As previously reported on Wallyhood, the indoor homeless SHARE shelter opened yesterday at the Gift of Grace Lutheran Church. Following up from Sunday’s notification meeting, Pastor Jami Fecher sent an email to all meeting attendees who wanted to receive a follow up communication.
I’ve re-printed the email below with Pastor Fecher’s permission. His email, among other things, outlines a few upcoming public forums to be held at Mosaic Coffeehouse (4401 Second Ave North East), the first of which is this Saturday from 10:30am – noon. The next meeting will be on Saturday October 23, also starting at 10:30am. RSVPs for both events are not necessary.
In addition, Mayor McGinn’s office is hosting a city-wide community town hall at Saint Matthew Parish (1240 NE 127th Street) this evening at 6pm for folks who want to attend.
Dear Friends and neighbors,
As promised I am (barely) meeting my deadline to communicate with you. This initial communication is purely an effort to set up further communication. The thing we are communicating about is presence of the SHARE shelter at Gift of Grace. At the informational meeting with SHARE last Sunday, hosted at Gift of Grace, among the many thoughts expressed, I am lifting out two things that can help us move forward: 1) an open and broad public forum 2) a team of people who more or less monitor any impact the SHARE shelter is having on the Wallingford neighborhood.
Since there have been many concerns raised there is a lot to sort through. One articulate neighbor suggested that we proceed with public conversations in a two-pronged way, 1) an immediate public forum to hear and understand concerns 2) a forum planned further out that considers how those concerns are addressed after a reasonable period of time, like 6 weeks or so.
I invite you to a public forum this Saturday, 10:30 AM –NOON PM at Mosaic Coffee house the corner of 2nd NE and 44th NE (right behind Dick’s Hamburgers). The coffee shop will not be open, but a staff person will serve us drip coffee. The purpose of the meeting is to hear concerns and understand them and see where we might move from here. Perhaps it would be a time to try to set up the team who would monitor the impact of the SHARE shelter on the neighborhood.
I also invite you to a second follow-up public forum, to be held at Mosaic, Saturday, Oct 23rd, 10:30 AM – NOON. No RSVP’s required for either meeting.
Finally, I left my phone number and email address for anyone who wanted to communicate with me. Some of you have called and/or written and I have responded. Others have not heard back from me. This is not an intended slight. It has simply been a matter of my time constraints. So, please be patient. If you have not heard from me by next Friday, please call me again.
To reach me by email it is best NOT to reply to this address, but to write me at [email protected]
Sincerely,
Pastor Benjamin Fecher (Jami)
Thanks for providing this info.
I will be attending and moderating this first meeting at MOSAIC’s on Saturday, September 18. I am a resident of Wallingford for 23 years and will be joining Gift of Grace as a member on Sunday 9/19.
Woody, were you one of the people who were involved in planning the shelter before it became known to the general public last week?
I was not part of the leadership team at Gift of Grace that negotiated the details with SHARE and communicated with Huckleberry Forest Preschool (the director, not the parents) regarding the church’s plans to proceed with this ministry to homeless men and women.
I was a participant in the church meeting on August 8, where we went through a consensus process to identify and resolve issues related to becoming an indoor SHARE site. The preschool was one of our major concerns. I am very disappointed that the Director of Huckleberry Forest Preschool, Aida Mahmulyin, did not communicate the terms of the lease she signed in February with Gift of Grace pertaining to homeless persons in and around the church to the parents of children in the preschool. This notification is spelled out explicitly as a requirement in the lease. She also didn’t inform them after August 8, when she was notified in writing that we planned to be a SHARE host site with September 15 as the start date.
I am angry (although probably not as angry as the parents) that the parents of children in the preschool did not learn about this until the neighborhood was informed a week before the opening. The tenants in the Gift of Grace building got over 1 month’s notice. I do not know why the Director of the preschool did not inform the parents.
There has been a lot of misunderstanding and poor communication on this. I hope and pray we can speak and listen for the truth in conversations with each other in this messy situation. I am willing to answer questions of clarification on this blog and work through the difficult task of reestablishing trust in face to face meetings.
-Woody
I went to the Mayor’s talk last night. It was planned for that neighborhood which has several needs and concerns about sidewalks and traffi crevisions.
Please be careful with meeting plans posted here.
Thank you for the additional information. Woody.
Woody I understand the legality of a lease document, but did you guys actually take time to explain this verbally to the leaseholder? The fact that you were planning to site them next to a magnet for substance abusers and unscreened criminals? I would love to think of the shelter naively as a warm dry place for good people who have simply fallen on hard times, but we are all adults here and that is a ludicrous misrepresentation of Seattle’s homeless people.
The inference that it’s her fault for not noticing seems contrary to other reports I have heard about the nature of the lease and secondly, leaves us all in the uncomfortable position of looking like NIMBYs and selfish yuppies.
I have been homeless, through no fault of my own and I am sad to report that I was in a small minority, most of whom had the wherewithal and common sense to find other solutions to that problem. The residents of the Ballard community who apparently suffered the halo effects of their shelter are better qualified to note specifics and anecdotes, the rest of us it seems are just going to have to suck it up.
If I sound cynical and heartless, then tough. I am cynical, but I am a realist, not an asshole. If you were housing abused spouses, single moms with kids, even runaways, I would not only accept the situation, I would volunteer to help, but that is not the demographic you’re going to be serving, other than by exception.
I’m a parent of a preschooler
Here are the two “agencies” with direct oversight. The Health and Human Services Department is listed in the second row of the City Organizational Chart.
http://www.lutheransnw.org/about/contact.asp
http://www.cityofseattle.net/directory/CityOrgChart.pdf
(Health and) Human Services:
Human Services
The mission of the Seattle Human Services Department is to connect people with resources and solutions during times of need so we can all live, learn, work and take part in strong, healthy communities. HSD contracts with more than 230 community-based human service providers and administers programs and services that meet the basic needs of the most vulnerable people in our community – families and individuals with low incomes, children, domestic violence and sexual assault victims, homeless people, seniors, and persons with disabilities.
Director: Dannette R. Smith, Acting Director
Phone: (206) 684-0263
Visit Us At: Seattle Municipal Tower
700 5th AV, Suite 5800
Seattle, WA
Mail Us At: PO Box 34215
Seattle, WA 98124-4215
Website: Human Services
http://www.seattle.gov/humanservices/
I think trying to place blame on the preschool is pretty disgusting.
With all due respect to Woody, I’m wondering if it would be most fair to all parties if an independent moderator could be hired for the community meetings.
I am a preschool parent who is completely in favor of having the shelter and preschool co-exist as long as there is a good working relationship established between all parties. Clearly this is not the case as things stand now, however, and that is the reason why many parents are concerned.
I have heard both sides of the story, and my assessment is that this whole situation is the result of massive communication breakdowns — players on all sides are at fault. I am extremely uncomfortable with Woody’s implication that parents should be furious at Aida for not telling us “the truth.” This is simply not fair and not productive towards fostering healthy conversation in our community.
For this reason, I am very concerned about Woody’s ability to moderate fairly.
Woody –
Thank you for stepping up to the task of moderator. This cannot be easy, given the heated nature of the discussion.
I am not a parent of a preschooler, so I can only comment on the notification (or lack thereof) that I received as a neighbor within 2 blocks of the church, and the input (or lack therof) that parents and neighbors share. It seems to me that the root cause of frustration (and the ensuing, unecessary drama) stemmed largely from the fact that non-members of the congregation have no voice. As a moderator, I noticed the pastor tended to call frequently on people he could reference by first name, bypassing many who had their hands up for a long time. SHARE really drove the discussion, and presented several things as fact that subsequent research has confirmed to be mistruths, but these facts were allowed to stand as truths in the meeting.
As you are a new voice in the debate, I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you will be open to all voices and help us open new paths of communication, but my trust is shaky based on what I witnessed last Sunday and given your position as a member of the congregation. Can you tell me if SHARE will be present at the meeting? It would be helpful if the neighbors and parents had an opportunity to discuss the facts directly with the church, separate from SHARE, to discuss a differing point of view, as it seems that the church has had many opportunties to discuss things with SHARE.
Again, it takes courage to step into this role. Please don’t think I’m assuming the worst about you when I beg you to be unbiased, I’m honestly just begging from the depths of my heart for there to be someone in this role who can be an unbiased, clear thinker who will allow the thoughtful commentary and revealing research presented on this blog to be heard and understood.
Might be best if the moderator were an independent entity, someone who does not have a vested and or emotional connection to this – and I mean from either side. With all do respect to Woody, who I am sure is a fine person, his stating his anger in this is not the kind of talk I want to hear from someone who is suppose to be monitoring a bridge-building session. That is not to say his anger isn’t real of justified, just that he should not be leading this particular discussion and should be sitting with the pastor given his role in this. Then again, there is effort being shown here and that is a good thing. I do believe that impartiality by the meeting leader is the best solution for a productive meeting and I can point to last weeks meeting as a point in case where this was clearly absent. Just a thought…
Again – let me be clear – I don’t know Woody but assume he is a fine person. That said, whenever I’ve been involved in conflict resolution seminars and management classes, having a stakeholder from one side serve in the arbitrator role is not a good strategy. Things don’t generally go very well.
All I’m going to say is that the majority of parents (and I am one) of Huckleberry Forest children remain supportive of the preschool. -At least the ones that attended the latest mtg.
My last word on this topic is just some advice for further Commenters about keeping it civil and respectful, realizing almost no one knows the full story. We are all dealing with hearsay from a first party we trust. Attacks require defenses and counter-attacks also based on hearsay, stoking a fire that burns all. Any attempt by a church or its members to vilify a preschool would be as foolhardy as a preschool trying to vilify a church and its congregation and will just divide the community further.
Quote from Pastor Jami’s letter:
“two things that can help us move forward: 1) an open and broad public forum 2) a team of people who more or less monitor any impact the SHARE shelter is having on the Wallingford neighborhood.”
1) Kinda like how Grace and SHARE were open with the neighborhood about their intentions a year ago when they decided to blindside us?
2) As for the “monitors,” per response 1), SHARE has repeatedly demonstrated they cannot be trusted at all, and that also applies to the congregation of Grace, to a lesser extent. I strongly urge that the monitors are neighborhood residents totally unaffiliated with either organization.
It’s time that SHARE and these churches, those both gullible and dismissive of their neighbors, are taught a lesson. They need to learn that they are not an island, and that they can’t just throw their weight around, hiding behind the skirts of the homeless whenever people want the truth and a fair and open process. They act this way and then they’re surprised there’s outrage and pushback?
Cathy – In response to your comment (#5). First of all, thanks for your comment on the post. The mayor’s meeting was part of a town hall series, and is listed as open to the community of the city of Seatte. I mentioned it on the post because I’ve been approached by so many folks saying that they contacted the mayor’s office. You are correct, however, that it was not scheduled in direct response to this issue, and if the post read as such, my apologies. Going forward, I will try to be much more clear on that point.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts with the Wallyhood community and contributing to the dialogue.
I do not want my daughter to be abducted by a homeless person.
Woody and GoG,
My question ‘o the day: If are serious about a conversation, then why is Woody facilitating the conversation? Woody, if you are as familiar with mediation and facilitation as you say, then you would know that this role is not the appopriate role for you. If I have a dispute with my neighbor, then I would not ask another family member of mine to facilitate a conversation to resolve the dispute. On second thought, I would try but would expect my neighbor to rightly call me out on this. Woody, that’s why you are being dismissed here as the right person for Sunday.
So, I’m not just “complaining”, but want to offer a solution. There are experts who understand the role of a proper facilitator. Two come to mind and specialize in complex issues. Ruckelshaus Center (http://pcc.wsu.edu/) and Triangle (http://www.triangleassociates.com/section_about/index.htm) are two local orgs here and would better serve the community than you, Woody.
The comedy of errors continues…
There was a momentary glimmer of hope, but unfortunately Woody’s comment (#4) has already set a bad tone for the meeting. And this from the moderator (sigh). I’m not familiar w/ this method of conflict resolution. I though moderators were suppose to remain impartial and keep their opinions off the table. That said, we now know we don’t have an impartial moderator. Thats for tipping your hat. If turning people off and re-enforcing suspicions about the church (warranted or not) was the objective, the pastor selected the right person. I am dumbfounded.
Response to Tom (#12):
“Can you tell me if SHARE will be present at the meeting?”
I called Marvin at SHARE to clarify this. SHARE has not been invited and does not have plans to attend tomorrow’s meeting.
Hayduke –
I’m afraid that neither the church nor share is surprised that there’s outrage. SHARE thrives off of both, and they have carefully coached the chuch to ensure that neighbors and parents fall unwillingly into their trap. Both SHARE and the church stand to gain from the way our outrage is beying portrayed in the media, by increasing support for their cause from outsiders who don’t have firsthand experience and can cast their own judgement based on limited information.
Before I had reason to research this, I admit, I lived a rather uninvolved life and voted blindly for the SHARE/WHEEL funding on the ballot a year or so ago. If I had seen this on the news, I would have had little reason to look any further, would have dismissed the residents of Wallingford as heartless and voted for SHARE, thinking that they were a normal, transparent charity organization doing good things for the city. And, as we see, the GoG congregation is growing this month by one unbiased moderator.
Pretty clever, the way we’re being played, isn’t it?
I have now read most if not all of the entries on this and two other related threads. I want to be as transparent as possible on this blog and at tomorrow’s meeting. That is why I mentioned my affiliations and my feelings.
I agree, as a member of Gift of Grace with some passion for this issue, I may not be an ideal candidate to be facilitator for tomorrow’s meeting. I will do my best to listen to all concerns, and be respectful and non-judgmental to those who speak. I offered to be facilitator for this initial meeting called by the church so that Pastor Jami Fecher could participate fully as spokesperson for the church instead of wearing both hats.
Per Jami’s letter posted elsewhere, one critical success factor for this meeting is identification of “2) a team of people who more or less monitor any impact the SHARE shelter is having on the Wallingford neighborhood.” This team needs participation by concerned neighbors and preschool parents who are not directly associated with the church. I expect this team to identify who will be the facilitator for the October 23 meeting.
-Woody
Woody,
I think your emotional attachment to the issue (see post #4) makes you a poor candidate for the facilitator of this Sunday’s meeting. Is there no one else that can do this job?
I’m fine with these people coming from the Gift of Grace Church:
>>identification of “2) a team of people who more or less monitor any impact the SHARE shelter is having on the Wallingford neighborhood.” This team needs participation by concerned neighbors and preschool parents who are not directly associated with the church. I expect this team to identify who will be the facilitator for the October 23 meeting.<<
A lease is a legal agreement and it seems (from this thread) that the church has fulfilled their requirements. If what Woody said is correct, the pre-school failed the parents, not the church. I would be interested in seeing it as it may shed some light on both sides of this argument.
@Elaine: The “meeting” is on Saturday – see article above.
To “lease”:
You might be able to look at the lease, but I think you should keep in mind that forming conclusions based on the lease alone would be a very reductionist approach to an extremely complex issue. A more open-minded approach to evaluating the issue would involve listening to many people’s stories, not just Woody’s. Looking at the lease alone might be a good approach to evaluating certain technicalities, but not a healthy way of determining who “failed” whom. You’ve made a pretty strong statement there in your post.
As a preschool parent who has spent countless hours trying to understand this complex situation (including the legal aspects), I now know without a doubt that the preschool did NOT fail me. You may reach a different conclusion after skimming the posts on this thread, but I do not think you should put very much weight into that conclusion.
@lease: Thanks for the detailed definition of a lease. I can tell you are a legal scholar from your critical assessment of the situation. It is amazing that you can do this given: ” I would be interested in seeing it (the lease) as it may shed some light on both sides of this argument.” Yeah, it may shed some light, but it looks like you got things figured fine on your own. Why complicate things. Just post like you know fact from fiction. Bravo Barrister, Bravo! ‘sigh’
The HF preschool issue is no longer relevant, as they’ve decided to change locations and control their own destiny.
However, I would say child safety is still an issue for the neighborhood though, as this doesn’t change the fact that SHARE does not properly screen and ID , and there is not a protocol in place for ensuring the residents actually leave Wallingford at 7am.
lease, you have only heard one side of it. I have heard from the other side, and they are saying the lease says that no additional homeless people would be invited to stay at the church(other than the two the church was already housing). If that is true, then the church is in violation of their lease.
No matter which version is closer to the truth, it is apparent that the church gave the preschool no input into the decision, and (from what I gather from these blogs) very little information until the last possible minute, be it one month or one day. The church may be a landlord, but they are first and foremost a church, which to me means an institution with an obligation to be compassionate, ethical, and just in all of their dealings, including their legal ones.
The preschool folks quite clearly feel surprised, betrayed, and deliberately misled by this decision, no matter what was written into the legal document. I would like to see that addressed at tomorrow’s meeting.
Woody, thank you for disclosing your involvement, though I was saddened to hear about your anger with the preschool director. I have talked with her personally and heard her tell a very different story. Even though it looks like they will be leaving the building, I hope you can take the time to sit and listen directly to her. She seemed genuinely blindsided by what happened.
As far as tomorrow goes, I think if you backed off from moderating as much as facilitating the meeting, and continued to be as open about your allegiances as you have been here, then everyone will at least know where you stand. Depending on how things turn out, it may be best to bring in a truly neutral party for the October meeting.
I truly wish the preschool the best. I hope that the church will handle their departure with true Christian spirit and grace, and go out of their way to make this transition as smooth and easy on them as possible. Moving a school to a new location on such short notice is an extremely difficult process as it is (been there, done that, as they say). This would be one way that the Gift of Grace community could help the healing process along, and it would visibly demonstrate to the larger community your good faith efforts.
@28- seriously? Do you use shame to teach your kids lessons, too?
@32: Sorry, thought I was addressing an adult. I’ll be more tolerant of ridiculous comments moving forward. Again, my apologies.
Poster 32, You must be new here. Please scan/search the numerous posts on this blog pertaining to this situation for the words “NIMBY”, “non-Christian”, “disgusting”, “shameful”, “elite”, “rich”, etc. This will take some time because you’ll find a good number of them. You’ll see that there has been plenty of shaming directed towards the pre-school, parents, and neighbors. Now it may not be shaming of a nonsense post by a reply that is dripping in sarcasm as you’ve highlighted in Post 28. Instead, you’ll find a more self-righteous damnation style of shaming directed at people that have real concerns and questions. So I would argue that the crazies (to use your term) have been here all along. In fact, they own the place, so to speak. Maybe you just haven’t noticed.
I have seen some un-Christian workings coming from this pastor and this church, but Woody’s comments are a brand new low. Let me deal with some of his purposeful misdirections:
“I am angry (although probably not as angry as the parents) that the parents of children in the preschool did not learn about this until the neighborhood was informed a week before the opening. The tenants in the Gift of Grace building got over 1 month’s notice. I do not know why the Director of the preschool did not inform the parents.”
The instant that the director of the preschool learned that the church planned to house 15 homeless in the same building as the school (and this was mid-August, not January and she was not told directly but CC’ed on an email to the congregation) she immediately contacted the church and told them that they needed to have an emergency meeting on this. The church waited. She contacted them again after a weeks or so, choosing to believe it a mistake. They held her off for weeks, refusing any dialog. Do you know when the church met with her and her husband on this? At the public meeting, 2 days before the homeless moved in. Why on earth would she contact the parents when she had assurances from the pastor that this was not going to happen? Shame on these lies!
“I am very disappointed that the Director of Huckleberry Forest Preschool, Aida Mahmulyin, did not communicate the terms of the lease she signed in February with Gift of Grace pertaining to homeless persons in and around the church to the parents of children in the preschool. This notification is spelled out explicitly as a requirement in the lease.”
Oh really? I am very glad to hear you site the lease. Very glad. Since you have stated this as the basis for your argument, I am sure that you would have no objection to producing the document to prove what you say? I of course do not expect you to produce this document since to do show would prove definitively who knew what when. Would there be anything in this document preventing the preschool director from talking about it?
I think it is abysmal to denigrate this woman and this school, when this church’s lies have already cost them thousands of dollars and when shills for the church like you keep to the same negative script. I can only hope that a glimmer of Christian values will somehow suffuse those from the church who are throwing these lies around.
So tell me Woody, when can we all look at this lease in its entirety? I’m sure that everyone would be glad to get to the truth of this. Everyone that is except Pastor Jami, the church and you.
Guy, I spoke with Woody at length after the meeting. He was not privy to all the details of the lease or notification, and based his earlier comments on what was being told to the congregation and to him. He did seem interested in hearing all sides. Whether or not Woody’s (prior) information is accurate, I do not know. I can say that I was disturbed last Saturday by Pastor Jami’s own discussions about the lease, and his description of how he chose to interact with them.
I am hoping that the GoG congregation will look into this further, as this seems to be the source of much miscommunication. Although the details of the lease are interesting, what is far more important is what was being communicated to the preschool about the church’s long term plans when the lease was signed. And how the church, via its representative Jami, handled its communications with the preschool during this time.