1970s.

However, our community is currently in the midst of a serious and far-reaching debate between, on the one hand, the views of some (although by no means all) in the business community and from neighborhood associations who have favored reduction of the visibility of homelelss people in downtown and in particular neighborhoods, and the opposition, on the other hand, from homeless people to policies that would tend to segregate them from Richmond's mainstream in general, and downtown in partricular.

In the context of this debate, ASWAN requests that you not ratify a formula for board allocations for a new body to have substantial influence over allocation of public homeless funding where that formula was determined by a process that excluded, over considerable protest, a meaningful role for the strongest champions of the homeless, Richmond's African-American churches, where this exclusion coincided with a proposed allocation of board positions that favors selection of leaders from the business community over selection of any other single group.

I submit that the Task Force, acting as an arm of the City Administration, is asking, in effect, that United Way invoke its prestige to help still objections to the proposed coordinating body for homeless services.

The City Administration made what I submit was a like request in 1996, which United Way granted, apparently in part as an accommodation to the strong support for the proposed coordination body by the City Administration, with unfortunate results.

During the 1996 HUD NOFA process, the City Administration asked, and United Way agreed, to apply for part of those HUD funds for administrative costs to start the proposed coordinating body. During an organizational meeting on the HUD/NOFA process, the executive director of SRO of Richmond, Inc. had opposed the attempt to seek these HUD/NOFA for such administrative costs because he had contended that these HUD funds were supposed to be used for direct services to the homeless.

After the coordinated commuinty application had been submitted, and while it was pending at a meeting of the Greater Richmond Coalition For The Homeless, I expressed concern that United Way, in the course of that process, had competed with its own fundees for federal funds. At that meeting, a United Way representative responded, likening that competition to United Way's imposition of administrative costs in its own funding process, and adding that United Way had been advised that its application for HUD/NOFA funding for administrative costs for the proposed coordinating entity was desirable or needed as a means of protecting the strength of the overall coordinated Richmond community application for the 1996 HUD/NOFA funds.

Events proved that United way had been misinformed. I do not know, and do not mean to imply from what quarter this misinformation came (conveyed no doubt inadvertently). HUD disapproved the part of the Richmond community's coordinated 1996 NUD/NOFA application in which United Way sought $137,000 for administrative costs to start a coordinating body for homeless services. In response to inquiry as to the reason for such disapproval, ASWAN was advised that the United Way application to HUD had been disapproved because this HUD/NOFA funding was not supposed to be used for administrative costs, but only for direct services. As a result, the Richmond community lost $137,000 in 1996 in HUD funds for help to the homeless.

On the issue of location of homeless shelter and services, ASWAN asks United Way to consider encouragement of all sides to join in non-binding mediation. It is true that mediation on this issue was attempted under the auspices of the McCammon Mediation Group in 1996, and the result that tentatively came out of that mediation, for decentralization of the Richmond Street Center in the downtown area, lasted for only a few days after it publicly announced. However, ASWAN requests that mediation be tried again, with an opportunity for a thorough and vigorous discussion of matters of concern by all sides of the issue of location of homeless shelter and services. If the McCammon Mediation Group would again supervise such a mediation, perhaps representatives of all of those interested in the issues of location of help to the homeless would join in such an effort to seek to reach a united way on this issue.

Like the rest of the community, ASWAN is deeply grateful to United Way for the wonderful example it sets. In the face of serious problems in other efforts at regional cooperation, United Way is a shining example of successful regional cooperation, and, in the face of serious continuing problems in race relations in our community, United Way has been a model for sensitivity on racial issues.

Aswan wishes to express paricular gratitude to United Way for the actions of its allocations panel described in this letter above, that was cited persuasively by member representataives on the Daily Planet should turn down the proposal to relocate to 17th Street.

In light of restrictions against legislative advocacy by legal aid societies, this letter seeks to influence only United Way as to (a) ASWAN's request that United Way, as a non-legislative agency, suspend any action to appiont a board of directors for the proposed coordinating body, and (b) ASWAN's request for United Way support for mediation on issues of location of homeless shelter and services. Copies of this letter are therefore not being sent to any government official outside the United Way board of directors.

xc: Non-Goverment Members
Richmond Regional Homeless
Task Force

ASWAN Main Page:
http://www16.brinkster.com/6499/aswan